Dan Dan Cookies. aka 醜餅乾

OK.. The time came again to try and make up my own cookie recipe. This one was pretty good.
I felt a bit playful when dropping the dough and laying the toppings. I made one that I like to call Mr. Bill. See him in the middle???

Anyway, I laid the dough with a dimple in the middle so I could add some filling or toppings. For some, I used an almond butter and brown sugar filling then added a couple nuts or chocolate chips. On others I used apricot jam, nuts and dried cranberry.
The dough went like this:
3/4 of one stick of unsalted butter.
1/2 cup of pure maple syrup.
1 tsp vanilla.
1/2 tsp baking soda.
1 cup whole wheat flour.
1/2 cup all purpose flour.
1/4 each of corn meal and almond meal.
1/8 cup oat bran.

First soften the butter and whisk until fluffy. Then add the syrup, vanilla and baking soda and whisk well.
Put all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix well, then add to wet ingredients and mix well.
There you have the dough.. Simple, eh?
Now put table spoon sized scoops on a greased cooking sheet and use the round side of the spoon to make a dimple or well in the dough. Lay your filling of choice in there.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake in center or upper rack for 10 to 15 minutes (when edges turn a nice golden brown).

These little darlings are not totally unhealthy either. As long as you are not allergic to almonds, that is.
If you like it, let me know. Also, if you change something or use a different filling and it works nicely, let me know... Please.
Ahdoga.

First attempt at Pretzels...

Well, this was my first attempt at making pretzels. After the great pretzels we had in Poland, I wanted to try.. I am sorry to report that they were nothing like the ones I had in Poland. I tried to do them multigrain and used too much whole wheat flour and corn meal. They were OK, but not great. I count this as an edible failure. Luckily Zoe made a strawberry tart that was great. So, we did ok as a team. (hehehe).

I did some with black sesame and some with cheddar cheese. The dough was a little different than I thought it would be and we tried to make pretzel shapes with little success.

The final product had a nice color and the texture was fairly chewy. Something just wasn't right about them. They weren't bad heated with butter, though.

Baking Wars- DMZ (Danny meets Zoe)

Well, here is my little ode to baked goods.
It was Z's birthday this month so I surprised her with a strawberry short cake from Whole Foods. They use better, more natural ingredients than most places, so we don't feel as guilty about eating their stuff. And we ate way too much... OK, I ate way too much.


For our next selection; Zoe's little bread.

I later called this little bread "piggy-tail bread". See the photo for explanation. She made this egg bread dough very light. Not too eggy. It was really good. The texture was just a tiny bit chewy, while still soft. I think I now know what Taiwanese people mean when they say something is "Q". The crust was crispy and light. A very nice product. She made a 3 day supply. It lasted the night. Ummm... I am starting to resemble the cutting board.


Not to be outdone, I decided to make cookies tonight. I did not want to make my usual cookies.. Although my cookies are really damn good (shameless plug), I felt like trying something different.. Something Zoe would not have tried before.
I made Hamantaschen.


They are a triangle shaped cookies filled with a variety of fillings. I made the dough and let it chill. I had to improvise on the filling as I did not have what I originally wanted. I settled on honey-almond-cranberry for the filling.I was worried about the dough while I was shaping them, but all came out well. The texture was really great and I thought the only thing I could/should have done differently was add a dash of cinnamon to the filling. Zoe agreed with me on that, saying so while I was chomping on a HMT. I like the layers of pastry/filling/pastry. Over all, I was happy with the product. But, next time I am going to add cinnamon!

When even your dog needs a diet pill.... It's gone too far!!!

OK folks, this is something I just have to comment on. It was bad enough when we found out that Americans spend more each year trying to loose weight than most countries do on eating. OK, that may not be totally accurate. But, I bet it's not far off.

Well, all bets are off now. When even your dogs need personal trainers and even diet pills, it is just too much. Do we really not understand that we eat too much and exercise way too little??? Talk about waste! If you and your dog are eating so much that you can not burn off the calories, the answer should be simple. Eat less!!! Eat more natural foods!! And get some exercise!!!

Your dog knows it needs to exercise. Just let it! If you can not let your dog exercise because of your lifestyle, maybe you should consider changing your lifestyle or not get a dog. It's just wrong. Now, I am not trying to belittle any individual people or individual dogs. But we should learn from the mistakes of the past. We should learn that not ever habit we have developed in our glorious modern era is good for us. It's OK to walk a couple blocks. We don't need to drive 3 blocks to Starbucks with the dog in the back seat. WALK!!!!

These doggy diet pills should not exist. It is just not in harmony with nature.

--------



Something for the Dog That Eats Everything: A Diet Pill - washingtonpost.com



The obesity epidemic has spread to man's best friend, and so many dogs are getting fat that the government stepped in yesterday by approving the first doggie diet pill.

US obese dogs to get diet pills - BBC

A weight-loss drug for dogs has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).



About 5% of America's 65 million dogs are thought to be obese

powered by performancing firefox

日出大地-乳酪蛋糕.牛軋糖(台中)

I just cracked into a box of candy my wife brought me from Taiwan. It's from a pretty cool and very popular bakery/candy store in the Taichung area called Dawn Cakes (日出大地)

The candy is calle niu2ga2tang2 牛軋糖 in Mandarin and is pretty much what it translates to... Nougat... But, it's good nougat. The box has two flavors, original and coffee. Both have nuts and are quite tasty. The really cool thing is the packaging.
Each nougat is individually wrapped and has a Chinese or Taiwanese saying on it.
Also, the box is made to look like a book. Here:






Examples of some of the sayings are:
一食二穿，三才作人情 （你送禮如此用心，提醒了朋友〔禮輕人意重〕的古訓）
Cool stuff. Learn while you snack. And the sugar high will help you with retention. Right?

Mr. Noodle - New York Times

I read that the gentleman who invented Top Ramen died recently. There are several interesting reports on this event and stories of him seem truly inspired. Take this NY Times piece by Lawrence Downes:
Mr. Noodle - New York Times: "Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything."
I loved this paragraph in particular:
"Ramen noodles, by contrast, are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving".
That was almost poetic. I mean, I forget they were talking about instant ramen until the part about the college student's ability to recognize it as food.
Cleverly written Mr. Downes. Clever indeed.

Congrats to mahster on blue belt.

Congrats to Eric on his blue in BJJ. Outstanding job.
Mahster.com - I'm so Blue!: "I'm so Blue!
Monday, 01 January 2007

"Finally blue!I'm so blue, blue, blue . . . Not as in being depressed, but as in finally getting a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu!" -- mahster