Japanese Cotton Soft Cheesecake

This coming weekend will be my mom's birthday. To celebrate the occasion this year, I will be making her a cheesecake. Here's a great recipe provided by a friend. I'm actually making two this week. My first one as a test and to ensure it turns out good and the other will be the actual one presented at her birthday. Today was Sunday and I started my day off by running some errands. Mid afternoon after returning from the supermarket will all the ingredients, I attempted to make this great cake everyone was raving about. Stay tuned for my pictures and reviews.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I was scrambling through my fridge a couple of days ago and noticed that I have a container of unopened peanut butter in addition to soy butter. A constant dilemma we face is attempting to finish our food before it goes bad. Most of the time it’s the milk. When I first moved in with Dh, we purchased milk by the gallon and it would go sour. Since then, I have learned my lesson and purchased milk by the quart instead. When I go grocery shopping, I make it a point to purchase items that expire as far as advanced as possible prior to it expiring. However, we still have difficulty since Henry rarely drinks milk unless I use it for cooking. Otherwise, I would have to finish it myself. So to stick to the topic, I will be making peanut butter cookies from a recipe I found online. This will be my attempt to finish some things in our fridge and make space for others. Stay posted for the recipe and my reviews. It looks like a fairly simple recipe.


Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut Butter Kisses Cookies

*RECIPE:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt


Whisk the butter and both sugars together until light and fluffy. Mix in the peanut butter and egg. In another bowl mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.) Stir the dry ingredients into the sugar butter mixture and mix until all ingredients are thoroughly combined and the dough forms a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Preheat oven to 375°F. Seperate the dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Place about 3 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and flatten in crisscross pattern with a fork. Bake until light brown, 9 to 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for a minute then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

For chewier cookies, bake at 300°F for 15-18 minutes.Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

SIDE NOTE: For the Hershey's kisses version, add kisses 10 minutes after the cookies begin to bake and then remove them from the oven and press the kisses into the center of the cookie. Next put the cookies back in the over for another 5 minutes. Remove immediately after, as the chocolate will start to burn. Place cookies on cookie rack to cool down.

ENJOY!

*adapted from an online blog

Craving Noodles

Tonight I had a craving for some dry noodles. When I came home from work, I decided to rummage through my fridge to see what I had. I happen to find some ground pork, spring onions, and some soft tofu. It was the perfect combination for Ma Pao tofu. Ma Pao tofu is a stir fried tofu dish with brown gravy that was created by a grandmother ( Ma)-- her surname. It's a delicious and light dish to enjoy either with rice or noodles. I decided to make mine with noodles instead. Other quick ways to make this dish is by purchasing pre-packaged Ma Pao tofu sauce. It's available in most Asian supermarkets. Since I didn't pick up the sauce to make this dish in advance, I decided to make my own instead. It's fairly simple.

Ingredients

-1 box of soft tofu
-ground pork (tennis ball size--sorry, I don't have the exact measurement)
-1 teaspoon of Oyster Sauce
-1 tablespoon of soy sauce
-3-4 cloves of chopped garlic
-1 teaspoon of sugar
-1 cup of water
-1 spring onion (for garnish)

Method:

Stir fry the ground pork in a wok, add some oil if needed. (If the pork is fatty, omit cooking oil). Cook it until it is medium well. Then remove the ground pork from the wok and set aside so the fat may drain. Add chopped garlic into the wok and continue to stir fry until it becomes medium brown. Once the garlic is ready, combine the pork in the same wok and add the teaspoon of oyster sauce to the mix. Cook the mixture for another 1-2 minutes. Next cut up the tofu into small cubes and toss it into the wok with the pork. Then combine soy sauce and sugar into the tofu and pork stir fry. Cook it for another 1-2 minutes and then slowly add water. Continue to cook until it comes to a boil. Let it simmer as the tofu will slowly soak up the gravy. For a thicker gravy, you can add 1 tsp of cornstarch and water to the mix. However, I kept it as is: which is just as great. Pour this sauce over noodles and enjoy. I decided to use Ramen. Any type of noodles will do. It's really up to you. All in all, DH and I both enjoyed our Ma Pao tofu noodles tonight. Stay tuned for the pictures.