King’s Hawaiian Project Mahalo Lei Day Event
Earlier this month, I was invited to King’s Hawaiian headquarters for their Project Mahalo Lei Day event. Project Mahalo is King’s Hawaiian’s way of recognizing and giving back to organizations who do amazing things for the community.
The four finalist agencies were Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Family Caregiver Alliance, Meals on Wheels, and One Warm Coat. Meals on Wheels was selected as the winner and received $25,000, and the other agencies all received $10,000 each! Thank you King’s Hawaiian for being an exemplary example of how brands can give back!
Side note: When I received the invite, I was super excited to attend, because I know first hand how Big Brothers Big Sisters can affect a child. I have been active with Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles for many years–I spent nine years as a Big Sister matched with an awesome Little and had the opportunity to watch her grow from a child to an adult, and have since sat on many committees.
After the agencies were honored, we were treated to an enormous lunch. There was food for miles, and every one of the King’s Hawaii team was so warm and welcoming!
We stuffed ourselves silly then went on a tour of the bakery. And yes, it smelled as incredible as you would imagine. At the end of the tour, we were treated to bread fresh from the oven. There are no words.
Finally, it was time to head home, and King’s Hawaiian gifted us with amazing bags filled with bread, cookies, and candy.
Mahalo King’s Hawaiian!
Disclosure: King’s Hawaiian provided lunch and gifts to everyone attending the event.
Lemon Pound Cake
Hi! Remember me? I’m the one that made baked donuts and posted a bunch of Passover stuff then sort of disappeared (except for on Twitter, you can always find me there!). Things have been kind of crazy over here. My back got really bad again (MRI and nerve test next week, eeks!), then my beloved KitchenAid mixer starting wobbling and almost walked off my counter, and then I got laid off from my job of 3+ years. On the flip side, now that I’m home during the day, I was able to spend three hours on Google finding potential solutions to the wobbly mixer. Fingers crossed that it is finally fixed!
A couple days after I was laid off, I went down to San Diego to celebrate my mom’s birthday with the family. Around that time, my mom apparently asked my dad to pick up lemons while he was at Costco. And pick up lemons, he did. A HUGE bag of lemons, more than my mom would ever use before they would go bad. Fortunately, my sister and I benefited from my dad’s shopping mishap, and I decided a lemon cake was in order.
With my mixer not wobbling off the counter, I got to work zesting, juicing, and mixing, and had high hopes. Sadly, those hopes were squashed. I’m sure this is a perfectly decent lemon cake, even if the texture and taste of the bottom and sides was a little cornbread-ish. But once you have tasted Ina’s Lemon Cake, any other lemon cake is guaranteed to fail in comparison.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have Judge Judy to watch before I head to happy hour at 5:00.
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup shortening, room temperature
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
6 Tbsp lemon juice
1 lemon, zested
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350F.
Spray or butter and flour 2 loaf pans or one large bundt pan. (I used a 10-cup bundt pan and had about two extra cups of batter so I made mini bundts.)
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into medium bowl. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, shortening and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended after each one.
Add dry ingredients in three additions to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Mix in lemon juice and zest.
Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool cakes in pans for 15 minutes. Turn cakes out onto racks and cool completely.
Recipe from Plain Chicken.
Passover Desserts
It’s that time again! Here are my tried and true Passover dessert recipes. My family’s faves are the matzo brittle, meringues, and chocolate walnut cookies, but they are all delish! Happy Passover!
- Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
- Passover Mandelbrot
- Chocolate Chip Meringues
- Flourless Chocolate Cake
- Matzo Brittle
- Apple Crisp
- Brownies
- Lemon Chiffon Cake
Baked Chocolate Doughnuts with Vanilla Glaze
Print This Recipe
A couple of Sundays ago, I woke up at 8 a.m. instead of my normal 10 a.m. (Hey, I like to sleep in on the weekends!) With no plans aside from laundry until the afternoon, and no AP flour to be found but tons of cake flour, I decided baked doughnuts using cake flour were on my morning agenda.
As expected with baked doughnuts, these taste nothing like the real thing, but are an easy way to feel less guilty about basically eating cake for breakfast. Not too dense, with a rich chocolate flavor, these were easy to make and the perfect Sunday morning treat.
Doughnut Ingredients
1 3/4 cup cake flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Doughnut Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325.
Combine the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and salt and whisk together.
Stir in the milk, eggs, oil and vanilla until well combined.
Transfer the batter to a large plastic bag and cut one corner off. Pipe the batter into greased doughnut pans, filling 2/3 of the way.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until springy. Allow to cool in the pans for five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
Glaze Ingredients
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Glaze Preparation
Warm the milk and vanilla in a medium saucepan set over low heat.
Add the confectioners’ sugar and whisk slowly until well combined.
Remove from heat and set over a bowl of warm water (you may have to reheat over low heat occasionally).
Dip doughnuts in glaze and place on rack to set.
Doughnut recipe from Cassie Craves.
Glaze recipe from La Mia Vita Dolce.
S’mores Bars
Print This Recipe
Every month or two, a few baker friends and I get together for brunch to explore a new restaurant in LA (and to swap our latest treats). There are so many brunch places here, you could spend a lifetime in LA without trying each one. So when our latest plans included a quick bite at Cafe Surfas (yes, the cafe connected to the awesome kitchen supply store), before a shopping spree, I decided to make another version of s’mores bars.
Unfortunately, my sciatica had other plans. I had another stupid acute flare up, which this time, I (thought) I was prepared for with Prednisone, but that’s a whole other mess of a story. So instead of sharing these s’mores bars with my friends, they went to the office, where they were a huge hit.
If you’re looking for something gooey and sweet, these hit the spot. The crust is a little more cookie-like that I would have preferred, but it works well with the rest of the bar and elicited only good responses from my coworkers.
Ingredients
3/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 cups butter (unsalted or salted) at room temperature
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt (less, if using salted butter)
1 cup graham cracker crumbs (whole crackers can be crushed in a blender or food processor or else in a zipper-bag with a rolling-pin)
3 cups milk chocolate chips or semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows
Preparation
- Preheat your oven to 375° F and place rack on middle rung. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until smooth, about two-three minutes. In a separate bowl combine the flour, salt and graham crackers. On the lowest mixer setting gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet and then mix until well blended. Add up to 1/4 teaspoon of water to the sides of the bowl, drop by drop, just until the dough separates from the sides.
- Press the soft dough into an un-greased 9×13-inch pan, preferably non-stick.
- Bake the crust for 20 to 25 minutes or until slightly golden-brown and just set. Remove from the oven and sprinkle then spread the chocolate chips evenly over the top of the crust. Allow the base and chocolate to stand for five minutes or so to allow the chocolate to melt slightly. Spread chocolate with off-set spatula.
- Set the oven knob to broil. Sprinkle the mini-marshmallows evenly over the melted chocolate, covering it entirely.
- Broil the pan, with the top of the marshmallows no closer than five or six inches from the heat for about 30-60 seconds, or until the marshmallows are evenly toasted and browned on top – watch the entire process carefully. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Cut into bars, approximately 2″ by 3″.
Recipe from IslandEAT.
