Another cooking adventure - Seafood rangoon

Before: with the simple twist wrap

I became obsessed with these fried appetizers called seafood rangoon after having them in various Asian restaurants in the States (credit to Yamato Japanese Restaurant for filling me up with all these delectable appetizers!). They all had variations on these deep-friend dumplings which I don't think are common in Asia since they're filled with cream cheese, but it had a unique taste and it's one of the few fried foods I actually enjoy. I haven't seen them in Canada yet so to solve this issue, my mom and I made them ourselves.

After: oozing cream cheese and crab meat

They're quick, easy and fun to make (unless you're going for the flower dumpling effect, which trust me is hard and tends to unfold when you deep fry it), definitely high in calories, but tasty hors d'oeuvres great for any get together!


Ingredients: crab meat, cream cheese, green scallions, onion, dumpling wrappers

Cafe review: Ausanda Chocolate

White chocolate and hazelnut hot chocolate
Photo credit: Jennifer Nguyen

My friends and I headed out to Ausanda Chocolate in Waterloo tonight to (over)fill our taste buds with... you guessed it - chocolate! It's not a well known student hangout in the area as it's new but I think once students catch on that there's a chocolate cafe in town with over 23 flavours of hot chocolate and desserts, they'll be flocking to this place. It's a small cafe, but it has a variety of different seating arrangements, minimalist style set up and they have a slew of chocolate cheesecakes, tiramisu, chocolate pyramids, flan, truffles, muffins! 

Chocolate fun-due!
Photo credit: Joyce Karel

I had the white chocolate and hazelnut Italian hot chocolate. It was semi-thick, not the usual watery Tim Horton's or Second Cup hot chocolate I get, but it had a rich heavenly taste (especially in this weather!) topped with hazelnut bits.

 My friends had the dark chocolate fondue with lady finger bites, strawberries, bananas and marshmallows. How did it taste? As divine and heavenly as chocolate should taste (meaning you have to go there and try it yourself)! Be careful if you try to roast the marshmallows above the candle... it's dangerous ;)

Apparently chocolate is healthy, makes you stronger AND it makes you feel younger - so my recommendation? Go! (And bring your laptop to study too since they have Wi-fi)

Random discoveries...

Finally back! This was an exciting week full of random discoveries and devoting my life to a slew of midterms and assignments (YAY! We're halfway through the term!)

What I discovered this week...
- Settlers of Catan - To say that I'm obsessed with this game after playing it twice is an understatement. My first exposure was on a previous episode of the Big Bang Theory, then at a friend's birthday. In the past week, I joined the Facebook group, monitored discussion boards and forums, and yes, I'm now recruiting others to play with me. How could trading sheep, building roads and robbing friends of their resources be so FUN? I'm a nerd and proud of it. Does anyone have any tips they like to share?

- Jeremy Lin - He is on FIRE. If you don't know who he is, he's literally taking the NBA and New York by storm in the 4 games he's played since last Saturday (over 23 points in 3 games and 38 in tonight's game... absolutely crazy). I don't even enjoy watching basketball that much, but I'm tuning in to Knicks games and actually considering going to the Raptors/Knicks games next week to take part in "Linsanity".

- Fair trade hazelnut flavoured coffee... dee-licious! And available in every corner of campus, which makes it my new daily treat.

What I thought about this week...
- The 2010 Vancouver Olympics all started two years ago. That's right... just TWO years ago. How time has flown by - I remember Sidney Crosby's goal/Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue's mesmerizing free dance as if they occurred yesterday! I was GLUED to both the TV screen and my laptop screen and didn't want to miss a single moment. This was around the time I discovered Twitter at this time too and I remember seeing how neat it was to read tweets from Canadians and folks around the world... it re-energized my Canadian pride and got me even more excited about the Olympics.

February's baking adventure: cheesecake brownies

Et... voila!

Normally I don't need a reason to bake, but today's a special day... Happy early birthday Jennifer! Today I made cheesecake butterscotch brownie bites (the butterscotch flavour isn't as noticeable as I originally thought but it still tastes like a brownie which is all that matters!). For the cheesecake topping, I used Bakerella's cheesecake topping recipe... I've used it a few times and always forget to use a "significantly less amount" of confectioner's sugar to minimize the sweet taste - nothing changed this time around so it's super sweet as usual!

Meeting Bakerella on her cake pop book tour with a friend in NYC!