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How to make this Chetna Makan-Inspired Vegan Cheese Eggplant & Onion Tart!

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Wanna try this amazing GBBO celebrity cook recipe in your American home, but hold the cheese? I got you right here with my Onion & Eggplant Vegan Cheese Tart, inspired by Chetna’s original.

Based off the “Aubergine & Onion Tart” recipe in Chetna Makan’s book, The Cardamom Trail, this tart is originally made with cheddar cheese and the rest is very similar. My partner bought me Chetna’s book for Christmas and it is filled with the brim with savory and sweet recipes! I tried the aubergine tart recipe first and now it’s an instant favorite.

** Note that because this uses store-bought puff pastry, which is made with butter, this recipe is not truly vegan, but instead uses vegan cheese. However, if you’d like a true vegan version of this tart, you can try making your own vegan puff pastry here. Warning, it’s a lot of work though.

Chetna Makan's The Cardamom Trail with her Onion & Eggplant Tart
Highly recommended.

For Chetna’s original recipe, you should check out her lovely blog that I’ve recently been geeking over. The original recipe has its own video so you can check it out yourself.

What’s Special About this Tart?

My version is modified for your non-dairy American eater while keeping the integrity of Chetna’s tart. Unfortunately some of the UK-isms just don’t translate due to product differences. I’m not able to find a 325 grams puff pastry, since the most common brand comes in a square-ish 246 grams, from Pepperidge Farms. I also found that the cooking time was shorter for me, and I needed much less onions. (Chetna’s original recipe calls for 3 onions… maybe she is better at slicing thinner than me, but I thought that was overkill.)

As always with this blog, I like to veganize the cheese since I don’t like dairy. Daiya cheese is perfect and it even melts similarly to American cheddar. The end result is delicious, nutritious, savory and sorta reminds me of fancy pizza.

And all you need is vegan cheese, salt, eggplant, tomato paste, and red onion! Let’s get started with making this Vegan Cheese, Eggplant & Onion Tart!

Chetna Makan-Inspired Eggplant & Onion Vegan Tart

Adapted from Chetna Makan's Aubergine and Onion Tart, this delicious veganized tart contains deliciously thin eggplant slices, tomato paste, grilled red onions, and of course, vegan cheese.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Course Snack
Cuisine British
Servings 2 people

Equipment

  • 11 x 17 baking pan (must be at least 9" length wise to fit)
  • grill pan
  • Pastry brush
  • shallow dish or small bowl

Ingredients
  

  • ready-rolled puff pastry
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • ¾ medium aubergine (eggplant)
  • 1 red onion, diced or cut into spirals
  • 4 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
  • 1 cup Daiya cheddar cheese
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • pepper
  • cayenne pepper & oregano for garnish

Instructions
 

  • Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and take your puff pastry out from the freezer. It will need to rest for at least 20 minutes to unthaw and soften so that you can unfold it without breaking.
  • Add your olive oil to a shallow bowl and then carefully slice your eggplant into ¼ inch slices. Then, use a pastry brush to brush a thin layer of olive oil over them. You will have some left.
  • Grill your eggplants slices on the grill pan on medium-high heat. 4 minutes on each side. Work in batches to get them all done. Then set aside.
  • Lower your heat to medium and put the rest of the oil (at least 2 tablespoons) in the pan. Take precaution as it'll be hot. Add your red onions and cover the pan with your biggest lid for 8-10 minutes, tossing every now and then.
  • When everything is done, spread your tomato paste over the puff pastry, leaving about half an inch on all sides. Spread the grilled onions evenly and sprinkle with salt. Then, add the eggplant.
  • Now take your cheese and sprinkle evenly over the pastry.
  • Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Sprinkle some cayenne pepper and oregano over the tart and let it cool 10 minutes before serving.

Notes

Depending on your eggplant size or the width of your cut, you can use the whole eggplant or just over 2/3rds of it. Either is fine, this recipe does not need to be exact.
If you don’t use a pastry brush, the eggplant will probably soak up a lot more olive oil. It won’t ruin the dish, and just refill the oil as you go. 
You can also make this on a skillet like I first did. Just make sure you keep the heat at medium or medium-high and watch the skillet carefully to make sure it doesn’t burn.
Don’t want to spend a bunch of time grilling onions? Try my Chinese substitution – sub with scallions / grilled onions. It’ll be just as good. 
Keyword Eggplant, Onion, Tart

So what do you think?

Chetna says the Aubergine & Onion Tart is best eaten on the day it is made and I agree! It is still good after, but the delicious crispy flakiness of the puff pastry is best right after it cools. I find that this recipe makes for a delicious afternoon snack that reminds me of ready-baked pizza after school or delicious brunch. It’s good any time and super easy to make. Try it and let me know what you think!

picture of the vegan eggplant & cheese tart in a container
Yummy! This is a version I did with both cheddar and mozzarella cheese.

By the way, if you’d like to see other recipes by Bake Off celebrities, check out this Easy Apple Cake recipe by Mary Berry.

I also recommend buying her book, The Cardamom Trail for yourself. It is such a gorgeous and inspiring book and makes for an amazing present.

I can’t wait for more from Cheta and to try more of her recipes. Looking forward to making her cakes and much, much more!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link from Amazon. I get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.

How to make a delicious Buche De Noel!

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Buche de Noel is the fancy French term for “Christmas log,” or the more commonly-known Yule log. It has a delicious sponge, filling, and is covered with chocolate ganache made to look like a log. This holiday season, I tried this winning recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I also made a video that you can watch here, if you’d like to follow along.

Growing up in a Chinese American home, I didn’t really celebrate traditional Christmas with Christmas treats. My family wasn’t really holiday people, also, I tend to say that the only true holiday tradition we had was fighting. So this was actually both my first time making and trying buche de noel, or a yule log!

Sally’s recipe includes extensive work, plus optional sugared cranberries and rosemary, as well as meringue mushrooms! I opted not to do this for my holiday baking show that I had on Twitch, since there would already be a time crunch & commitment for viewers. You can find the full details of the recipe on Sally’s blog, but if you’d like to check out the measurements and notes I took, just keep reading below.

