Birthday chocolates from Fran's of Seattle.

A birthday surprise came for me today! They were these wonderful Fran's Chocolates from my friend C in Seattle!

Dark chocolate truffle collection. Mmmm! I just tried the dark chocolate and the espresso--both were very good. Thanks so much, C! :)

Mother's Day gifts from Williams Sonoma.

The Ici Silicone Tools from Williams Sonoma are my favorite. They are awesome so I decided to get a set for my mom for Mother's Day!

I got the spoon and the spatula, which are the two I use the most. These images are from the Williams Sonoma website.

Williams Sonoma will do a free gift wrap, which is great! I didn't have time for it though so they sent me off with a box, wrapping paper, ribbon and this great, signature cookie cutter to tie into the ribbon!

I didn't even notice this was a cutter until I really thought about it.. Very cool! Momma doesn't bake cookies so I decided to keep this. :) I'm excited to use it for little biscuits!

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.

Darbar Indian for St. Patrick's Day dinner, Russian Hill, SF.

What didn't we order?! Haha.. I must say, we made some great choices and got a variety of flavors. Clockwise from the bottom left: Lamb Korma Curry, Bangan Bharta (eggplant), Palak Paneer, Chicken Makhani (butter chicken).

Darbar was excellent--definitely the best Pakistani-Indian I've had in SF. None of the curries were too bold in flavor, but they were just right and had excellent textures. The chutneys had stronger flavors and complemented the curries well. We also got an order of the rice, garlic naan and onion naan. I prefered the onion naan because you could taste the onion, but the fluffiness of both naans was just right! :)

I'm so glad we decided on Indian for St. Patrick's day! I think it was fitting considering Indian food is taking over the UK/Ireland. :)

Website

Yelp

Valentine's Day dinner at House of Nanking.

After hitting up Pillow Fight and then watching A Single Man, We got a green bean dish, an eggplant dish and a catfish dish. The eggplant was my favorite, but everything was SOO good! I can't believe I haven't been here yet! Loved it.

Yelp

Valentine's Day Cupcakes!

I took a bunch of photos, but they aren't uploading correctly, which is really scaring me! I hope everything is okay with my camera. Luckily, this one turned out!

I did red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting and my candy heart sprinkles, of course! The frosting is pretty awesome. :)

Happy Valentine's day, everyone!

Korean New Years dinner party.

The one American dish: my salad. :) Romaine with slivered almonds, dried cranberries, red bell pepper and a light honey balsamic vin dressing.

Mom's spicy broccoli dish.

Mom's amazing buckwheat noodle salad.

Grandma's pot-stickers.

Mom's kimchi.

Mom's shrimp and veggies.

Dad's bulgogi.

Sooo amazing! I love when my parents have Korean dinner parties! Happy New Year!!! :)