Worth the wait.

Hello reader.
For the last 1 1/2 months my mom and I have been vigorously working on designing my own little kitchen! And it's finally done! We put the final touches on the place today, and I love it.

And to celebrate this little kitchen, I'm having some friends over for dinner (It's gonna be fun :B ). When my peeps come over its all about the good stuff. The fudgy brownies, loads of chocolate, just a day to let loose and stuff your face. So this time I have something a little special planed for my guest. <3

ROCKY ROAD:
White Chocolate+Sugar Toasted Almonds+Mini Marshmallows and fudge brownie chunks, sounds like a dream doesn't it? And all of this in a scoop of beautiful home made ice cream.
I was just looking through Serious Eats for some ideas for the party and voila! I found this great Rocky Road Recipe that would be perfect.

 One thing most people don't know about Yangon is that we don't have hazel nuts, or almonds or nuts that grow in non tropical places. Now and then if I'm lucky, I can get a hold of some, but most of the time it's only when I travel that i get a hold on them. So when the recipe called for hazel nuts, I just used almonds, but if you have hazel nuts use 'em! Everyone knows hazel nuts are chocolate's best friend, just look at Nuetulla.
And instead of dark chocolate chips I added little chunks of fudge brownies. Ummmm. Fudge Brownies. :B

Right now it's in the freezer ready for some scoop's tomorrow! I have big plans for this batch of ice cream, big, fudgy, whipped cream topped with a toasted marshmallow plans.

Yangon Heat

Jello!

The title might be a little miss leading, but with all this hot-talk going on in the world I thought something cool, creamy and chocolatey would be the perfect break.

I present to you (drum roll please) The Banana Split Ice Cream Cake! It's got the whole shabang, moist chocolate cake, chocolate fudge, bananas, and cool ice cream to keep it all together.

So lets get jiggly with it. First off you need a really, really good chocolate cake for this. One that will stay moist after a day in the freezer and yet will hold together when you assemble the layers. I found one perfect for this cake (I'll post the recipe later, promise), and it's from Joanne Chang's Flour. Its chalk full of really great recipes, I really love it because there's a lotta detail in explaining the methods and stuff. :)

So alls you need when you have the perfect chocolate cake is:

• 2 large ripe bananas sliced
• Chocolate fudge (or ganache is fine)
• One tub of ice cream of any flavor
• And frosting.

+Heres what you need to do:

• Once the cake is cooled, slice the cake into 2 layers. 
• You want all the parts of the cake to be ready, so you can work fast before the ice cream melts!
• So line the spring form pan with parchment paper with a circle at the bottom and strips on the sides. Then put the top half of the cake and place it inside the pan with the cut side on the bottom.
• Then take a knife and cut the ice cream into slabs and place them on the first layer of cake in the pan, try to cover as much  as you can.
• Then spread bananas over the ice cream layer as evenly as possible.
• Pour and spread out chocolate fudge over the bananas, the place the bottom half of the cake with the bottom side up into the pan.
• Cover with plastic wrap and leave over night in the freezer. 
• After at least 4-6 hours, remove plastic wrap  and unlatch the spring from pan and start frosting (see notes)
• If the cake looks melty when you are working on it, just put it back in the freezer. Theres nothing to fear! 
• Then decorate with whatever you want! Crushed almonds, M&N's, mini marshmallows, you name it! 
• Return to freezer at least 2 hours before serving!

Layers top to bottom: Toppings/frosting
/cake/bananas/fudge/ice cream/cake.

+ Notes:

• Use a springform pan or the one with the removable bottom, or your cake won't come out! 
• I did this for a 9' cake, but adjustment are very easy to make. Just make the size that you want  and assemble with smaller portions of bananas, fudge and ice cream.
• I just used the simple chocolate frosting from my last post, cause I love the balance it brings to the sweetness with the pinch of salt. But any frosting is great with this cake.
• But frosting with a high butter content is not a good idea, because the cold might cause it to  crack when you cut into it.

The best eats in Yangon: Mont Hin Gar

If you are planning to travel to Myanmar for the first time heres a couple of things you should know (if you can get in that is, just kidding :B ).
1.) The food will be very different.
2.) Some restaurants will be on the expensive side
3.)Be careful of what you eat! Not everything is "Myanmar FDA" approved.
3.5) But! its still great food.

