New Apartment Housewarming Party

At the beginning of August I moved into a new place, got a new room mate and a new mafia-affiliated landlord and, for the first time in 5 years, I have my own bedroom that has an actual door. It's a dream come true.

Not only do I now have my own bedroom, but I also have a real living room, kitchen, office/desk area, annd bathroom--what luxury!! Coming from jank dorm rooms and a small one bedroom though, I essentially had no furniture whatsoever. So my parents, being the angels that they are, agreed to rent a uhaul truck, fill it with furniture and drive it all the way to NYC in order to protect me from the dangers of furniture shopping on craigslist and trying to put together the million-piece items from ikea. And since they had a huge truck, they didn't want any space to go un-utilized! So my dad fired up the smoker before they left home and my mom filled some coolers with dry ice and they were able to bring some good ol' Texas BBQ to New York. It was amazing.

Angy took a few pics of the gathering of some of my favorite people I've met here in the city as we celebrated the new place and enjoyed some home cooking...

housewarming flowers from Angélique

Joanne, SueYeon, Suji, Yaegi, Brittney, Mom, Sujin, Me, Tae, Dad

I think Sujin was taking too many pictures at this point-- Joanne, SueYeon, Suji, Yaegi,Brittney, Mom, Angélique, Tae, Dad, Me

Me and my 가장 친한 친구 (bffl)

SueYeon's dog, Dodo, was the life of the party

Sujin started getting her Beyonce on...

<3

post bbq napping needed

dessert spread--fruit salad, coconut macaroons, chocolate chip cookies, & brownies w/ chocolate gnache topping

xoxo.

Mile High Chocolate Cake

Last week I decided to host a dinner party last week for two reasons: 1. I wanted to be reunited with my Korean bffl's after my trip to texas/michigan, and 2. I needed some motivation to get my apartment shiny clean. And the best part was~~ Sue offered to cook dinner as long as I made dessert! She made two delicious Korean dishes which I of course don't know the names of... but one was beef (yum) and the other was sweet potato (my new favorite korean dish). Sue and Yaegi love chocolate so I decided on this Mile-High Chocolate Cake. It was indeed very tall, and super delicious. My kitchen was really hot though, and I was a little bit too impatient to let the icing cool completely... hence a cake that looks a litttttle sloppy. Also, because it was so tall and still a little warm, I took the precaution of adding the chopstick support system. Sue added chocolate covered espresso beans and chunks of milk chocolate to disguise the chopsticks(but mostly I think just to add more chocolate...)

I didn't get a good group shot of everyone, but I am in love with this pic of Sue, Hye and I in matching denim!

cake recipe

22nd Birthday Treats + Baking French Macaroons

I spent my actual birthday in the workroom at school-- 17 hours of sewing, pattern making and all around fun. There was a slight break taken however, when Angy and Joanne surprised me with this amazing brownie tower cake topped off with a raspberry cheesecake and served with hazelnut coffee from our home away from home, Brooklyn Bagel.

(If you live in NYC and are in the Chelsea area, go there immediately. I eat like 2 meals a day there and have converted all my friends to serious addicts.) Their brownies are possibly the best i've ever had. (Sorry Mom.)

On Monday night after i'd finished all my classes for the semester, my korean bffls took me to Mad for Chicken in K-town for a lovely b-day celebration feast of fried chicken and amazing sushi. If you haven't had korean fried chicken-- get to it. Soo delicious. Served with carrots, celery and, my favorite, (korean?) radishes. The sauce is half soy garlic and half extra extra spicy. It's hot.

I have officially mastered eating drumsticks and wings entirely with chopsticks. I am not kidding.

Thennn, upon returning to Texas, my mom cooked up a legit feast for the fam + Katie, Amanda, Samantha, Marcus and Carrie. The meal consisted of my favorite salad, steak au poivre, pomme frites, and this amazinggg pumpkin tart.

I didn't get any pictures of the meal because I was too busy snarfing it down. I did however, pause for long enough to document this magazine cover worthy dessert. It was soo amazing. I promise to add the recipe asap.

For Christmas Day, I made some French Macaroons. I had been wanting to make these for a while, because they look so good. They were definitely a little tricky to make, mostly because they are very fragile, but they turned out perfectly and were really, really tasty. I didn't even put any flavoring in, so mine just had the traditional almond flavor and then the dark chocolate filling. So good. Now that I have a food processor of my own, I will be able to make these often.

My dad doing his best French face...

macaroon recipe

As you can see, a lovely and sweet 22nd birthday.

High Tea at the St. Regis in NYC

On the day after Thanksgiving, Marissa and I slept in and relaxed, and then decided to brave the crowds uptown in order to check out some sales and, most importantly, go to a fancy high tea. I've been to several High Tea's in the city in the four years i've lived here, but so far the St. Regis is definitely my favorite. It has the most incredible atmosphere and the food is super delicious. I would like to live in the St. Regis...

The tea sandwiches.

The scones and pastries.

Beautiful tea pot.

Marissa and I in a lovely booth... soo cozy

Behind the Scenes: Thanksgiving Baking

I finally uploaded pics from my camera, and I had some pictures taken by Marissa and I from the Thanksgiving morning bake-a-thon...

First, to give you an idea of what i'm working with here... this is my entire kitchen- all of it!!

