Thai Tea Skillet Brownies

I hope you guys had a splendid Easter weekend! My Easter holidays growing up usually involved church and my mum forcing me to play some hymn on the violin. I used to have terrible stage fright, and I still do! But, my mum kept making me do all kinds of things in front of people because "it builds character". Now that I'm an almost adult, I get to wake up late and eat left over Easter dessert/candies for breakfast :P.

It's raining in Richmond today, so I can't imagine what doing a egg hunt would be like in this weather. My roommate and I did some major spring cleaning. Honestly, we only clean when we have prospective renters look at the apartment, so I'm glad some people want to see it tomorrow. We really needed a reason to kick our butts into high cleaning gear!! You don't even want to know some of the things I found under my desk! It's difficult when you have two girls with long black hair shedding all over the place :P

Cleaning is some back breaking work though, so we'll be treating ourselves to some leftover brownies a la mode. The butter here is infused with Thai tea, so it gives it some depth and extra flavor! I'm using the same Revol mini dishes that I used in my last kimchi chili tots post. These are perfect for serving and portion control...otherwise, I'd eat the whole pan! And, because of the gooey nature of these brownies, it's difficult to clean but these "cast iron" dishes are able to go into the dish washer! What a relief, because I have absolutely no strength to even wash dishes :D

Thai Tea Skillet Brownies

makes 3-4 mini skillet brownies

1 stick butter
4-5 tbsp loose thai tea leaves
5 oz unsweetened chocolate chips, melted
2 eggs, room temp
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
sweetened condensed milk

1. Put Thai tea leaves in a cheesecloth or tea bag. Melt butter in a small saucepan and place tea bags into the butter to let steep for a few minutes (I let it sit for 5-8 mins). Some thai tea leaves have orange food coloring in them, so if your butter turns bright orange, don't be alarmed!
2. Preheat oven to 350F and butter mini casserole dishes. Once the tea is done steeping, take out the tea bags, add in chocolate chips and the residual heat will melt it. If it isn't quite melted, just put it on low heat for a few seconds and it will melt quickly. Set aside and let cool
3. In a large bowl, mix together sugar flour, baking powder and salt. In a smaller bowl, lightly beat eggs with the vanilla extract and stir this into the cooled melted chocolate. Mix together the wet and dry ingredients until just incorporated. Try not to over mix, or you'll get a more cakey brownie!
4. Bake for 20-25mins, or less if you want your center to be very gooey. And that's okay because we're going to be eating these with spoons anyway!
5. Serve with a giant scoop of ice cream and drizzle on sweetened condensed milk

I developed this recipe for Revol; all opinions expressed are my own. I love their beautiful and creative kitchen bakeware, serve ware and cooking tools :) Thank you for the support!

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Coconut black rice pudding

Sometimes my bf and I get these insane cravings for McDonalds. We have serious love for pink goo chicken nuggets and their extremely soft chocolate sundaes. Although my post has nothing to do with McD or nuggs, I'm currently posting this at midnight, still feeling full from my twenty piece nugg box, soft serve, and at least a gallon of diet coke. I have to wake up in less than 5 hours, but sometimes I forget how sensitive I am to caffeine, and drinking coke has got me all wired! Or I pretend to forget, because I can't have fries without coke. Also, we are both lactose intolerant, so we're on the wait for Montezuma's revenge >.<

Anyway, I thought I wasn't going to post throughout my internal medicine rotation, but we have all these mini holidays this month, including the world biking race coming to Richmond! Woo, getting a free entire week holiday!

Ack, I'm going off track and I want to get some studying done before I sleep. I'm leaving you with this totally summer-y and refreshing dessert to enjoy in the hot weather. Also did you notice the hospital gauze posing as "cheese cloth". LOL, don't worry it's sterile and fresh out of the packet :D

Coconut black rice pudding
makes 6-8 servings

1 cup black glutinous rice
1 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water

1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup white sugar
2 mangoes, diced
shredded dried coconut
other fruits

1. Rinse glutinous rice and let it soak overnight with at least 2cm water over the level of rice. In a small pot mix brown sugar and coconut milk. Drain rice, add to coconut milk and then add enough water so there is about 1 cm over the top of the leveled rice.
2. Bring to boil on high and then lower to low-med to simmer for about 35-40mins. Taste test towards the end and the rice should be chewy, but not hard or stiff. Fluff and let it cool. Stick it in the fridge to chill
3. To make the decorations over the rice, dissolve white sugar in coconut milk by warming it a little. Dice up mangoes or any other tropical fruits. Allow the sweetened coconut milk to chill as well
4. To assemble, scoop rice into a bowl. I used seran wrap and molded the rice into golf ball sized spheres. Place into shallow bowl. Stir up chilled coconut milk and pour over top. Arrange fruits over rice and sprinkle on some dried coconut shavings.
5. All components can be made a day or two ahead and even assembled together. 

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Tomato Watermelon Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette

It's that lazy Sunday where I don't really feel like doing anything but eat frozen chocolate covered bananas in bed. I've had a week filled with cooking and baking disasters. I just kept burning everything I made. Like my batch of green tea macarons :( So labor intensive and then gone to waste by 5 minutes of extra time in the oven. Ughhh macarons!! So when it came to the day of my bf's birthday two days ago, I was super super hesitant to cook dinner. But, I did it anyway...because "best gf". you know? Ha

Anyway, I wanted to make sausage and biscuits, because he loves that gloopy stuff. Baking the biscuits was a disaster. My first batch well... I might as well have made hockey pucks. I know when I have a bad week, I just need to stay out of the kitchen! Luckily, this salad turned out pretty decently. And I say lucky, because I spent a few hours cleaning the mess I made in the kitchen after dinner :(

Tomato Watermelon Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette

serves 3-4

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