Espresso ice cream with Andes mint chips.

My roommate Noah requested ice cream, so my other roommate April made this delicious batch! She used an easy recipe from online with instant espresso instead of instant coffee. Then she decided to give it some kick with some chopped up Andes mints! I think it was an excellent combo!

A million delicious cake balls, done three ways.

I decided to make some fabulous chocolate covered cake balls for various occasions I had last weekend: my friend, Maddy's, birthday party, my friend, Arang's, parents visit, etc.

Here's how it all went down:

1. Bake a cake, any cake! From and box or your own recipe. I used a strawberry cake mix for my first batch. I baked it in one 9" x 13" pan, but you can use whatever you have.

2. Let cool.

3. Crumble cake. I read you can use a mixer, but I just cut my cake up and then crumbled each section. Unless you have a very large mixing bowl, you might want to do this in halves--which is what I did.

4. Dollop in your frosting and begin mixing! You can use any frosting. I used store bought strawberry. One can is enough. If you do your cake in halves, remember to only use half of the frosting!

I found that using your hands to really mix it together was the best way of doing it!

5. Form balls. Some people online said they had to chill the mix before doing this, but I thought it was easy to work it right after mixing. I used a small ice cream scoop and then rolled the balls with my hands. They came out to be about the size of a ping-pong ball.

6. Freeze balls for about 30 minutes.

7. While they are freezing, you can start on the chocolate. A lot of recipes use chocolate bark, but I decided to just go with chips and a little shortening. For these, I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. It took a little more than a normal sized package. For one regular sized package of chocolate chips, add 2 tablespoons of shortening in a double boiler. I didn't have a proper double boiler so I improvised with a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. I brought the water to good boil, melted the chips, and then turned the heat down.

8. Dip! I just dropped a cake ball in, individually. I used a spoon to turn them, fish them out and set them on my Silpat (foil or wax paper work great, too). The spot where the spoon hit was was always bare so I just took a little chocolate and covered that spot. Make sure you have enough space on your drying sheet so they don't stick together--if the chocolate touches and hardens, they are sometimes difficult to break apart.

9. If you're going to top these with something, you should do that right away. I topped my strawberry ones with coconut flakes!

10. Stick in freezer or refrigerator to cool. I stuck mine in the freezer for awhile. After they were done, I pulled them off, put them in tupperware and then back in the freezer! Yay, first batch done! :)

While I was waiting for my first batch of cake to cool (Step 6) I went ahead and baked another cake. This time it chocolate cake mixed them with vanilla frosting.

I used mint chocolate chips (I know these are hard to find, but you can always add some mint/peppermint extract extract to chocolate chips) for the coating.

And then I drizzled them with white chocolate. I found the white chocolate was a bit difficult to use in the beginning.. I just used a spoon and worked quickly though. I kind of like the abstract ones!

These are a bit more fancy. :) Yay!

For my last batch I made an orange cake (orange extract and peel into normal cake mix) with cream cheese frosting. It made for a light orange flavor and I dipped these in white chocolate and topped them with toasted pecan bits.

And here are the three of them!

• Left: Chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and mint chocolate coating with white chocolate drizzle.
• Middle: Orange cake with cream cheese frosting and white chocolate coating with toasted pecans nibs.
• Right: Strawberry cake with strawberry frosting and semi-sweet chocolate coating with coconut flakes.

Here is the platter I did for my friend Maddy's birthday. The very left is the orange cake with white chocolate, sans nuts (in case of allergies, etc.) and then the middle is the strawberry cake with semi-sweet chocolate, sans coconut.

Yay! So delicious! They turn out to be super moist because the frosting is mixed in with the cake. All of the flavors were a big hit and I got tons of compliments, which was so nice. :) They were all my favorite--I'm really very happy with how each of them came out! Everyone said the mint tasted like Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies!

These aren't difficult, but they are time consuming! Definitely worth it, but just know that each cake will yield about 50-60 of these, and they are a good two-bite size!

My first Passover Seder dinner.

Star of David latkes! We just used a cookie cutter for these.

Awesome.

The table.

The non-Jews! :) My roommate, Noah, on the far right is Jewish so he hosted this dinner and was awesome.

Seder plate! Everything on here is meaningful. I can't remember what it all means, but it is meaningful. Oh, and we have a chicken neck instead of a bone? Haha.

The wine for the prophet.

Thanks, Safeway! :)

The beautiful reading!

Washing of the hands.

Eating the bitter herbs.

Wine dots. I think I was missing one..

DINNER! Yay!! Matzo ball soup.

Matzo crackers crumbled up in the soup. Sooooo yummy.

Deviled eggs.

Gefilte fish. Oh, wow.

Spammy fish. NOT LOVING IT.