First thing you want to do is preheat your oven to 350F. Then, grease or butter up your baking pan. (You can see my video or Sally’s video for a demonstration.) Sally recommends a 12 x 17 baking pan but my 10 x 17 Pyrex also did the trick. I used PAM baking spray that I got from a local supermarket, which worked well. The goal here is to get your pan or dish to be as flat as possible so it can form a strong foundation for your rectangular cake roll.

Cake Ingredients:

1 and 1/3 cups cake flour

2 Tablespoons unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 large eggs, separated and at room temperature

1 cup (200g) granulated sugar, divided

2 Tablespoons (30ml) vegetable oil, canola oil, or melted coconut oil

1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Sally’s Baking Addiction

You measure and mix the dry ingredients, (cake flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt) and then you want to open six eggs and separate the egg whites and yolks. After that, you take the egg whites and half a cup of sugar, and using a stand mixer*, whip it to stiff peaks, (4-5 minutes by stand mixer.)

Remove the half the meringue and add it another container to stand by briefly. Then add the yolks and mix on low for 10 seconds. Then add the rest of the meringue and mix for another 10 seconds on low. Then add the rest of the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract to the stand mixer bowl. You don’t have to wash it since it all becomes the same mix. Sift half the dry mix in and beat at low speed, and then sift the other half in, altogether for 3-4 minutes. Now, the mix will magically change color, and become lighter which I thought was pretty cool!

Take your lovely batter and spread it so that it’s evenly distributed on the baking pan.

Here, Sally recommends you hit the pan against a surface to release some air bubbles. I don’t know how much this helped, but this got me stuck in a rut as I have trypophobia and I strongly do NOT recommend looking at the air bubbles while they pop *screaming!!!*

Then, bake for 18-19 minutes.

Once it’s done, the cake should sproing back as you poke it with your finger. Very nice.

* A stand mixer is recommended for the heavy duty whipping. A hand mixer will also work. I do not recommend whipping by hand unless you’re a glutton for punishment and carpal tunnel.

Now here’s the tough part in which I strongly recommend checking out the video, timestamp 10:00 to 12:00 on mine, (this video below should start immediately there.)

Take a nice clean kitchen towel you don’t mind covering in cocoa dust and lay it flat on your clean kitchen counter. Use a fine mesh sieve, and dust 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. This gets everywhere, and you can probably get away with less if you want to make less of a mess. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, loose the edges with a knife and then carefully invert it onto your kitchen towel. Peel off the parchment paper on its back. You don’t want to wait on this step because the sponge WILL harden, leaving it unrollable, as anyone watching Great British Baking Show will know with the Swiss rolls.

Take the end of the towel and roll it forward until the whole cake becomes enveloped into a little roll / towel baby that you can see at the end of the time stamp. Set it into your refrigerator now for 3 hours or up to one day. You don’t want it to get too stiff, either.

Now you are free to go watch TV, or clean up your kitchen for the next three-ish hours to a day. When you’re ready for the whipped cream & ganache topping, you want to do them together to save time.

Here’s the recipe for the Cocoa Hazelnut Whipped Cream from Sally. Except, I didn’t use Frangelico liquer and used Kahlua instead. So it was more coffee tasting. I’ll let you decide, but the coffee taste was bomb! I would do it with Kahlua again in a heartbeat.

Cocoa Hazelnut Whipped Cream

1 and 1/4 cups cold heavy cream

2 Tablespoons Frangelico liqueur or Kahlua

3 Tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

1 Tablespoon unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder

1/2 cup (60g) finely chopped hazelnuts (optional – I didn’t use this)

Sally’s Baking Addiction

This comes together pretty quickly. You put all the ingredients together first, and then start mixing, which surprised me. Usually recipes have you beat the whipping cream first, but it came together. You use your hand mixer or stand mixer at medium-high speed for 2-3 minutes until stiff peaks. I was afraid I may have over-whipped it in the end because the cream got a little foamy at the edges (a sign of being over-whipped) as it was sitting out, but that wasn’t the case. The whipped cream is absolutely luxurious and delicious.

As soon as you’re done, you want to unroll your lovely buche, take a flat spatula, and carefully spread the cream over the now slightly flattened and creased roll, making sure not to disturb the sponge too much. Leave an inch on the sides so it doesn’t spill over. Then, you carefully roll it up again and cover it with plastic wrap this time. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, which gives you just enough time to make the ganache.

Now let me be clear, Sally’s Baking Addiction has never once failed me when it comes to recipes. I’ve tried her vanilla buttercream and Royal Icing recipes before, and the bakes are absolutely flavorful. However, I think the chocolate ganache is the only place that might lack a little love. It’s not bad by far, but simple. It tastes identical to a chocolate vegan ganache I made, following Vegan Richa’s recipe which uses coconut milk.

This is where I would experiment. Maybe add a kick of spice with chili powder, or sprinkle in nuts, or a touch of almond extract? Anyway, here’s the very simple two-ingredient recipe below.

Chocolate Ganache For the Buche de Noel

6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped

3/4 cup heavy cream

Sally’s Baking Addiction

You can run your chocolate through a food processor or manually chop them, but I actually forgot (oops) and it turned out fine. Heat your cream over the stove until it simmers (not to boiling point) and then pour over the chocolate. Let it melt for 2-3 minutes and then take your silicone spatula and blend it together until it turns a delicious chocolate brown color. As soon as it’s perfectly blended, it’s fine. Refrigerate it (uncovered, according to Sally) for 30 minutes.

What I like to do now is to take out the cooled sponge with the filling and the cooled chocolate ganache together. 30 minutes on the dot means that the pan of your ganache will still be slightly warm, but the ganache will be slightly lukewarm. If you would like it colder, wait a little longer. Sally’s recipe provides you with more than enough ganache to decorate.

