Kumquat Tofu Cheesecake

I'm sad winter is over and spring is soon to follow. I love winter because it means our citrus trees start producing, and from winter to the start of spring we get our crop of kumquats, oranges, and tangelos. This year, some unseasonable winds knocked down what remained of our kumquat crop, so I'm glad I got to make this cake for my mother's birthday before that happened!

Don't let the name scare you, this tofu cheesecake isn't a health food. However, it retains that creaminess that you love about cheesecake, while boasting a lot more protein than a traditional cheesecake. I bet you if you chose to stay mum about the fact it was packed with protein, your guests wouldn't even know it had tofu in it. It's also a bake-free cheesecake, which is great since we are having a serious heat wave here in Southern California.

If you don't have access to kumquats, you could serve this with no topping at all, or any fresh fruit that you choose. I think blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries would be a great topping choice! Of course, if you have any jars of kinkan no kanroni in your cupboard, you're good to go.

This recipe is adapted from recipes who use the metric system and different size cups, so while I converted the recipe, I also included some weights where applicable because it's more accurate.

Wagashi: Microwave Jello Mochi

You'd think that with the moniker "Miss Mochi" I'd feature a lot more mochi recipes than I currently have. Well, I start craving mochi around the holidays, so watch out for a lot more mochi recipes!

This recipe uses a microwave tube pan specially designed for mochi with a removable bottom. You don't need one, you can just use a square pyrex with an overturned coffee cup in the middle. I do love the microwave tube pan, because the removable bottom makes it easy to remove the mochi. Plus it's less than $6 online!

I was kind of apprehensive to use jello in mochi. As I've made it clear on this blog, I'm not too fond of jello. My mother is the ravenous jello freak that keeps requesting jello for holidays, whereas I find it kind of weird. However, jello does not impart any sort of texture change to the mochi, just the color and flavor.

Microwave Tube Pan

Unlike traditional mochi, which must be steamed for a good 30 minutes, this is a very quick recipe because it uses the microwave. While the microwave is not the ideal appliance for a lot of foods, it steams the mochiko quite effectively.

Use any jello flavor that strikes your fancy, I think a lime mochi or fruit punch mochi would be fun and exciting! I used mango and strawberry flavors for these ones. For extra flavor combos, replace the water with fruit juice, like orange jello + mango juice!

Thanksgiving Layered Jello

For Thanksgiving this year, I was in charge of a few things. My mother took advantage of my close proximity to borrow my oven for dishes. Everyone know that the turkey takes up a ton of room in the oven, so having access to another oven freed her cooking schedule up quite a bit. I was in charge of heating up the three stuffings, brie en croute, and the seville marmalade glazed sweet potatoes.

However, as detailed in my bacon gravy and biscuits post, my oven is one foot in the grave. I solved the problem of not heating up and I've had good luck recently baking cakes, but apparently shoving in an entire oven full of dishes straight from the fridge was too much for it. The oven temperature plummeted and slowly limped back up to the proper temperature, which means that my dishes took forever to heat up!

I was so frazzled I nearly forgot my jello in the race to the celebration, with around 9 dishes in tow, some very very hot (wrapped in foil, then beach towels to keep warm), as well as a boyfriend and a dog way too interested in this whole festivity. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head the entire time, she was begging so hard.

This jello recipe definitely takes some time to make, but it is pretty hands off, as most of the time is spent chilling the layers.  This is always requested by my mother, and I knew that her flower arrangements were in fall colors, so I chose red, orange, and yellow to complement them.

Fourth of July: A BBQ and Festive Jello

There are some people suffering under the delusion that I am a good cook. Just because one likes to cook doesn't mean they are fabulous at it. Posts like these help shed some light on how helpless I am. I mean seriously, who messes up jello? Especially with a recipe that the cook has been working with for over a decade. It's skill, baby, pure skill.

Right above us, lit up by neighbors

Putting aside my ineptitude, Happy Independence Day! Every Fourth of July, we go over to my maternal grandparent's house for a barbeque and family. When I was a little kid, the fireworks were the most important part. Since they live in Buena Park, it is legal to light the "safe and sane" kind, and when I was a little kid nothing was more fun than throwing poppers at each other, getting burned waving sparklers around, and watching Grandpa rig up fantastic displays of light and sound.

Nowadays, I like it more for the family time. While most kids my age are throwing boozy blowouts or going to Havasu with their friends, I look forward to going over to my grandparents for a quiet outdoor sit-down. Which means I am probably growing old at an alarming rate, but I love it nonetheless.

Mosaic Jello

I decided to try this new jello recipe that I first saw on one of my favorite blogs, Food Librarian.  She called it broken glass jello. Probably because I was an English major at UCLA and tend to be particular about words, or I'm just neurotic, but I often take issue with recipe names that aren't attractive (See Soda Cracker Bark for my latest example of my neurosis).  So Broken Glass Jello won't fly with me... it sounds ouchy and painful and not tasty. Who wants to eat broken glass?

On the official jello website, they call this recipe "Mosaic Dessert Bars" which sounds much more edible. Not that I would want to eat a glass tile mosaic (which is made of bits of broken glass) but at least I am not imagining shards of glass in every bite.

Putting aside my crazy tendencies and bringing up my mother's, this is definitely a recipe for her. I have talked about her penchant for wiggly jigglys in my layered jello post.  So I decided to make her a jello, and see how I liked this one.

Seven Layer Jello

Don't ask me why, but my mother LOVES jello. When I was a little kid, my dad bought me a patty pan shaped like a heart and I made her a two layered jello heart, red and green because it was Christmas time. That was my Christmas present to her, because I was in elementary school and obviously new at this whole gift giving thing.

I should have never done that.  Ever since, when my mother had a hankering for jello, I would find next to my breakfast plate a giant mountain of jello boxes and some new jello recipe to make for her.  The kicker: I don't particularly care for jello.

My mother's favorite, and my personal bane, was seven layer jello. Every layer had to be mixed separately, and the next layer had to be poured over the cooled jello layer without being too hot and burning a hole in the layer below.  The problem with most recipes is that it calls for you to mix the jello powder with boiling hot water, then wait for it to cool down enough.  And god forbid you let it cool down too much, then you need to put the bowl in a hot water bath.  In short, its fiddly and time consuming.  My recipe solves that by using a mix of hot and cold water so that there is no waiting.  That way in between layers you are free to do something else, and come back at your leisure to finish the whole project.