Hummos! This was awesome, Noah!

Latkes with applesauce. :)

Amazing mushroom risotto.

And for dessert--macaroons. April made these and they were delicious. :)

And chocolate molten cake with raspberry sauce! So easy and yummy.

Passover pass out! Awww, this was such a lovely holiday dinner with great meaning.

Wine and dine at Fat Angel, Fillmore, SF.

I got out to Fat Angel with my two amazing ex-roommates for a wine and dine girls night! We started a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc, with their cheese plate. The wine was lovely, but there was one really stinky cheese from Vermont (I think!?) and none of us cared for. It was a super interesting flavor though. The blue cheese with honeycomb was probably my favorite of the five.

The special was a flatbread with shaved asparagus, olives and toasted pine nuts. This was pretty yummy.

Sliders! I feel like when the three of us get together and sliders are on the menu, we always get them! Haha! The tartar sauce on this was really nice. Annnd they were on toasted dinner rolls (I think the ones from Costco! Haha--love!), which was also really nice. I actually prefer that to burger buns.

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Sunday brunch at Pomelo, Noe Valley, SF.

Daily specials! I'd been meaning to try Pomelo for soooo long now and finally got out to Noe! :)

They bring you little mini muffins. Not my favorite--I like either cake like muffins or crumbly muffins, but this was kind of an in-between. Very cute though.

Eastlake, Seattle! Awww, that made me miss seattle and my best friend, KM. The Altamira, Caracas, were the ones I ordered. :)

Areeeeepas! These are the first arepas I've seen in SF! I was so excited to see them on the menu and had to have them! They were breakfasty arepas and were very good, but I like arepas to be a bit more flavorful.

M got the special, the daily Noe omelette.

We heart Pomelo. I love the space, the neighborhood, the menu, everything! I'll definitely be back, and will be trying out other restaurants in Noe, too--yay.

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Cold soba at Mifune, Japantown Center, SF.

Soba and California rolls. I think quality is important with soba noodles and I don't think this place has the best noodles. The California roll was fine, but I think they were sliced too thickly--could have made 8 or 9 rolls instead of 6.

Soba, udon and tempura.

I really wanted some light, cold, refreshing noodles! Soba sounded nice, but I just don't like soba as much as Korean or Vietnamese cold noodles. Nothing I'd come crawling back for.

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The Cafe at New People, Japantown, SF.

New People is this great space that opened last summer in Post. The whole building looks like it's straight out of Japan or Korea. The Cafe is super cute with their kitschy chandelier and bright two-panel wall art. I didn't actually have anything here, but will have to try it sometime. They serve Blue Bottle coffee and bento boxes from Delica.

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Amazing dinner at B44, Belden Place, SF.

Left: Grilled morcilla sausage / baby white beans / mortar allioli

Right: Sautéed mussels / sofrito / pancetta / green peas / tarragon

One of my best girlfriends, Arang, has the sweetest parents ever! They were in town visiting and invited a few of her friends out for a fantastic dinner. I don't if there's anything we didn't order from the B44 menu--we had about 10 courses and it was amazing!

Our dessert--churros with chocolate and custard.

The meal was fabulous and the service was great. B44 is an excellent place to go with a group. There wasn't anything I didn't like, but here were my favorites (of course, I didn't get photos of any of them!):

• Tiger shrimp sautéed with garlic and adobo - Just a really yummy shrimp dish. One of the more flavorful dishes of the evening.
• Escalivada - Warm roasted vegetables / cabrales / pine nuts / garlic oil - This was tasty pizza -bruchetta on these great big slices of soft French bread!
• Arros Negre – Squid / clams / sepia / green peas / green bell pepper / squid ink / mortar allioli - Okay, I just really like squid ink paella! It wasn't as nice as the one at Iluna Basque, but we ordered two paellas and I preferred this one to the seafood one.

Muchos gracias padres de Arang!

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Brenda's with my German friends, Tenderloin, SF.

Yogurt parfait.

Fried oyster and bacon scramble with biscuit and grits. This is what I got and it was absolutely amazing! I could only finish half, and I'm really glad I ordered it, but I don't think I'll ever be able to eat fried food again! Well, maybe just not fried oysters--I forgot how intense they are! Well, I suppose it was that plus the bacon, plus the buttery biscuit, plus the grits!! Eep! I seriously felt like I was 2 steps from a heart attack. Amazingly tasty meal, but not a good feeling at all!

My german friends who were visiting SF were shocked at how heavy the brunch was. They loved the biscuits and thought the grits were really interesting--I guess you don't get much corn in Germany.

They were horrified with the bathroom situation at Brenda's! You have to go through the kitchen to get to the loo and they said in Germany this place would be shut down because of that! They couldn't get over it! Haha. Oh, America. :)

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