Before decorating, cut one a small edge of the log horizontally and place it on its side so it looks like a fallen tree. How delightful!

Then use a silicone spatula or a spoon to drip the chocolate ganache over the log. As you do, take a fork, and run it through the sponge so it looks like tree bark. Pretty cool huh? In a few minutes, the ganache will harden and then you’re ready to eat. Although you can eat it right away, I did. 🙂

No fake smiles here! Here’s how my little loggy looked from above. I was too lazy to clean the serving dish.

The sponge is delicious and the cream is simply heavenly! Even with all the work, I would do it again. What do you think about this buche de noel? Let me know if there’s another recipe you have to recommend below.

Thank you Sally! This holiday baking session with buche de noel was super fun.

The Best Egg Free Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe!

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Check out this super easy egg free chocolate chip recipe with hazelnuts and almonds! It’s super easy to make, and super addicting.

Yum!

Sometimes, it’s the simplest recipes that make for the best treats. I’ve tried my fair share of chocolate chip cookie recipes before, from classic to “luxurious.” Some of these recipes have even included peeling and toasting walnuts before adding them into your dough, or browning butter in a saucepan. This chocolate chip cookie recipe is delicious, buttery, and nutty, with only a fraction of the work.

After a long time of experimenting, I’ve finally found my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and it can be done in only 30 minutes. There’s something about the way that the Imperial margarine browns and spreads that makes it deliciously thin and crispy! This recipe is also egg-free, for those that are looking for that.

delicious egg-free chocolate chip cookies in a bowl

The Best Egg-Free Crispy Margarine Chocolate Chip Cookies!

These cookies are crisp, crunchy, and have just the right level of gooeyness.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Baking Time 11 minutes
Course Dessert, Snack
Cuisine American
Servings 2 hungry cookie lovers

Equipment

  • Oven
  • Baking Tray
  • Parchment Paper optional
  • Digital scale for weighing

Ingredients
  

  • 5 tablespoons Imperial Margarine
  • ⅓ cup granulated white cane sugar
  • ⅓ cup granulated brown cane sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 20 grams coarse ground almonds
  • 20 grams coarse ground hazelnuts
  • 80 grams  60% cacao dark chocolate

Instructions
 

  • First in a large bowl, take the Imperial margarine and beat it with an electric mixer with the brown and white sugar. After awhile, the sugar will be well mixed and the margarine will be clumped up.
  • In another small bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking soda.
  • Then, you’ll want to take the almonds and hazelnuts and blitz them in your food processor until they’re coarsely ground and add it to the dry mixture. Then sift the two together until it looks like a coarse meal. After that, take your chocolate chips or baking chocolate and process them until the shards are ½ or ¼ the size of chips. Add them to the mixture. The mixture will look very dry, but will stick together easily.
  • Take two full teaspoons worth of the dough and mold it into small balls. Put them two inches apart on parchment paper on a baking sheet or pan, as they will spread and thin out.
  • Bake the cookies then for 350°F for 11-13 minutes. The cookies will start to brown towards the corners when they’re ready and will be soft but not runny when you take them out.
  • But you don’t want to eat them right away because these cookies are better crispy and firm. Once they’re done baking, cool them on a cooling rack for 8-10 minutes.
Keyword Cookies, Crispy, Margarine, No Egg
chocolate chip cookie balls
The cookies, when they’re all laid out, ready to bake.

Why Imperial Margarine?

Believe it or not, I’m a picky chocolate chip cookie eater! I like crispy cookies, not soft cookies. I don’t like it when you can taste the “flour” in the cookie, or if they’re too chewy. Something about this recipe, sans egg, and with the Imperial Margarine just makes them melt perfectly and be the right amount of gooeyness. I’ve tried this with vegan margarine before, and the result isn’t the same.

It’s also a completely different recipe if you add egg. The result becomes a chewy, soft cookie, with larger dough to chip and nuts ratio. It might be a better cookie if you prefer that kind of cookie, but I first made this recipe for myself, so this is my favorite kind of cookie – a crispy, egg free chocolate chip cookie recipe!

Why Hazelnuts and Almonds?

the sandy dough
The “sandy” dough when it’s mixed in

I made a crunchier version of a this egg-free chocolate chip cookie with hazelnuts and almonds. I strongly recommend using a food processor, to blitz them into small pieces, though you can also do it by hand. If you can’t find hazelnuts, you can substitute with more almonds, or vice versa. I found that hazelnuts give this cookie an absolutely delicious crunch, which is so addicting!

These chocolate chip cookies are deliciously buttery, sweet, with chocolate chips done just right! Enjoy, and if you’re like me, you won’t be able to eat just one. Let me know what you think of this recipe!

delicious egg-free chocolate chip cookies on a tray
once they come out!

How to Veganize These Cookies

Originally, I found the basis of this recipe through this book called Easy Vegan Baking, which called their vegan cookies, “Chocolate Chip Cookies, the Salty Way.” Which gives you a hint about reconverting the cookies back to a vegan recipe – they become strangely salty!

These cookies can be made vegan by a margarine like Earth Balance. By using a vegan margarine with a higher oil content, the cookies will turn out more salty. The cookies will not “flatten” in the oven and smooth out into beautiful ovals, so you should push them down with your hand. I tried this with Earth Balance but I imagine the results will be similar with other vegan margarines.

Other than that, vegan chocolate chips should not make a difference. These vegan chocolate chip cookies are still delicious! By in my opinion, not as addicting as the recipe I have listed above.

Are you vegan? Let me know what you think about this version and if you have notes on improving the recipe! For more delicious treats, check out my other desserts here!

fully baked - delicious egg-free chocolate chip cookies

The best gingerbread men recipe!

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This is the best gingerbread men recipe! Follow it right and you won’t need another.

The first time I ever made gingerbread, I followed an All Recipes recipe loosely and the gingerbread men came out too chubby and soft. Regardless, I dropped them off in the Target break room where I worked and hungry employees gobbled it within minutes. This Fall, I was determined to make gingerbread the right way.

