Jars of cake

My mom was hosting a dinner party and attending another all in one week. She was swamped with cooking especially because she had to make a dessert and two appetizers for the dinner party. I decided to help her out. The theme for the dinner party was a Fish Fry. I have wanted to try cake in mason jars for some time now and I finally have an oven big enough to do it. The recipe is from I am Baker go check it out, she has a wonderful site.
The cake is a blueberry cake with blueberry whipped cream icing and a strawberry on top. Hope you enjoy ^^

Pudding Pie

Like you may have read in my previous post I have been teaching an after school reading club here in Korea for the past 3 years. My advanced class of readers have just finished the boxcar children and my intermediat class just finished reading Amelia Bedelia. For their cooking project we made pie! I would have loved to have them make lemon merurange pie, but being in Korea and all it just wasn't possible, time, money and supply wise. Instead we made banana pudding pie. I made pie crusts in muffin tins for the kids to fill. I made chocolate and vanilla pudding and the kiddos got to pipe that into their mini pie, add bananas, and chocolate for decoration. It was a fun and messy expirence. The kids loved their pie though ^^






The kids loved showing off thier pies ^^

My poor husband was feeling left out. He always sees me get all this delicious stuff ready for school and then is bummed when I don't have any left for him. These two were his special treat.

Cake for Kiddies

This week marks my last week teaching in Korea.
For the past 3 years I have been teaching an after school reading club.
I wan't to instil a love of reading in my students. Many of them only have time for studying, and don't have time to sit down an appriciate a good book.
We read one or two books a semester. This year we read boxcar children books, a favorite from my childhood. Every so often I try to bring the book to life for the stuents. The boxcar children books are great because they talk about cooking a lot. It is a great way for my students to learn first hand about western style food. This semester we made bread, had a clam boil and on our last day of class decorated a cake. The following are some fun pictures from our cake decorating day.




I made the cake the night before (I have always wanted to try a cake like this, thanks to http://iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker/ she is wonderful!) Hope you enjoy, I know the kiddies did ^^

Petite Pocket Pies

Aren't they just sweet. Cute little Petite pies, no bigger than the palm of your hand.

It is summer time here in Korea. Summer time makes me think of fresh berries, especially blueberries. Unfortunately blueberries can't grow in Korea, for whatever reason. But I was lucky enough to find canned 'fresh' berries in the international section of a big supermarket here.

They may not be fresh berry pies but they are quite good, strawberry, raspberry, current and blueberry...nice and tart wrapped up in a sugar dusted pie crust. What's not to love ^^

Roses

The cookies are a lemon rum, with a lemon butter cream.

It is really hard to find powdered sugar in Korea, you have to order it online. My last bag was really lumpy, like really bad. I don't have a proper sifter so I did the best I could. Unfortunately it wasn't good enough, my icing was lumpy, which resulted in the piping of the roses being next to impossible. I can't wait to try this again either when I have better sugar, or a sifter ^^


Only 2 more moths till living in a country with real baking supplies !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Memorial cake

About a month ago I was asked by my husband's parents to make a cake. Not just any cake but a cake for a special celebration. That special celebration being my husband's grandfather's memorial service.

In Korea the death of the head of the family (Father) is celebrated with a ceremony each year on the date that the person passed away. The whole family gets together, the men sit around and eat and the women cook a huge meal for the men and prepare special food to give to the deceased.

After the men have finished eating and talking a special table is set and a ceremony is preformed where drinks are poured for the deceased and offered to them and the family bows to them. Generally the men just pour the drinks, but when a new person joins the family through marriage they also should join in, in the ceremony and the deceased should 'meet' them. So my husband and I poured a drink for his grandfather and offered it up to him.

After the ceremony everyone sits around and talks and eats the food that was on the ceremonial table. The cake was a huge hit, as well as the chocolate covered strawberries I made to go with it. I felt very special, and welcomed into the family to be asked to contribute something to the table.

Gingerbread man

Run, Run as fast as you can. You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!

I recently started teaching 1st and 2nd grade Korean students English. It has been a real struggle, these kids are just learning how to write in Korean, and their mothers want me to teach them to read and write in English >.<

One poor boy in my class can spell better in English than Korean.

Anyhow, I am always trying to find fun activities for them to do, and what better than making gingerbread cookies after reading "The Gingerbread Man" The kids loved the book, but they loved the cookies even more. These are some that I made to show them what gingerbread men can look like. Then they all made their own.

At one point in time I had photos of the cookies the kids making the cookies, but the hubby reformatted my hard drive recently and may have forgotten to back up all my files :(

Brownies

It was spring in Korea.... I am slow with my updates. One of my co workers had helped me out big time. Helping me out means baked treats. In honor of spring I decorated some of the brownies in cherry blossoms. Yes I know the color is off. I am still learning exactly how to color my icing correctly.... I'll get there ^^

Parents Day

In Korea there is no mothers day or fathers day, instead there is parents day. Parents day falls right after children's day (May 5th) on May 8th. On parents day children give presents to their parents and they give them red carnations.
My father in law loves anything sweet, and he and my mother in law are avid gardeners. A carnation just didn't seem to cut it. Instead they got a nice potted plant with little red flowers, and these hand painted carnation cookies. I found the tutorial for painting flowers on cookies at university of cookie
Hope you enjoy ^^

Sparkling lemon cookies

These cookies are a bit like a lemon short bread with a lemon butter cream filling. The recipe is
from The Kitchen ( http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/cookie-recipe-glittering-lemon-sandwich-cookies-134849 )

Cakes

While I love making cookies I like to mix it up sometimes and make cakes. This first cake is a congratulations cake for my co-worker who was recently accepted into graduate school on a scholarship program (she was 1 out of 80 who applied, only 2 were accepted).
The cake is vanilla, cinnamon, apple, with a layer of caramel icing in the middle of the cake and a spiced butter cream on top. The cake is decorated with some chocolates from a mold and then piped with colored chocolate.
This cake was for a friends birthday. The cake is vanilla and the icing is caramel. It has some more of the poured chocolates and there are some snicker-doodle cookies in the back to support the chocolates. The gifts on top are actually little chocolates ^^ aren't they cute!

Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) Cookies

Hanbok Cookies

Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving is one of the few important holidays in Korea. It is celebrated with your family. Most of the day is spent honoring the dead and going to temples and tombs. At the end of the day a family will get together and have a big meal. It is tradition to give gifts to the grandparents in the family or the eldest members of a family. Around Chuseok you see huge gift boxes of canned food, toothpaste, win, soap, fruit, and many other things sold in the grocery store.

I never know what to give my husbands family for Chuseok (and he is no help thinking of gifts) This year I decided to do something special. I made them cookies. This was my first attempt at frosted cookies. I fell in love with the process!
The cookies at the top of the page are Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing). On Chuseok you will see older men and women and young children dressed in this style of clothing. They come in all colors, but the colors of the cookies are the traditional colors of Hanbok.
The rest of the cookies are just a hodgepodge of different experiments with the icing.