A Month of Faves is hosted by Tanya and Tamara

 

#AMonthofFaves The Cook It, Bake It, Drink It or Eat It Edition – share with us this year’s favorite foods, drinks, restaurants or recipes. Or just snap a picture of something you recently enjoyed. Not into Food? Then share your (or family members) Christmas Wishlist.

 

I had some awesome meals in 2019. Some in Singapore (where we spent three weeks in July and August)  as well as plenty that we’ve had locally in Northern California, like on our recent road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway and also a few days in summer spent in Los Angeles and Universal Studios. 

But today, I’m focusing on goodies I’ve made myself!

So here it is, the homemade edition

 

I’ll be talking more about these Christmas cookies in my post tomorrow. So stay tuned!

 

For the past few years, I’ve been making my family’s birthday cakes.

And for my husband, it’s Black Forest. It’s a cake he’s loved since he was a kid, so it was a daunting one to take on at first. And I had to try a variety of recipes before I decided on the one. The cake part needs to be chocolatey but not too rich or fudgey. It needs to be a light-ish cake. So this one, just the cake layers part, from this Chocolate Mousse Cake recipe is perfect.  I talked about it more in a post here last year.

 

 

All the sprinkles!

Both boys wanted funfetti cakes this year. One was to be in chocolate frosting, the other in a vanilla. And they were both very pleased with the cakes.

 

Freeze!

This was the year of ice-cream making. I’ve always wanted to try making ice-cream but wasn’t sure if I wanted a standalone ice-cream maker. We happened to be at Target and saw that the ice-cream attachment for the Kitchenaid mixer was at a really good price. So ta-da! Ice-cream attachment. And it was super easy to use. Just, as with more simple (and cheaper) ice-cream machines, the bowl must be frozen for at least 12 hours (I keep my bowl in the freezer after I’ve washed it).

I owe a lot of my ice-cream making education to David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. I love his vanilla ice-cream (can never have a store-bought vanilla ice-cream again!), chocolate ice-cream, Vietnamese coffee ice-cream. But I didn’t really think his black sesame was really what I was looking for. So I came up with my own recipe! I also made a Gula Melaka (palm sugar) coconut milk ice-cream which was so luscious and irresistible from that deep dark palm sugar flavour and the rich coconut milk. I also sprinkled coconut chips (from Trader Joe’s – so yummy!) before serving. Heavenly!

I can’t wait for the temps to warm up again (ok not really, I hate being hot) to try out more ice-cream recipes.

 

 

Other new recipes I tried out this year included Chocolate Financiers

Dorayaki, a Japanese red bean pancake, inspired by my reading of the book Sweet Bean Paste

Condensed Milk Bread or Pai Bao, a Hong Kong-style sweet bread

My go-to is usually walnut bread and I also make a lot of Tangzhong-style bread (if you’ve not heard of Tangzhong bread, it uses a kind of roux for a soft bread that us Asians love).

Hope you enjoyed the post (and are not too hungry!)