3 decorated gingerbread men with various expressions
I may not be a master decorator, but the taste is still incredible!

And wow, did I succeed this time. Believe me, this time, between me and my quarantined partner, the entire batch was gone within a day and a half. And less than a month later, I made them again!

I followed this recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum’s book Rose’s Baking Basics, and her tried-and-true recipe did not fail. Amidst a lot of stress-baking, I was able to find a groove and add tips of my own, so here’s my adapted result.

Rose’s original gingerbread men recipe is more complicated than most, and for good reason. When you take the extra time to refrigerate your butter and dough, you’ll notice the difference in ease of cutting your shapes and the gingerbread “snap.” I did change a few things, like swapping light molasses for regular, since I couldn’t find it, and only using dry spices. Since I got addicted to these cookies, here are some tips I have for new bakers.

Tricky Gingerbread Men Best Practices

8 uniform gingerbread men on baking tray and parchment paper
To get nice thin gingerbread men like this, make sure to roll them out uniformly to 1/8th inch. Otherwise they won’t have the gingerbread “snap.”
  1. Make sure your butter is cold! If it’s too warm, it’ll be hard to even roll into a disc. If you just got your butter from the store, make sure it is properly cold before starting.
  2. Chill your dough properly. I know the temptation to immediately roll & cut the cookies is there, but it’ll be a sticky mess if you don’t prep accordingly. I recommend at least 3 hours, and overnight is just fine.
  3. You don’t want to clean up a sticky mess off your counter, so roll your dough on plastic wrap, sprinkle some flour over it, and then add another sheet of plastic wrap.
  4. You want to roll until it is 1/8-inch thick. The trick is you don’t want it paper-thin to where you can’t even remove your gingerbread folks. 1/8-inch thick is just right before you get to that part.
  5. Space out those cookies! You don’t want them to blob together. To see when they are ready, lightly tap them with a chopstick or skewer. If they immediately dent, it’s too soft. They should be just barely able to withstand the tap. Also, the corners of their limbs should just be turning brown – but you don’t want to wait until it spreads to their whole body.
  6. Again, be patient for them to cool. It’s this time that they harden to get that nice crisp snap.
  7. Waste not, want not! For the leftovers, just re-roll them again & cut! You can always make a round teensy cookie in the end if you don’t have enough for a person.

Phew, that was a doozy. Hopefully you’re still with me. Are you ready? Let’s get baking!

four decorated gingerbread men on a blue plate

The Perfect Gingerbread Men Recipe

This recipe is adapted from Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipe for gingerbread men. I like them so much that I'll eat it plain without decoration. It's positiviely addicting!
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cooling time 3 hours
Course Dessert
Cuisine American

Equipment

  • Cookie tray
  • food processor
  • gingerbread mold for cookies

Ingredients
  

  • 6 tbsp unsalted butter
  • ¼ cup molasses
  • 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ⅓ cup plus one tablespoon dark brown sugar
  • optional: Royal Icing, candies, raisins to decorate

Instructions
 

  • Cut your butter into half-inch cubes, wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. (It will be hard to shape and roll if your butter is warm.)
  • Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a medium bowl.
  • In your food processor or blender, process the brown sugar until very fine. Add the butter cubes and pulse. Measure ¼ cup of molasses and half an egg and process them until incorporated.
  • Add the flour mixture and pulse until it begins to come together.
  • Scrape the dough into a sheet of plastic wrap and press it into a round 1/2 inch thick disc. Chill for 3 hours or overnight.
  • Twenty minutes before baking, preheat your oven to 350°F.
  • Set your dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Add a layer of flour and cover it with another layer of plastic wrap. Roll your dough until it’s 1/8 inch thick.
  • Cut your cookie with a gingerbread cutter. If it gets sticky, brush it with flour. Gather the scraps and re-roll to cut. If too warm, refridgerate them and try again later.
  • Place your cookies 1 inch apart on a cookie sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Then, rotate your pan and bake for another 6-8 minutes. 
  • To test to see if they’re ready, lightly tap them with a chopstick or skewer. If they immediately dent, it’s too soft. They should be just barely able to withstand the tap.
  • Take your cookies out and set them on a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes. Enjoy!
Keyword Gingerbread, Gingerbread Men, Holiday

Since making these gingerbread folks, I’ve had tons of people reach out for the recipe. Perhaps they’re photogenic, or we’re all looking forward to some comfort food in the colder seasons during quarantine. I hope this recipe gives you joy and warmth!

four decorated gingerbread men on a blue plate
Whose day wouldn’t be brightened by these cute fellows!

Fun Bonus chapter

After this, I decided to try my hand at Parkin, taken from my Great British Baking Show’s “Big Book of Amazing Cakes.” This is a super fun book that gets your creative baking juices flowing, although some ingredients may be harder to find.

From the Big Book of Amazing Cakes!

Parkin is very similar, essentially gingerbread in a cake form. Traditionally, it’s eaten during Bonfire Week and gets better with age. Like lots of British pastries, it can be made with golden syrup. Golden syrup is pretty hard to find in the U.S., so that can be swapped with light corn syrup.

The other ingredients are similar to gingerbread-like molasses and ground ginger, and a “pumpkin pie spice blend,” but it also includes whole milk and rolled oats.

Here’s the process of making Parkin.

I admit I didn’t like Parkin as much, maybe because it’s harder to eat as a crumbly cake. Parkin supposedly improves with age as it takes a week for the flavors to really sit in. I personally didn’t find it better. (But maybe I just had too much gingerbread!) I don’t have any unique or special notes to add which is why I’m not sharing details on the recipe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a better recipe out there. Or maybe I just need to use golden syrup. Check out the book for more about Parkin and other British treats.

Plus, here’s another treat I made from the same book! You can see even more desserts by checking out my dessert recipes here. Thank you all for following with me on my tasty treat journey!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link from Amazon. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.

Making delicious vegan kulfis!

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It’s really hot lately with the summer sun in Oakland (and also the wildfires) so I decided to try a super delectable recipe from East Meets Vegan, one of the most recent cookbooks I bought.

