Recipe: Coconut Mochi Cake

So ever since I learned about Mochiko rice flour, I've been obsessed. Its a glutinous type of rice flour. It is also called sweet rice flour. I buy the Koda brand which is available in most Asian stores. This flour is used mostly to make mochi which is a chewy rice cake stuffed with sweetened red bean paste. I, however, don't make mochi with it. When I was in undergrad, a friend from Hawaii introduced me to Butter mochi which is basically like a pound cake made with mochiko rice flour. It tasted like a soft, chewy, buttery cake, something like I've never tasted before. As the name suggests, butter mochi is quite rich and dense in calories. So I came up with a slightly lighter version that tastes about the same with lesser calories.

2 cups mochiko rice flour
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1 and 1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/4 cup dried coconut flakes

You just mix everything together until its a smooth paste and then grease a dish and pour the batter in. If your batter is too tight, add more water or milk to make it runnier. The runnier the batter, the moister the cake and lesser the chances your cake won't be dry. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes. You must remember that the chewiness and gooeyness is characteristic of this flour and hence it doesn't mean that is is undercooked. I don't know if it is an acquired taste thing but I just love this dessert. It tastes like nothing you've ever tasted before.

Happy Birthday to my hubby!

Ramadan Mubarak :)

I know I'm late, but hope everyone's having a wonderful Ramadan so far :) We've been having so much fried food, its soooo bad but we can't help ourselves. 

Trip to Mount Bonnell, Austin

We be juicing!

So the hub and I decided to get a juicer. We were torn between a centrifugal and masticating juicer. The former is much faster where you can feed whole fruits and vegetables through a large chute while the latter is a very slow one where the fruit and veggies have to chopped to feed through the small chute. However, quality wise, masticating juicers produce a much nutrient rich juice as there is low oxidation to the low revolutions per minute while centrifugal juicers produce a much more oxidized juice to the high speed. We settled on a masticating juicer. The Omega J8004. Made in Korea, this juicer seems like one of the best of its kind. We've had it for over two weeks now and so far, we've been juicing everyday! We are not replacing meals with juices yet, but I have been trying to start my day out with a glass of juice. So today I am going to share one of our most favorite juice recipes.

Beet Medley

1 beet
4 carrots
1 apple
1 navel orange
3 stalks celery

Not all our produce is organic so we rinse everything in a bowl of cold water, with a few drops of vinegar. Except for the carrots, everything else is conventional (meaning non-organic). Juicing requires quite a bit of produce and using everything organic can get quite expensive. The one off occasions when we do juice all organic, I  enjoy the part where I don't have to peel everything and rinse everything extra well. The next pictures are pretty much self-explanatory.

 I bore easily, so must watch some Family Guy on Netflix while juicing!

 The jar is for hubby to take to work, the mug is mine for now. I already chugged a little before taking the pic. See, it is just that irresistable! But I must say, the yield is mighty good! They threw in a strainer to strain your juice, however I prefer it a bit pulpy.

Red Lobster: Seaside Mix & Match for $12.99

Hubby and I went to Red Lobster this past weekend to try out the Seaside Mix & Match for $12.99. So basically, you get to choose 2 items from a selection of 7 and get it for $12.99. It is quite a steal. I got the cheddar bay biscuit shrimp-n-lobster pie and the shrimp and scallops linguini. Hubby also got the pie along with crunchy parmesan ranch shrimp. It was pretty good, however, we felt that it was quite bland. We would have preferred a hint of garlic at least...We obviously got the usual biscuits, salads and one side. Hubby got mashed potatoes and I decided to be extra naughty and get french fries.

 Hubby's plate

 My plate

Laundry Soap

I am a lover of all things random. I mean laundry soap isn't really random, its more like a necessity. But its just that its something random like this that stirs up my interest. I was in Walmart today and I stumbled across this (hold your breath) 97 cents laundry soap! Like a huuuuge bar of soap! Sometimes, I like to wash a few knick knacks on my own and having a bar of soap to do that is so convenient. It has a strong citrus-y smell, but I think it will do the trick. I just washed a hand towel using this soap and it thoroughly removed all the stains it had. It also gives me an old school feel...remember the times when people used huge bars of soap to wash their clothes.