Thank you Tun Tun Photography for this picture. :)

If you ask a guide or the person at your hotel, what is the most popular dish of Yangon, they will probably say Mont-hin-gar.
Basically it's a fresh rice noodles with a fish based soup, with a verity of fritters like beans (as seen), gourd, onions with baby shrimps, etc.
 And the best Mont hingar (in my opinion) is at Oo Yin street, on Inya road. Since Mont hingar is traditional eaten for breakfast, it sells out fast. About 8:30-9:00 am to be exact. But thats not the only place in town, Mont hingar is available all through out the city.
Here are some other places with great Mont hingar:

Feel Restaurant/tea shop:
124 Pyidaungsu Yeiktha Str., Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar
This is a great place for authentic Burmese food. You can get anything from traditional bean fritters (Ba ya chaw) to nice cool Korafii.

Here's more information on Feel.

Bout Taw teashop:
It has no specific address, I'll up date this bit later.

This place is notorious for its great afternoon mont hingar and mote ti (Mont hingar from Rakhine state). Along with other special treats like stuffed fish cakes will really get you sweating. If you have a guide you can ask them, or just email me! :) I'll be glad to give you directions.

How to use a liter of heavy cream.

Hello reader.

So my last sit-in was all about Tiramisu, which was quite easy. It was all about assembling the parts and pieces like the sponge cake, mascarpone cream, and the kahlua/irish cream/coffee. We don't have the Italian lady-finger sponge thingys in Myanmar, so we made little adjustments (which were just as delicious :B )

ANYWAY lets get jiggly with what this post is really about. Cream. Heavy cream to be exact.
There are so many types of cream that it's confusing (it is for me anyway). So I found this little guide to different types of cream. I wanted a cheese cake recipe I learned at Sharky's, so I got a liter of heavy cream. But! I only needed 160 grams, and now I need to use it up before it goes bad.

And here's how!

Panna Cotta, its quick and easy and just what I needed to fill up my time. I found the perfect Panna cotta recipe on David Lebovitz's blog, he has such great recipes it's really a treasure trove for foodies. I added the strawberry compote to balance the creamy-ness of the cooked cream, it's really something.
 Anyway here's the recipe:

Panna Cotta with a Strawberry compote:

Panna cotta-
4 cups of heavy cream
1/2 cup of sugar
2tsp of vanilla (or 1 vanilla pod)
2 pkg of gelatin (if you're using gelatin sheets it's 6 sheets)
6 tbs of cold water

1.) Heat the cream and sugar in a sauce pan until the sugar dissolves. Then remove from heat and add vanilla. (if using vanilla bean, split bean and add to the cream before you put of on the stove, then the flavors will come out)
2.) Lighty oil cups/ molds with neutral tasting oil.

3.) Sprinkle gelatin over cold water then let dissolve for 5-10 minutes.
OR
soften the gelatin sheets in some water then add just the soften gelatin to the cream when its time to combine the two.

4.)Add the gelatin to the cream and stir until dissolved.

5. Divide mixture into molds and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Strawberry Compote:

1/3 cup of defrosted strawberries

2 1/2 tbs of sugar

and a twist of lime/lemon.

1.Combine all of this in a sauce pan and cook until the juices of the strawberries are at the consistency of a syrup. You might want to add 1-2 tbs of water if the strawberries don't bleed ( It's a weird way to put it but its true)

Bananas&Berries

Hello there.
 Yesterday I was checking out some of the blogs and I saw this great, beautiful, cute tutorial for a Patriotic Summer Berry Cake from Bakingdom. I think its a new creative way to decorate a cake! It's really cute and unique, and sometime I just want to just a lotta colors on my cake.

I ended up not fellowing the recipe for the cake part of it, but it was still a mixed berry cake. I just added a mixed berry puree to a vanilla cake recipe. This was kind of the first time I've used self-raising flour, and I have to say I like the results. Maybe it's just the recipe, or the ratios of fat or whatever, but it was one good fluffy cake. It was hard to put on the crumb coat cause it was too crumbly, but it was handle-able.

So I filled with some bananas, yes it is an odd combination, but it works. Doing the frosting was the best part of job, it's like playing with frosting but better! Cause I actually get a great cake outta it. :)