{recipe attack} sweet potato cake

Say hello to my little DINO friend! He would like to share his enthusiasm about a recent cake recipe that came his way. While preparing to celebrate a birthday he decided to make a cake for that person. 

Knowing she loves sweet potatoes (고구마/ サツマイモ), he searched far and wide to find a recipe and finally came across this recipe! After converting the measurements from metric, a few adjustments, mashing, and 2 hours later...the birthday cake was finished!

adapted recipe from GreenCilantro:

ingredients...
-2 small sweet potatoes*
-2 eggs
-2 1/2 tbsp. brown sugar
-2/3 c. milk (I used 1/3 2%milk + 1/3 soymilk) 
-1/4 c. flour

directions..
1. Cook sweet potatoes to soften and remove skin while hot.
      -->2 options: steam/roast them & remove skin after perfectly soft OR peel & cube the potatoes then simmer in water until soft then drain
2. Preheat oven to 330 degrees F while sweet potatoes cook.

easiest way to roast/steam them: in foil sitting in your preheating oven. may take half an hour cut in half

3. Mash the hot sweet potatoes. When desired smooth/chunky consistency is reached, add milk and mix well.
4. Then add sugar and eggs to the mashed potatoes&milk. Once incorporated, sieve in flour to the batter.
5. Coat springform pan in butter and flour well.
6. Pour batter into pan and bake for 35-40 min. (depending on thickness of cake) ** Once done remove from oven and let chill in refrigerator or enjoy warm with fresh fruit or whipped cream on top!

 *not the orange type often confused with yams. Can be found at Japanese, Korean, or Chinese markets
** depending on intensity of your oven check on cake every 10 min. after 20 min. has passed with clean knife test.

Let me know if you try this out yourself and make any improvements to it :) Have an awesome Friday everyone!

lots of lovee

{attack the senses} transitional

 

 

Who else is fed up with this bipolar SoCal weather? *RAISES HAND* Last week was blazes hot and this week we  are afraid of spontaneous rain fall. I'm tired and my wardrobe is in a big transitional mess. With all this trouble i have truly learned to embrace and appreciate the power of layering. Allowing me to stay warm in the cold mornings and peel off layers as the day goes on so I'm not sweating like a monkey the while day. (not attractive)

What do you do in transitional weather? Is this what "spring" weather is?

lots of lovee

(creds: style-arena.jp, brigit, Karla's Closet, tumblrz, DropTokyo) 

w e e k e n d e r.

 Yes. I spent the weekend doing nothing and messing around. Mission Accomplished. How could I not with the truly magnificent weather given to SoCal? Not pictured was my afternoon at the neighborhood Cherry Blossom Festival, which consisted of delicious festival food and stalls filled with the cutest knick knacks.

Super exciting: THAILAND TEAM 2012 is coming together! More and more I see how perfect God's timing is and what my spiritual gifts might be. Continuing to seek His plans for us this year :)

have a lovely week! p.s. what's with the rain, socal sunshinee? :(

lots of lovee

set my ears ablaze.

My car died this past week. Thankfully it was in my driveway sitting there sad and not active. My friends at AAA came and jump started my battery. Wait I haven't gotten to the bad news yet: my car radio requires a code when restarted or the radio won't play music.  !!! I went 4 days without listening to music during my commute & it was a sadlyfe. #firstworldproblems

Anyways let me share some honey for your ears

Really excellent driving music with the windows down, sun roof open, California sunshinee, and blasting vocals by myself.


lots of lovee

chemistry like apple and cinnamon

Honesty time: we all love Utada Hikaru's english album somewhere deep in our hearts. We also love to think that adding fruit to a dessert makes it breakfast worthy...I am one of those people.

This past weekend I had a staff meeting and a sunday school class to make light breakfast/brunch items for and recently I went back through my older recipes and bread pudding caught my heart eye again! Wanting to make it "healthier"/ influx of them in my house, I added apples and raisins to my original recipe and cut the chocolate chips & half the sugar.

Step 1: chop up 2-3 of your fave apples into wedges and again into thirds (*used red delicious but any will work)

Step 2: In a deep pan melt down 1 tbsp. butter & add apples to cook down. After 1-2 minutes sprinkle 2-3 tbsp. sugar (*depending on sweetness of your apples to begin with. red delicious=2 tbsp. granny smiths= 2-3 etc.) Let it cook down for another 5-7 minutes until soft & then let cool.

