Victorian Lavender Cookies with Rose Water Icing

Every time I'm bound to come back to Chicago for my in-between semester breaks, I always mean to eat out a lot and cook a lot. I've been doing a lot of the former, but not too much of the latter. I made these cookies following that exact recipe. The Spice House is an awesome store in the Chicagoland area that sells TONS of great quality spices at an amazing value. I'm talking prices are much less than your average McCormick spices. So I don't delve into a tangent, I'll have to save a review of this store for another post.

These cookies were honestly just ok to me, although my family did enjoy them. The cookie itself wasn't sweet enough, and the texture was a bit dry for my liking. The rose water icing, however, was what made the cookies at least somewhat enjoyable for me. It added a uniquely sweet flavor to the cookie. I was worried that these cookies would taste like flowers or handsoap/lotion, but thankfully, they weren't too floral in taste.

If I were to ever make these again, I'd have to play around and make some adjustments, most likely by either adding more sugar or some other spice/essence/extract to include another dimension to it.

I had extra rose water icing, so I decided to drizzle some of it on fresh strawberries. These were AMAZING. Rose water and strawberries might just be a better unique pairing than aged balsamic vinegar and strawberries. I'll have to indulge in rosewater&strawberries more before I leave for the Caribbean again.

Westville East and Pinisi Bakery

I've had a grilled cheese craving lately, and after reading this post, I was reminded of the fact that I had been meaning to go to Westville for a long time. On a side note, I'm actually temporarily moving out of NYC for the next 20 months by the end of June, so for the next two months, I'm committing myself to at least one foodie lunch per week. I've been really good about making cheap food (i.e. pasta, sandwiches, and instant ramen) and bringing leftovers to work about 4 days a week in order to allow myself to splurge on one lunch and dinner per week. Not like Westville is even a splurge. In fact, it is a cheap eats considering its popularity, neighborhood-feel, and quality. But I've honestly never been one for spending more than $6 on lunch.

ANYWAYS. Like I said before, I've been craving a good and serious grilled cheese. It was between Westville and Bouchon Bakery. Obviously, two very different places. However, I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend $13 on a grilled cheese at Bouchon Bakery. Plus, Yelp reviews didn't seem too favorable. So Westville it was, and I will never look back.

I decided on the East Village location for the sake of convenience and the fact that I wanted to go to Pinisi bakery afterwards. I sat down at a booth, perused the menu and blackboard specials, but knew anyways that I wanted the grilled cheese with fries. What's even better is that I had the option of getting bacon on my grilled cheese. I'm such a bacon fiend. You have no idea. It was only 50 cents extra to get a good portion of amazing crispy bacon. How could you not like that?

Unfortunately, as a solo diner, I tend to feel self-conscious about taking pictures, so I opted for my camera phone. Now, the picture doesn't seem to want to transfer from my phone to my laptop, so no photos. I'll do my best to describe. When I got my food 5 minutes after ordering, I was surprised by the mountain of french fries ($1 extra) they gave me. Like wow. That was a ton of fries. The cheese was literally goo-ing out of the perfectly grilled Portuguese bun, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of bacon they gave me. It was so greasy, and I loved it. The sandwich was actually bigger than I thought it would be. Can I also tell you how amazing the fries are? I'm one for very crunchy fries, and I'm pretty sure every single fry on my plate (except for the ones I didn't finish since I wouldn't know) was so crispy and crunchy. I love that.

For a total of $9, it wasn't bad. It was $1 extra for a mountain of fries (like, bigger than supersize at McD's) and 50 cents extra for bacon. Not bad at all. The food just really hit the spot today.

After happily leaving Westville, I trekked my way over to Pinisi Bakery on East 4th. I had heard of the Ghost Chili cupcakes, so being the one who tends to like contrasting flavors (like chocolate+salt and chocolate+chili), I had to try this. It's definitely a really cute bakery. I'll have to try other things next time. I honestly didn't like this cupcake as much as I thought it would. I thought the chili was just gonna give a little kick a la Mexican hot chocolate, but the cupcake was actually SPICY. I definitely needed water with this one. It's definitely interesting and not bad, but I'm not sure if I'd really want to get it again. I trust that the Red Velvet will please me more.

Go to Westville for sure. As far as Pinisi goes, if you're curious to try the famed Ghost Chili cupcake, I warned you it's spicy. It's not bad, and it's worth a try, but just giving you a heads up.

Pinisi Bakery
128 E. 4th St
New York, NY

Westville East
173 Ave A
New York, NY

chocolate kahlua cake

I made this on Christmas Eve in order to bring to my aunt's house for our Christmas Day party, but since she said that they already had too many desserts, I saved it for our New Year's party. The great thing about cakes baked with liquor is the fact that it keeps it moist and preserves it for a very long time. Last year, I made coconut rum cake for New Year's, and it was a big hit, so since my house has like 5 bottles of Kahlua (coffee liquor), I decided to try chocolate Kahlua cake this year.

In a mixing bowl, I added one box of Pillsbury chocolate cake mix, one box of Jello chocolate pudding powder, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, 1 cup of Kahlua, 1/2 cup of water, and 1 cup of sour cream. Most recipes I saw called for 3/4cup or less of Kahlua, but like I've said, my Dad and I tend to put more alcohol than needed. The sour cream probably sounds gross, but you don't taste it at all. It's just there to make the cake really moist, so maybe you can substitute with plain yogurt.

For the glaze, we heated and mixed 1 cup of sugar, 4oz Kahlua, and some Amaretto (almond liquor). I decided to throw in Amaretto because people often use amaretto flavoring/syrup in their coffee. That was a nice addition, but I think I'll put even more of that next time and/or use that instead of Kahlua for the glaze.

This turned out to be a great bundt cake. My cousin, Odette, loved it a lot as did others. Personally, I think the cake tasted a little more alcoholic than what I wanted, so I'll put less Kahlua in the cake mix next time.