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The Most Delicious Homemade Brownies Ever…it’s a Miracle!

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  Homemade cooking involves less preservatives and more control from you. And with the coronavirus forcing people to be in their homes pretty much all the time, I have to do most of my own cooking. I do love going out, and I will admit that prior to the covid-19 crisis, I barely cooked and spent more time eating out, and a lot. However, now that dining out is no longer an option (only takeout and delivery are available in New York), and I’ve been cooking at home, I’ve noticed that I feel more energetic and am losing weight again. Okay, this is not a health post. But all of that is true. Anyway, let me talk about the brownies I made. They taste kind of like the ones made from boxed mixes. I’m not kidding. The only difference is that their textures at the top aren’t flaky, and most importantly, I know what went in them. My guess of why they are fudgy and not cakelike is that the flour ratio is sort of smaller than the rest of the ingredients. Not once have I seen that in any other homema
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Perfect Brownies from Scratch: They’re So Hard to Make as Good as the Boxed Mixes

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  Brownies rule! Of course, you shouldn’t eat them all the time. But they’re delicious in moderation—just like everything else is, including healthy foods. You know how people say everything tastes better homemade? Well, that is true for most things. Except…brownies. I don’t understand why. But brownies from scratch almost never taste like the boxed mix. I wonder why no one has found or created a kopy kat recipe for boxed brownie mixes. I’ve experimented with so many brownie recipes from scratch. Nothing came close to the boxed mix nor did anything taste nearly as good. That was…until the end of 2017. I found a recipe which I liked. So, I used it to make brownies. They were almost like the boxed mix. But the baking soda made the tops too crunchy. I don’t mind crunchy-topped brownies but these were too crusty. Luckily, at the New Year’s Eve party I went to, people enjoyed them very much. They said that those brownies were better than any other dessert there. But to this day, I have stil
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When I Made White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

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  During quarantine, I missed a lot of my favorite commercial foods. One of those included white chocolate raspberry cheesecake from the Barnes & Noble café. It was super-delicious—both that and the one I made. There is a lot involved, though. You have to make raspberry preserves, crush Oreos and bake them as a crust, and melt white chocolate as well as prepare the actual cheesecake. While this particular “error” worked out in the end, I melted white chocolate chips instead of using the special kind the recipe recommended since I did not have it. However, that substitute was technically incorrect, and would have messed up the final creation. Luckily, though, my mom taught me a trick to avoid a bad cheesecake. That was to add milk to the white chocolate, but a little at a time. And guess what? It resulted in a great dessert. I would eat the cheesecake pretty much every day. Aside from the white chocolate thing, the raspberry preserves, Oreos, and cheesecake were no problems preparin
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The Process of My Pumpkin Cheesecake

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  That above is a pumpkin cheesecake I made from scratch. Why? I’ll tell you. Reason: I first had this at the Barnes & Noble café and theirs tasted delicious! But because of the pandemic, I haven’t gone back there. It could be open, but I feel that many places are worthless until we’re back to typical life. So, I decided that I wanted to make my own. I also had leftover pumpkin for something else I cooked and I had to use it, otherwise it would rot. I finalized with pumpkin cheesecake. Process: The process was no easy task. I had to make the crust with graham crackers and butter. Then I had to mix everything else. I cannot remember every ingredient, but it did overwhelm me to the point that I kept putting it off. My mom suggested to break the steps up into little ones at a time. After the cheesecake finished baking, I had to let it chill for several hours. Then I took it out and decorated it with stabilized whipped cream, but I used cream cheese instead of unflavored gelatin. The r
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Everything is Better Homemade, Including Cream-Filled Cupcakes

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  I used to like commercial-made cream-filled cupcakes. Now I don’t because they taste artificial. There are, like, so many chemicals in them. I won’t even eat Twinkies anymore because of that. Anyway, I have baked homemade cream-filled cupcakes in the past. They didn’t turn out as well as the most recent time. That was when I went to a New Years Eve party this past winter. That is why the cupcakes say 19 or 2019. The writing there was done with commercial icing. However, the ganache on the tops was cooked from scratch. Some of the cakes were made from scratch too. But the others came from a boxed mix. Why, you may ask? I ran out of the homemade batter. So, I bought a boxed mix. Regardless of what I said in the title, the boxed mix kind of tasted better. Don’t worry, the filling was also created from scratch. It had marshmallow crème. That was probably a crucial ingredient for the texture. These cupcakes turned out to be popular at the party. Not like crazy, but people enjoyed them, in
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Cake-Decorating Techniques I’m Glad I Learned

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  I’ve been baking and cooking since I was 12. I’ve also learned to decorate cakes and other baked goods around that age. Of course, I struggled several times, especially in the early days. However, I’ve been making a lot of my own occasion cakes in recent years, because one of my friends is allergic to peanuts. Unfortunately, many bakeries aren’t nut-free, including near where I live. In fact, although I reside outside New York City, allergy-friendly bakeries are rare. Nevertheless, I still enjoy my homemade cakes and cupcakes. The interest worked out very, very well. So, without further ado, here are the techniques I am thankful for learning. 1: Crumb-coating This is when you put a plain layer of buttercream all over the cake and put it in the refrigerator to cool. That way, you don’t end up with crumbs in your icing. That is when you put the next layer over it and you can be free to do what you want. This might not work for whipped cream frosting, though. 2: Whipped buttercream tech
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