I have to admit, it’s also one of the more challenging cookbooks I’ve bought. Maybe it’s because Sasha Gill lived abroad, but a lot of the ingredients have been a lot harder to find – like pandan essence and pandan leaves. I’ve definitely used a lot of Indian spices and ingredients in previous recipes but this book definitely took me back to the Asian grocery!

Anyway, this recipe is fairly easy. All you need are the following ingredients:

one cup of coconut milk

1/2 cup of white sugar, but you can definitely get away with less

1/2 cup of plant milk (I used almond milk)

1/2 cup of cashews

2 teaspoons of cornstarch

1/4 cup ground pistachios – chopped

ground cardamom

almond extract

turmeric

& slivered almonds as an optional garnish (I left this out, but it would be great to serve multiple people at a time.)

From Sasha Gill’s East Meets West

Make sure also to have popsicle molds for this recipe for ease. I got mine from Target, although I will say it’s hard to remove the popsicles from the molds so I won’t necessarily recommend it over others.

  • Cracking my own pistachios.


  • Isn’t this little French jam jar cute?

The recipe starts cooking with coconut milk and sugar in a saucepan. At the same time, you blend together cashews, plant milk, cornstarch, cardamom, salt and almond extract in the blender. You then add the blended concoction into the saucepan. The mixture will then thicken and you’ll want to leave it for 10 to 20 minutes. After that, you just stir the pistachios and turmeric into it. I sprinkled a little more turmeric than just a pinch, so the popsicles ended up being a lot more yellow, though still a lovely color!

Sasha’s version was a lot more green so I have to wonder if maybe she used a little food coloring, or perhaps it transferred better from the cardamom.

  • Super photogenic!
  • Snapshot from Sasha’s book.

And voila, the end result!

Sasha recommends to refrigerate for at least four hours, or overnight. I would definitely recommend overnight, as the popsicle will come out in a better form.

Sasha also explains that to serve the popsicles, you’ll want to dip the molds in warm water for about 30 seconds. I’m really glad she added this tip as otherwise I would have been really lost and would have probably pulled the sticks right out of the mold!

And these tasted absolutely amazing! I will admit that not all of Sasha’s recipes have landed, perhaps because I made mistakes in preparation or overcooked them, but all of her sweet treats have been amazing.

I’ll need to take these over to some friends in San Francisco though I’ll have to think of a smart way to transport them! Icebox? Hopefully they don’t melt over the bridge.

Till next time!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link from Amazon. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer. The Target.com link, however, is completely unaffiliated. 🙂

Chai and Chilla Besan Pancakes, for Sunday morning breakfast!

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I’ve been making a lot of recipes from Richa Hingle‘s cookbook lately, which include a lot of traditional recipes and also creative vegan creations of her own.

Recently, I decided to try making two of her recipes for a delicious Sunday morning Indian breakfast!

The first recipe is an Indian savory pancake, called Chilla Pancakes, and made with besan, or chickpea flour. If you’re new to chickpea flour but have baked before, you might have passed by it in the baking aisle, also under “garbanzo flour.”

Besan is a version of chickpea flour that is even more densely packed and fine. It makes for really delicious, protein-rich, and savory pancakes, and the flour is much finer than regular chickpea flour that is made in the states. There are a good amount of Indian grocery stores nearby, so I was able to find besan for this recipe.

The recipe comes together quickly, and it begins with mixing chickpea flour with water, and then adding spices, onion, and chiles – I used jalapeños.

After that, you pour a 1/4 and 1/3 ladle of the batter into a skillet and move the batter around, and pour some oil on the sides of the pancake as well.

My pancake cooking! I’m not good at making things round, so it’s got a funny Nickolodeon shape.

After that, you just cook until it’s golden brown, and there are bubbles glimmering under the pancake. These pancakes are simply delicious, and are delicious with Sriracha, chili oil, or a little bit of ketchup. Those are probably not traditional Indian toppings, but that’s my Chinese Americanness coming out.

I made a whole stack of these and could barely stop myself from gobbling it up! Absolutely delicious. But the pancakes did make me thirsty, so I thought, why stop there?

Richa also has a special vegan non-dairy chai recipe. The recipe does require a grinder and lots of spices to be grounded up, but then it creates a powder that you can use for chai again and again.

Of course you’ll also need loose leaf chai or tea bags. I just had tea bags so I cut them open and measured them.

Altogether, you need water, sugar, Chai tea, (Richa recommends the Jivraj brand,) chai powder, grated ginger, and almond milk or coconut milk. To make the chai powder, you combine green cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, ginger, and fennel seeds. I didn’t have fennel with me at the time, so I left it out.

You put the tea leaves and all the powder together and cook it with the almond milk. Altogether, the tea takes about 20 minutes to make. After that, you strain it through a colander into your glass.

I didn’t get a chance to take a good picture before sipping all of my chai!

Just like all chai, it’s delicious both hot and iced. In the end, the tea I made wasn’t as creamy as the kind I’ve had in my Indian restaurants, but it was still a great addition to my breakfast.

Mmmm!

If this looks good, I definitely recommend checking out Vegan Richa‘s cookbook. For a while, I skipped over the breakfast section since I was mostly interested in entrees for lunch and dinner. But now I’ve gone through so many recipes that I’ve just ordered her other vegan cookbook in my next recipes haul. Can’t wait to try more of her recipes soon!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link from Amazon. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.

My Ericdress Wig Review: a Total Nightmare Experience!

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Here’s the saga on my terrible Ericdress wig experience – from getting the terrible wig to writing this review.

Update: EricDress has responded back and requested that I take this review off in exchange for a no-ship back refund. I declined, and shipped the wig back to them, and promptly received a full refund back.

There’s now a video you can watch on this whole fiasco. Hooray!

If there’s one thing you should know about me, an angry and cheap Chinese person AND a drag queen — is that you do NOT mess with my wallet. And you definitely better not claim to have a high-quality lace front wig, when you’re going to send me… this. Oh yeah. I’m definitely writing a bad wig review now.

