Tagalongs® Cupcakes & 100 Years of Girl Scouts

This year is the 100-year celebration of lots of things, including Girl Scouts! I’ve been a Girl Scout for over 20 years and one of the best things about Girl Scouting is Girl Scout Cookies! Selling cookies teaches about budgeting, setting goals, and managing money. Another great thing about Girl Scout Cookies is that we get to buy them! They’re only available for for a short time during the year, which makes them test all the more better once you finally get your hands on them. My favorite are Samoas, followed closely by Thin Mints, but it seems that everyone else’s favorites are Tagalongs!

My sister’s Girl Scout troop was having a mini-celebration in honor of the 100 Year Celebration in March so I took these popular cookies and brought them over as a special treat for them. My sister’s troop (except for her) are all seniors in high school, so this will be their last year as “Girl Scouts”. After they graduate high school, if they choose to remain in Girl Scouts, it will be as “Adult Girl Scouts”, not as participants. They loved these cupcakes and made their own “100-year” decorations.

This recipe has been deemed a "hit at home" and is one of the tastiest recipes on Hapa-tite!

Chai Chocolate & Coconut Cardamom Rice Pudding(s)

So you remember how I told you that one of my favorite foods is rice? Well one of my favorite things to do with rice is make rice pudding.

Growing up, we would take whatever rice was left in the rice cooker after dinner, add milk and sugar and nuke it in the microwave until it was nice and hot. For some, rice pudding can be polarizing. My dad thinks that it is blasphemous to make this meal staple sweet instead of savory; my boyfriend hates the consistency. I, on the other hand, love rice pudding so much that I visited a rice pudding restaurant with my sister when we visited New York City.

These two rice puddings combine some of my favorite flavors, especially with the crunchy, chewy topping. Since my family and friends are all lactose-sensitive, I opted to make this rice pudding dairy free. The flavor that the almond milk imparts onto the rice, blended with the warm spices of cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, chai, and chocolate make something really special. I also used a special chai-cocoa powder I picked up when I visited San Francisco a while ago to deliver the chocolate punch, so this pudding is full of memories for me.

Trust me when I say this this pudding is as fun to look at as it is to eat! It is lighter than most other puddings I’ve tried since it is non-dairy. Which just means you can have a bigger serving ^_^.

Again, thank you to Marx Foods for the delicious Italian Organic Integrale Rice, and thank you all who voted me in to Round 2 and made it possible for me to create this delicious dessert. Please check out the other entries in Round 2, they all look delicious! Good luck to The DelGrosso Food Blog, Cookistry, Girl in the Little Red Kitchen, Oh Cake, Chez What?, Food for Thought, The Upstart Kitchen, Great Outdoors Cooking, Creative Cooking Gluten Free, and me of course.

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Chinese Roast Pork Integrale Risotto

A few weeks ago I entered to be part of Marx Food‘s The Integrale Gauntlet. At first I was very intimidated by the title, but that’s probably because I’ve been watching a bit too much medieval-themed TV shows recently. The more I read about the “Gauntlet”, the more excited I became. This challenge is “all about rice”, one of my favorite foods!

After I entered the gauntlet, I was sent one kilo package of Italian Organic Integrale Rice — my mission was to make an original savory risotto.

Though rice is one of my favorite foods, I’ve only made brown rice a few times and risotto only once. Ashamedly, the one time I did make risotto was from one of those instant risotto packets back when I was in college. I’ve always been intimidated of risotto–the care and attention it takes, as well as the reputation it has for being so easy to “do poorly” or “just wrong.”

Luckily, Marx Foods has a good framework that broke down the process into general steps, noting when embellishments could be added. Using their steps as a guide, I formulated a recipe using some of my favorite flavors and inspired by a recent trip to a new dim sum restaurant nearby.

I chose to make a risotto with shiitake mushrooms, ginger, water chesnuts, pickled cucumbers, cilantro, scallions, and char siu (chinese roast pork). The end result was something that was creamy and rich with the taste of good memories though balanced with acidity and crunch from the vegetables.

For my first time making risotto from scratch, I was quite proud of myself. This is a great healthier version of risotto with it being organic and brown, and it has the added bonus of being a one pot meal!

This dish paired well with a deep red wine we picked up at the local store; the flavor of the wine helped cleanse between bites of the risotto since the char siu was quite fatty. I used about 2 cups (my rice cup measures 180ml) and had generous dinner and lunch portions the next day for two people.

Elly’s Birthday Cupcakes – Carrot Cake with Crystallized Ginger & Dried Apricots

Last year for my friend Elly’s birthday she came over to my apartment and we decided to bake something.

I pulled out my Martha Stewart Cupcakes book and tried to see what we could make with the ingredients we had on hand. We decided on the Carrot Cake Cupcakes, but swapped the golden raisins out for dried apricots, added in some crystallized ginger, and omitted the nuts. The cupcakes were delicious and just what we needed. In fact, they tasted even better the next day.

Happy Birthday Elly!

Mad Hatter Tea Party

Every year around Valentine’s Day, my sister’s usually throws a Valentine’s Day party for her Girl Scout troop. Last year, she decided the theme would be “Alice in Wonderland” and asked for my help in planning a Mad Hatter Tea Party. I worked with her and my mother to plan a menu and make all the treats. Everyone showed up to the party and was absolutely thrown away — they were expecting some food and some tea, but they got a full-blown professional-style party planned down to the tee.