Majarkeun

matcha egg cream

With the world warming up, it's probably a good plan for us to find other ways to cool down besides air conditioning, ice cream, and swimming pools. I mean, nothing against any of those things, I'm just saying that we give ourselves more options since it looks like we're in this for the long haul, ya know? And more options are always good, especially if they're different and exciting like this matcha egg cream:


If you shuddered at the words "egg" and "cream" brought together in such a cavalier fashion, you are not alone. Because gross! A drink containing an egg and, well, cream? No thank you. But fortunately, an egg cream doesn't actually contain either of those ingredients and instead consists of milk, chocolate syrup, and carbonated water. It's basically chocolate milk, but with some bubbly water to give it a little bit of a fizz. Apparently it originated in Brooklyn, but nobody really actually knows because that's how these things go.

And if you're wondering why my egg cream doesn't look like chocolate milk at all, it's because I kinda went all rogue and made a matcha variation. All you need to do is combine some green tea powder, whole milk, and sweetened condensed milk in a mason jar and give it a good shake, shake, SHAKE:


At this point, the mixture will be a pretty pale green — you're basically making matcha milk. Pour the milk out into ice-filled glasses, and top with fizzy water. BOOM! Matcha egg cream.


The recipe comes from Food with Friends, a new cookbook celebrating the art of, well, eating food with friends. I've been a fan of Leela Cyd's work for the Kitchn and various blogs for so long, and her cookbook is another example of her awesome work. The food is whimsical and fun, and this matcha egg cream is no exception.



Some baker's notes:

• Matcha is a vivid green powder made from compressed green tea leaves; you can also use it to make green tea, matcha lattes, and of course, baked goods. Matcha usually has a "grade", which is determined by the age of the leaf that is milled for the tea. Ceremonial grade matcha is made with younger leaves are more delicate and flowery, and ultimately used for traditional tea ceremonies in Japan. As a result, it is very expensive. I would recommend getting culinary grade matcha, which isn't as delicate (quite frankly, ceremonial grade matcha will probably have too delicate of a flavor for baking), but is within a more reasonable price point. It is available online, specialty tea stores, and some Asian super markets.


• If you're working with especially cold ingredients, it might take a little bit for the matcha to fully dissolve and integrate with the rest of the ingredients. If you're lazy like me, you can get around this by using a fine-mesh strainer to remove any clumps. If you're a big planner, combine the whole milk and matcha in a small pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Transfer to a mason jar and cool to room temperature, before refrigerating until chilled and then following Leela's original recipe.

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maple pear pie with a cream cheese crust

When I told folks that I was moving to New York City, I usually got two reactions. The first, usually from friends who either lived in New York or had spent a significant amount of time there, was one of disdain and/or confusion. "Really?" the current residents asked, crossing their arms as if to defend the territory I was clearly about to usurp on. "Why?" The former residents usually smirked at me. "Good luck," they wrinkled their noses, before detailing the many, many reasons why they decided to leave the city, usually involving some combination of steep rents, smelly garbage, extreme weather, and the sight of too many people pooping their pants in public.

The second group, however, was far kinder. Usually these consisted of friends who had visited for a handful of days, or had never been but only seen experienced it through books, TV shows, and movies. "Oooh, you should get a loft like the one in Friends!" one of my acquaintances exclaimed, gleefully oblivious to the very scary reality that is the New York real estate market. Several of these friends promised to visit, forwarding me lists like "The Best Rooftop Bars in New York City" with the words "LET'S GO!" I imagine they saw me traipsing around the city in the style of Sex and the City, running in heels to different events every night with an iPhone in one hand and a cupcake in the other.


But here's the dirty truth: it's all of those things, yet none of those things.

Because mostly it's boring.

Okay, okay, before you guys get all up in arms about me saying that New York City is boring, it's not. Not really. There's a lot to do here. There are so many restaurants, museums, shows, and for the first few months I got here, it definitely seemed that I was going to an event — not a party, but an event — every night.

The reality of New York is that it's somewhere between the two camps of what I described above: there's the glamor, the glitz, and the celebrity alongside the grit and the grime. Because sure, there are comped dinners at Eater 38 restaurants, bike rides along the glittering Manhattan skyline, and random celebrity sightings at Equinox. But there's also getting yelled at by taxi drivers, standing in line in heels for a shitty table in a VERY loud restaurant, and having to haul bags of groceries on the crowded L-train during rush hour. And after several months of juggling work, chores, and events alongside the daily grit of New York City, I've retreated back to my shell, where the jars of flour and sugar are very clean and organized and nobody is yelling or shrieking for any random reason. Days are now spent working, Netflixing, sleeping, and maybe leaving my apartment for an event once a week. IF I feel like it.

So it's me. I'M boring. But I'm okay with that.


This pie is the tenth installment in my #humhipieamonth series (the one where I'm baking a pie a month — you can read about the origin of the project over on this sour cranberry pie recipe). One of the hardest parts about moving out east has been getting used to what produce comes into season and for how long. In California, stone fruits would still be in abundance! In New York, they're long gone and we're in the heart of apples and pears season. To get into the fall spirit, I sweetened this pear pie with maple syrup and brown sugar. I used a cream cheese crust, which added a nice tangy flavor to compliment the maple flavor. Enjoy!