Ericdress Hair Wig Comparison for Wig Review
Look at that hairline. It is not even straight.

EricDress, From Bad to Worse

First of all, they never let me know when the package shipped out, and when I finally inquired two weeks later, making the wig late for several drag king videos – they were making excuses and trying to send me coupons to get me to not refund. So, I said fine, and I waited. The “wig” arrived two weeks later.

Apparently, Chinese companies aren’t above bald-faced lies apart from just the misrepresentation of their products. Here is their initial email responding back to me, and their “100% satisfaction” guarantee on their website.

Unfortunately, what happens after you submit a ticket and they gaslight you, asking for pictures of the “damage,” is that they’ll inform you that you’ll have to submit a return via tracking which will cost $60-70, making your return useless.

At this point, this is the part where hopefully you purchased with a credit card (that’s not Wells Fargo) or PayPal, in which you contact them and file a complaint and they’ll run you your money back. I know Chase also will get you your money back if it is on a debit card.

As someone that’s been buying wigs for years, I should have known better, but one night I decided I was tired of not buying drag king wigs and made an impulse purchase on my phone.

Let’s Talk Actually Good Wigs

So what’s the lesson here?

In general, synthetic wig prices tend to be priced around $35 to $50. Anything less than that is suspect, and anything more, you might be paying more than you need to. There are sites like Wigs and Grace that sell synthetic hair well in the $100s. But at that point, you are paying for hair density, special colors, customer service, and branding. If you really just need a straight black or blonde wig to style, you really don’t have to look farther than Amazon. (And yes, we all wear Amazon wigs.)

Any long (10 inches and up) human hair wig under $40 is guaranteed to be fake. $200 seems to be the starting price for a general lace-front human hair wig for me. There are ones for $90 – $200 on Amazon with mixed reviews and I can’t say I’ve tried them.

Here are some wig websites and brands that I can absolutely vouch for:

If you’d like to learn more about wigs and styling, I have a Drag Wig styling article here.

…And Let’s Talk Bad Wigs too

So here are two websites you absolutely need to steer away from.

  • EricDress.com
  • LunaWigs.com (I have a really funny story about these guys too, on the same video, skip to 6:50.)

Does writing a bad Ericdress wig review work?

Based on the reviews I’ve read prior, Ericdress seems unwilling to refund you for a bad wig or dress unless you somehow publically drag their name in the mud in a review. In the meantime, I’m going to sit tight and keep browsing wig websites and wait for them to bribe me with a coupon & a refund to take this blog post off. Oh, I won’t though.

I am a cutthroat bitch with my money. But only if you scam me.

So in short, what did we learn?

  1. Read through reviews and return policy very carefully.
  2. If you get scammed, make sure to write a bad Ericdress wig review or whatever to make sure they know you mean business.
  3. Know that they’ll bribe you to remove the review in exchange for a full refund (possibly without having to return the product.)

With all that said, happy shopping! Let me know if you have an Ericdress horror story to share as well. Or if you have another wig nightmare story? Or any positive experiences? I’d be curious to know!

Note, this blog post contains Amazon affiliate links. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.

How to make the most delicious Chinese Scallion Pancake and Dipping Sauce

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Want to try this traditional dish that’s perfect for an afternoon snack? Chinese Scallion Pancake is an absolute favorite of mine and I’ve perfected this recipe over time for you!

Recently, I wrote about reclaiming my culture through food, and I thought I would start with Chinese scallion pancakes. Scallion is a fancy word for green onion, and the Chinese name for this dish that I’m familiar with is cong you bing.

Growing up second-generation in the US means not knowing the words for things in other languages. It’s only recently, through watching culinary YouTube videos and blogs that I realized, oh, that’s what that is!

Super yummy scallion pancake!
Mouthwateringly delicious scallion pancakes!

I first made this recipe about 2 years ago when I started this blog, and I’ve consulted many recipes, tutorials, and YouTube videos ever since. This recipe is my own twist on the traditional Chinese scallion pancake, and like many cultural Chinese recipes, there are regional differences and there’s no “right” way to do it.

I do want to shout out East Meets Vegan for sharing their modified version with vegetable stock instead of water and the amazing Inga Lam for introducing her version, with a roux. My version uses veggie stock or water interchangeably, a quick roux for that extra mouthfeel, and sesame seeds for a yummy crunch.

The dough has a resting time of 30-40 minutes. During this time, you can make the delicious dipping sauce. While I grew up eating these pancakes plain, the inclusion of a dipping sauce is one I accepted over time. I’m glad I warmed up to it!

Kneading & Rolling Chinese Scallion Pancakes

Scallion Pancakes might be a little confusing for the beginner so I’m providing visual aids. Here’s how you roll them out. Once you add the hot boiling water to the mixture, you want to wait until it’s just safe enough to touch to begin kneading the dough. Knead for 5-7 minutes minimum, as a rough dough will make it harder to roll out later. After that, you want to cover your dough with a paper towel dipped in hot water, and/or a towel.

  • one ball of dough
  • four pieces of dough

While you rest your dough, you want to create a roux from equal parts dough and oil. 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup oil should be enough for your 4-5 scallion pancakes. Cook on low heat and use a silicon basting brush to mix.

After resting your dough for 3-40 minutes, divide your ball of dough into four or five, and then flatten them with a rolling pin. You want to get this as thin as possible. I’ve seen chefs roll it paper-thin, although it’s hard for me with my high countertop and stubborn rolling pin.

  • brush on sesame oil
  • rolled flour with scallions

Apply the roux with your brush, and sprinkle a helpful smattering of chopped scallions onto the flattened pancake. Then, roll the pancake into a thin cylinder and pinch the edges together. After that you, roll it into a spiral, like a chubby snail. Then, rest the dough for another 5 minutes.

  • roll it into a burrito and pinch the edges
  • twist it into a snail

After that, you take your rolling pin again and flatten the pancake out again. It’s okay if the scallions peek through and the roux might squeeze out a bit.