Step 3: Spray deep baking dish and line with 1 layer of bread on hand. **Using wheat or whole grain bread adds a nice crust and density to the pudding that helps hold it all together**

Step 4: Pour cooked down apples & sprinkle desired amount of raisins. Cover with a scattered layer of bread to create crust on top on bread pudding.

Step 5-7: Follow the recipe with a few "breakfast" changes:
--> 1. Reduce sugar amount to 1/2 c. sugar added to milk &eggs
--> 2. Soy milk is a perfectly good substitute to milk
--> 3. Increased to 4 eggs and 3 c. milk
--> 4. Bake at 350 for at least 35 min. and let cool & set in fridge.

That's all for now :) Perfect for dessert or brunch! Have a fantabulous week!

lots of lovee

{attack the senses} the streets are on

Unfortunately for us all the title is not referring to Step Up 2. It is in relation to how much inspiration can be found on the streets. I am blessed to live in LA that is such a huge melting pot of people and talents with Venice as one of the many epicenters for cultivation. All of these shots were taken as I was walking down the boardwalk area as well as around the neighborhoods, and it's so inspiring to see! Inspiration doesn't always have to be found on tumblr or pintrest...

Challenge for this week: go outside if it's not pouring rain and look at your neighborhood. It might surprise you what you find.

lots of lovee

p.s. anyone want apple raisin bread pudding? :)

festivity eats

top-bottom: Matzo ball soup for Easter lunch, sweet potato cake, seastar's birthday dinner at Mama's Lu

Happy Friday to you and me ! This past week was one filled with times of celebration as well as mourning, but through it all God sustained us. The excitement started with this past Sunday being Easter and I shared a bit about it in this last post, but in terms of food my family went to our traditional Easter spot: Billy's Deli in Glendale for some super yums sandwiches. Next, on Tuesday, was my oldest sister's birthday! I baked her a cake (recipe to come) and we went out for delicious home-y chinese food.

Let's be honest for a second. While writing this post my sleepiness just hit me in the face...so I'm going to go make some steam cake and bread pudding. Being honest means telling you guys that I have a problem baking terribly late at night. Have a killer weekend & catch me on twitter !

lots of lovee

absent {food} photodiary

1. vegan almond cookies 2. fresh baked wheat bread with avocado breakfast 

3. Bludso's BBQ in Compton 4. beautiful brick walls 5. rosemary bread 

6. abstract gates of Venice beach 

Short recap for those who didn't see most of this on twitter, just some spring break ventures. more to comee...

lots of lovee

#Annie'sMove

homemade wheat bread that kicked off spring 

Happy Hump Day ! short post for a short announcement:

I am on TWITTER! At first the whole twitter world seemed so strange to me but I am slowly getting used to it. With much luck I won't be addicted like some that I know (youknowwhoyouare), however it is nice as an outlet to share my everyday inspirations with you all!

Being the #lazystudent that I am there is a lot of my past few weeks that have been amazing & exciting but one much less several photodiary posts will be able to capture my thoughts at that time...so scoot yourself over (there -->) to twitter and see what I've been up to :)

lots of lovee

spring forward

Venice Beach, CA #springbreak

HELLLLOO! EYE SEE YOU reading my first post in a month after taking a break for Lent :)


This time away has allowed me to rethink about what I truly treasure in this world. For the past few weeks I have struggled with how to express myself without this blogging as my outlet and God has taught me that being transparent with those around me, opening up, and sharing my struggles is so rewarding! Being able to build each other up in Christ has been a blessing to see new relationships blossom. At the same time the urge/temptation/struggle to blog plagued me wanting to share all the fun things I did or tasty things I ate with you all, is nothing compared to the struggle that Christ put himself through for our sake. 


Celebrating Good Friday and Easter this past weekend has been the reminder as to why I have faith and confirms the pure awesomeness of the one whom I have faith in.  

"My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!"

Lots of exciting new things for the blog will be shared later but for now I just wanted to share how excellent God has been to me. How has God blessed you recently? :)

lots of lovee