If you’ve scoured the internet and various cooking books, you’ll notice that recipes for homemade dumpling skins all have the basic two ingredients, flour and water, but the proportions and technique vary greatly. They all work – dumpling skin dough is very forgiving. Using the right proportion and method, however, can make the [...]

How often do they fall on the same day??? As with every holiday, our family celebrates both occasions with food and lots of cooking on the days before and the day of. For Chinese New Year, I like to make homemade jiao-zi, Chinese dumplings (more on this on another post) and fortune cookies. [...]

I rarely use whole wheat flour exclusively in my recipes because, well, I love the taste and baking characteristics of white flour. Crackers are an exception. They don’t need to rise and you can pack a lot of flavors alongside wheat. Here’s my favorite cracker recipe which is simply a version of [...]

November through the new year is always a busy time for our family and I feel like I’m always in the kitchen! Here’s one must have food tradition for our family – oven roasted chestnuts, the next best thing to roasting on an open fire. The key to making them easy to peel [...]

Crackers are one of the easiest, most versatile “quick breads” you can make. A basic cracker recipe contains just flour, fat, baking powder, and liquid. As for seasonings, anything goes! Once I discovered how quick and easy it was to make especially with the stand mixer doing all the work, I’ve not [...]

What I love about using honey instead of sugar is that I can use about half the amount of sweetener. Also, it’s just healthier. Slightly. We make vanilla ice cream more than any other kind. It goes well with so many fruits, nuts, and chocolatey toppings.
This recipe is about [...]

Some of the best teas only come in loose leaf form. Having used a myriad of tea brewing paraphernalia, the French press is still my tea maker of choice. It is non-electric, economical, easy to clean, and does not take counter space. Though the French press is meant for brewing coffee, the [...]

Freeze and Thaw.
With minimal effort on your part or a machine’s, you can easily extract the syrupy naturally sweet liquid from some fruits. You just have to plan ahead and be willing to wait a day or so. This works especially well with strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I have not tried it [...]

In a previous post on homemade soda, I raved about the Soda-Club soda machine used to make your own carbonated water. From now until the end of this month, you can save on your online order with the following promo codes:
Save $10 – use code POPDADDY
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Tips for having a [...]

Say goodbye to your tortilla press and use your stand mixer for fast(er) tortilla-making at home. For these instructions, you would need the pasta roller attachment (not just for pasta making)! Here’s how I make 32 tortillas in under 30 minutes (not including dough resting time or extra little helpers):

Ingredients:
4 cups flour, all-purpose [...]