They turned out a little chubby here, but it’ll taste just as good, I promise.

Next, after preparing all of your pancakes, you want to turn on your stove heat to medium with a light spray of oil. (Don’t use too much or it’ll get greasy.) You heat up each side for about 4 minutes, but watch carefully so it doesn’t burn. You want it to have the pretty dark yellow and brown spots you see here.

Perfect!

How to Enjoy these Chinese Scallion Pancakes

Dipping sauce goes well with Chinese Scallion Pancakes. Cut them into triangles with kitchen shears and enjoy!

Super yummy scallion pancake!

Delicious Chinese Scallion Pancakes

Here's how I make this delicious yummy and savory snack, straight out of childhood.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Waiting time 30 minutes
Course Appetizer, lunch, Side Dish, Snack
Cuisine Chinese
Servings 4 people

Equipment

  • skillet
  • medium mixing bowl
  • Rolling Pin
  • Pastry brush
  • wooden spatula
  • small saucepan

Ingredients
  

Scallion Pancake Mix

  • ¾ cup boiling hot vegetable stock or water
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
  • 2 cups finely chopped scallions
  • 3 teaspoons sesame seeds

Roux

  • ¼ cup canola or vegetable oil

Instructions
 

  • Add the all-purpose flour, salt, and garlic powder in a medium mixing bowl.
  • Once boiling, add the vegetable stock to your mixing bowl and stir with a wooden spatula. After about 5 minutes, the mixture should be cool enough to knead with your hands. Knead for about 7-10 minutes, starting in the bowl, and then on your floured countertop.
  • Once smooth, place the ball of dough back into the bowl and place a wet papertowel and/or towel over the bowl. Let it rest for 30-40 minutes.
  • During this time, make the roux by adding the flour and oil into the small saucepan over light-medium heat.
  • After resting, knead the dough again for a few more seconds, and then divide into 4-5 balls. Take one of the balls and roll thinly with a rolling pin. If the dough is too stubborn, try resting for it for a minute and rolling again. Add the roux to the flattened pancake, and then sprinkle a generous amount of scallions over it.
  • Then, you roll the pancake into a thin cylinder. Pinch the edges to seal. Coil it into a spiral, making sure the edges stick to each other. Rest the dough again for an additional 5 minutes.
  • Flatten the coiled spiral again with your rolling pin. This is what will give your pancake the layers. It's okay if the scallions peek through. Press a handful of sesame seeds into the dough with your hands. Repeat for the other balls.
  • Add a tablespoon of oil to your skillet and wait for it to get hot, on medium heat. Fry your pancake for 4 minutes, until the characteristic yellow-brown spots appear. Then, flip it over and fry for another 3-4 minutes. They can be eaten as-is, or cut into small triangles to enjoy with the dipping sauce. Enjoy!

Notes

Make sure that the vegetable stock or water you use is boiling hot, otherwise, the dough will be hard to roll.
Keyword Chinese, Chinese Pancake, Green Onion, Scallion, Scallion Pancake

How about a Dipping Sauce?

Like I said, I didn’t originally eat my scallion pancakes with a dipping sauce. However, I was sold on it after trying the dipping sauces made by various chefs! Here’s my own version of it, which is a simplifed adapation of Sasha Gill’s from her book East Meets Vegan.

This sauce provides a little more than you need, so feel free to store in an airtight container in your fridge if you’d like to save it for a future batch of pancakes.

Super yummy scallion pancake!

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce

This dipping sauce is absolutely sweet and delicious. It makes a generous portion, so feel free to save it for later.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cuisine Chinese
Servings 4

Equipment

  • Small bowl

Ingredients
  

  • 1½ tablespoon light soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon mirin
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • ½ teaspoon Sriracha brand Garlic Chili sauce
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Instructions
 

  • Mix all of the ingredients together.
Keyword Dipping sauce

I hope you enjoyed this Chinese scallion pancake recipe, along with the dipping sauce! Let me know if you try your hand at the recipe or have any variations based off your own family recipes.

Mantou, Family, Trauma and Abuse: Learning to Re-Love Chinese Food

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Musing on being Chinese American, experiencing trauma, abuse, food insecurity, and wondering what the heck the point of mantou was.

Instant ramen: When your college struggle meal is the best meal I could expect.

If you’ve followed my cooking & baking journey, there’s a chance you might have noticed this about me. As a “proud” Chinese American, I don’t really make or eat a lot of Chinese food.

Most of the food I’ve made on this blog is comprised of traditional American baking and vegetarian Indian food. Outside of blogging, I’m also proud to have made various Mexican dishes, including poblano and cheese tamales, and my own corn tortillas by hand.

I put “proud” in quotation marks earlier, because the sad thing is that I wasn’t always proud to be Chinese. In fact, for most of my life, I was ashamed of it. I grew up in a family that was emotionally and psychologically abusive. This extended to ignoring my needs. Even though they insisted that they “always fed” me, I remember being really hungry for a lot of my childhood. They seemed to really underestimate how much a growing child was supposed to eat, which I’ll explain below. I had depression at a young age and that plus my hunger made it really hard to focus in school. Despite this, they demanded perfect grades. I spent a lot of my preteen nights crying and wishing I had been born into a different family.

My grandmother was a great cook, but I didn’t really appreciate it when I was younger. Part of that was because of my undeveloped child tastebuds, but the other part is that food tastes better when you have good company. As a hyper-vigilant child, I was often too anxious to enjoy what was on my plate. Unfortunately, this experience isn’t too unusual for many other Chinese Americans who experienced trauma and abuse, even if it wasn’t intersected with food insecurity.

When my parents divorced, my mother became the sole caretaker as opposed to my grandmother who then moved to a senior living facility. My mother was not a good cook, and was quite in denial about it. Her best dish was probably instant ramen, which is saying something. To this day, she’ll talk your ear off about her coworkers who enjoyed her cooking, despite my grandmother’s gossip about her giving them food poisoning. By the time I was able to fully appreciate my grandmother’s food, I was a vegetarian and unable to taste some of her best dishes.