Rolling out pie crusts. I don't have a rolling pin, so I use a glass usually.

The real challenge is finding enough counter space!

Apple and cranberry pie filling. So easy to make. I cut all of the apples into slices so that when you cut the pie, it looks really pretty. The cranberries added awesome color!

Ready to bake.

Ready to eat!

After the chocolate cream set, I added a layer of raspberries before I put the whipped cream on top.

Hye working on the icing for the red velvet cake. Marissa popping open a bottle of sparkling apple cider (SO typical!) ...check out that glamour apron!

2nd Annual Korean American Thanksgiving Dinner!

Tonight we packed 20 people into my teeny, tiny baby apartment in Chelsea. It was SO much fun! I was so afraid we wouldn't have enough food, but at the end of the night I packed up to-go plates for 6 people! And there is still some left for Marissa and I's breakfast!

The Menu:

Turkey (delicious, amazing, perfectly cooked)- by Suji

Stuffing (so awesome-- am getting the recipe asap because everyone must make!)- by Angélique

Korean noodle dish (quite possibly my favorite korean food yet)- by Yeagi and Sookhyun

and Mashed potatoes and biscuits (yum yum yum)- by my fave sis, Marissa

Sookhyun, Suji, Hye, Marissa, me, Yaegi

Sue, Suji, Marissa, me, Angélique

Sue, Suji, Marissa

So, after we were all totally stuffed and comatose... we started on desserts.

I wanted to make all new and different pie recipes from last year, and I am pretty happy about the way they all turned out.

Clockwise from upper left: Cranberry Apple Crumble Pie, Brown Sugar-Buttermilk Pie, another Cranberry Apple Crumble, Red Velvet Cake, and a Black Bottom Raspberry Cream Pie

Yaegi's favorite was the Black Bottom Raspberry Cream Pie-- it was literally gone in 2 minutes, so I would call it a hit. So, so delicious. I made the chocolate cookie crust with Newman's chocolate ABC cookies because I couldn't find any chocolate wafer cookies. The texture wasn't super fine, but it still looked really good, and had great flavor.

I love buttermilk pies. This recipe was delicious and really, really easy to make.

Annnd, the red velvet cake. Made just for Hye. I only have 7" pie pans, so i used those instead of the 9", which made a really tall cake. It honestly turned out perfectly. The Southern tradition addition to the meal... I miss Texas food.

Recipes:

*Cranberry Apple Crumb Pie

*Brown Sugar Buttermilk Pie

*Black Bottom Raspberry Cream Pie

*Red Velvet Cake (I didn't use the raspberries and blueberries, waaay too expensive at this time of year...)

I used my mom's pie crust recipe for the apple pies and buttermilk:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup canola oil

1/4cup icy cold milk

And: all of these pics were taken by my girl, Angélique. Seriously, if you haven't checked it out already...

click HERE!

It was a really wonderful day. I'm so glad I have so many great friends (who all also happen to be fantastic cooks) that I could spend the day with.

Mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, and pie for breakfast?

PIE POPS!!

So I think I can safely say, this was the most excited I have been about a post so far. Last week was most definitely the most insane week i've had at school so far this semester, and after 5 days of literally no sleep and consuming nothing but bagels, soup, brownies and coffeecoffeecoffee I passed out for 10 hours and woke up ready to bake. A while back I saw an entry on Pie Pops! one of my most favorite blogs that I just discovered, Luxirare, and I was immediately determined to recreate them. However, while Luxirare's looked sooo amazing (no really, check it out here)they used store bought pie crusts and only fruit, corn starch and sugar as a filling. So, while they certainly photographed waaay better than anything I would be making, they didn't sound that appetizing.

This project actually takes quite a bit of brainstorming, but luckily my friend Rachel signed up to help since I was still slightly brain-impaired from the activities of the week. Basically, you have to use a pie filling that a. bakes in the crust, and b. isn't too runny or lumpy. Immediately I thought of pumpkin pie (duh) and perused through epicurious.com for a new recipe since I always like to try a different pumpkin pie recipe. I was clearly feeling overambitious/ hungry because I also decided on a chocolate fudge pie recipe (which was reportedly Marilyn Monroe's fave pie recipe...)

about to go into the oven. shiny and pretty after an egg white wash on top.

these first ones weren't too pretty, but they tasted so, so good! (Marilyn knows good pie!)

see all those flakey layers?! homemade crust!!

Tae approved.

Sookhyun and Tae ate like 6 each.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the actual process, but

since you only need a pretty small spoonful of batter per pop, I have about 5 tons of filling leftover and am going to make some more this week, so I will document and update...

So the recipes I used were: Miss Milton's Lovely Fudge Pie & Pumpkin Pie

I didn't make any changes to the chocolate pie at all, and it was the perfect consistency. The pumpkin pie however, did turn out to be a little too liquidy, so I baked it in the over for about 45 minutes at 325 degrees to kind of set it up. It worked perfectly. The pie crust recipe is my moms: 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup canola oil, 1/4 cup icy cold milk. One pie crust recipe makes about 10 pops. In one night I made 6 pie crust recipes. That's a lot of rolling. They only need to bake about 10 minutes!

These would be really fun to serve at a party with a big bowl of whipped cream. Definitely a possibility for my upcoming Thanksgiving get-together...

More coming soon!