For years, I never prepared Chinese food at home — not even rice — and even rarely ate at mainland Chinese restaurants. I felt like my trauma and history of abuse had poisoned my taste in Chinese food.

Do you remember growing up and eating something your parents made for you and having a sudden revelation where you think… “Wait a minute. Why am I eating this?”

It might be because the food isn’t very appetizing, nutritious, or fresh. For me, one of those things was mantou, this Northern Chinese bread.

Here’s a picture from Wikipedia. As you can see, at least one of the mantou has a filling inside.

Mantou is a plain Chinese bread or bun. It is less savory than a dinner roll, or a tortilla or naan, and it is simply made with just bread flour and water.

As an adult, I realize that mantou is meant to be dipped in sauce and eaten with savory food, such as pork floss, or pickled salty vegetables. Often times, the mantou I ate as a kid would have been sitting on the kitchen table for awhile, waiting for me. By then it would get kind of hard, or sometimes it was soggy and was completely tasteless. I’d eat two of these for breakfast, which was supposed to keep me going until noon when they would give us our lunch, which would consist of a drumstick, chocolate milk, and peas. Then I would get home at 3PM and maybe have an apple before dinner.

So I don’t have very positive memories of mantou at all, because I remember being bitterly hungry and unsatisfied when I ate it, and shut down as soon as I asked to eat something more.

But part of the Asian American experience is deciding what parts of your culture you’d like to keep and what you’d like to conveniently shelf in the recesses of your repressed memory.

Recently, I just bought a book called East Meets Vegan, a book on vegan Asian food. It’s written by a South Asian woman who grew up in Singapore. Some of the recipes in the book remind me fondly of fuzzy memories like eating Beijing duck with tortilla-like bread, or going to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere for the best savory pork buns.

They also have bomb Indian recipes. I’ve already tried their lassi recipe and it’s great.

Recently, I’ve been ordering from Chinese restaurants again. Another reason why I had avoided Chinese restaurants was because they would often overprice traditional dishes my grandma made, and not even make them as well. Nothing says the Asian American experience like going to a Chinese restaurant your friend recommends and thinking, “wait, what the heck is this?”

But after three years living in Oakland, I started to find Chinese restaurants I liked, and some of them were vegetarian-friendly. The mean suburban Chinese waitresses who would judge me for speaking broken Mandarin were replaced with kinder people who would pause and smile when they found out I could speak a little of the same language.

Here’s me enjoying handpulled noodles in Fremont.

I started to remember the savory food that I did like, like cong you bing, or scallion pancakes. One of the dishes my mother did actually make well was Chinese stir-fried tomato and eggs, and a staple dish I order at many Chinese restaurants because it’s actually vegetarian.

Like my mom tries to stubbornly remind me whenever we talk, yes there were some good memories. I’m not just remembering the bad things. But those good memories, like scarfing down cong you bing were in spite of the trauma – and those are the sparse little jewels I’ll keep with me.

I’ll pass on the mantou, but for now, it’s time for me to reclaim my food. And this time, with as big as a serving I’d like, and good company too.

Plus, check out my blog article on making scallion pancakes here!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.

First Time Banana Bread from your favorite baker with a banana allergy

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Since I started baking, I’ve been powering through a lot of popular recipes: pumpkin pie, German chocolate cake, gingerbread men, carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies, and cheesecake. But I’ve missed a lot of great classics too, like yellow layer cake, cupcakes, and banana bread.

So I hadn’t made a classic banana bread yet, but my good excuse is that — well, I’m allergic to bananas. I also found out the hard way in Guatemala that I’m also allergic to plantains (which are bananas,) but that’s a story for another day.

My partner moved in with me recently, and he loves to mix apples and bananas into his yogurt, so there is a ready supply of bananas at all times in our pantry. Thus the reminder of banana bread was in my head at all times. I used to love bananas, before I became allergic later in life, so seeing the memes and stuff definitely didn’t help.

So a few weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and see just how allergic to bananas I really am. Onto making banana bread!

There are quite a few different ways of making banana bread, from Chrissy Teigen’s famous Uncle Mike & Twitter’s Banana Bread, which I haven’t tried yet because I don’t have a Bundt Pan yet, to the Great Baking Show’s banana bread recipe, and also Rose Levy Berenbaum’s banana bread recipe as well.

This one in particular comes from Katheryne Taylor from Love Real Food. I love her recipes because her bakes are so easy and fun, as well as healthy. Sometimes I get frustrated with complicated baking, but hers always have the outcome worth the journey.

For Kate’s recipe, it only requires 2 bananas, or 1 1/2 cups – much less than Chrissy’s whopping 6 banana recipe. Her recipe also includes walnuts or pecans, coconut oil, honey, and two eggs. Once it’s all mixed together, it looks like this.

Kate prefers using wheat flour – either white whole wheat or regular whole wheat flour, which is healthier albeit not always versatile. However, for this recipe, it tasted great! Her recipe also includes cinnamon, which she recommended swirling on top.

Like my zig zag pattern?

The bread bakes for one hour, but when it comes out, it’s surprisingly moist. I think I did overbake it by about 5 minutes, which browned deeply on the sides, but did not burn.

Ta dahh! Finished banana bread.

I was apprehensive, but it was absolutely delicious biting into this delicious, lightly sweet banana bread. And my stomach didn’t flare up either! It looks like the other ingredient to banana ratio isn’t bad enough for it to affect me. I enjoyed plenty of slices for the rest of the week.

Look at that little tongue go. I can’t even be mad at her.

And my cat Pina couldn’t resist lick-leemking the banana bread as well. Hmph!

Next time, it’ll be Chrissy Teigen’s recipe. And I’ll be using chocolate. Thanks all for reading!

Note, this blog post contains an affiliate link. I do get a small commission if items are purchased through the link at no cost to the buyer or viewer.