Some baker's notes:

• For this crust, I used Rose Levy Bereanbaum's cream cheese pie crust from The Baking Bible. According to this Food52 article, the cream cheese in the crust makes a tender, flaky, and super forgiving crust. In addition to the cream cheese, it also uses a combination of actual cream and vinegar for the liquid, with the cream serving to tenderize the crust and the vinegar to relax the gluten formation (the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie crust recipe also uses this trick). There's also a touch of baking powder, which I think helps keep the pie from shrinking. You can read the rest of her notes about the recipe over on Epicurious. I personally didn't find the cream cheese any more forgiving than a lard crust, but I did like the flavor that it brought to the pie. It did come out slightly paler than my usual lard and/or butter crusts, so if you want a deep golden color, I recommend using an all egg-yolk egg wash.


• In this recipe, I use two somewhat specialty ingredients — King Arthur Flour chai spice mix, and dark maple syrup. The chai spice mix is easily replaceable with any of your favorite fall/pumpkin pie spices; if you really need guidelines for flavor ratios, I recommend checking out this pear pie with crème fraîche caramel recipe from earlier this year. As for the maple syrup, maple syrup used to come in grades (A, B, and C) but merged together last year — you want the darkest maple syrup that you can find (formerly known as grades B or C). 

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Available link for download

Lucky Charms Marshmallow Ice Cream

Before we start, I'd really appreciate it if you took the time to vote for my blog in the Saveur Magazine's Food Blog Awards. Hummingbird High is a finalist in the Best Baking & Desserts Blog category!!! I am beyond floored that my blog was even re-nominated in the first place; it's honestly because of all YOUR support. So thank you to everybody who took the time to nominate me, is taking the time to vote for me, or, honestly, is even just reading this at all. And a HUGE congrats to all the other nominees, of course — I can't wait to meet everybody in June!

To vote for me, head on over to SAVEUR Blog Awards.

There's an ice cream shop in my neighborhood that's famous for their crazy ice cream flavors. You'll frequently find flavors like Pear and Blue Cheese or Tomato Water and Olive Oil on the menu. On Thanksgiving, Salt & Straw rolls out a salted caramel ice cream that's flavored with turkey juice and caramelized onions. One summer, there was a flavor that combined berries, barbecue sauce, and baked beans.

As a dessert enthusiast, I dive right in. I'll try a scoop of everything, including the ice creams with the pig's blood (Blood Pudding flavor, usually shows up around Halloween, yup), the meat juices, and even sea urchin. Do I enjoy it all?

Er... no, not really.

I know that makes me a bad Portlander, and I'm sure as I write this, the locals are gearing up to throw me some sticks and stones like they did in the comments section of this article. But maybe I'm just a simpleton at heart because the flavors I like best are their "classic" ones: chocolate gooey brownie, coconut with caramel bars, and Stumptown coffee with bourbon.


Every so often, however, I'll try one of their seasonal flavors and be blown right out of the water. Last month, it was a flavor called "Pots of Gold & Rainbows", a cereal milk based ice cream that was studded with all the marshmallows from pounds and pounds of Lucky Charms cereal but without any of their whole grain companions (because let's be honest, the only people who eat Lucky Charms cereal do it for the marshmallows, AMIRITE). It was perfect. There's no other word for it — the ice cream hit the perfect mix of creativity and deliciousness, balancing somewhere between a timeless classic and a more disruptive future demanding change amongst tried and true flavors. I found myself craving the ice cream again and again, lining up in Salt & Straw's obscenely long lines twice a week to buy myself a rather pricey scoop of the stuff.

But since I've never been the most patient person, I figured it was time to learn how to make it at home:


To reverse engineer the ice cream at home, I started by flipping through the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. Cereal milk dessert isn't a Salt & Straw invention; instead, it was popularized a few years ago by famed pastry chef Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar fame. Her New York bakeries actually sell cereal milk by the bottle, and she has pretty solid recipe for cereal milk that I've used in previous recipes (like these cupcakes!). But honestly, it's something that you could easily make without one, AND, if you eat cereal for breakfast every day, you probably already even do. Because here's the secret: cereal milk is nothing but cereal-infused milk. Like you know how when you eat a bowl of cereal, the leftover milk in the bowl once you've eaten all the cereal will have all these tiny cereal crumbs and will taste a little bit like the cereal you just ate? THAT'S CEREAL MILK. That's it. That's all! Seriously.

And so after sorting out the marshmallows (more on that later, grumble), I used the leftover whole grain cereal to make the cereal milk, which I then used in my favorite vanilla ice cream recipe (from Humphry Slocombe, a San Francisco-based ice cream parlor also known for its crazy flavors), churned it all into my ice cream maker, and hand-stirred in the remaining Lucky Charms marshmallows. Oh! And let's not forget — because I am a hedonist, I also bought some waffle cones, dipped them in some melted chocolate and marshmallows and BOOM! Chocolate and Lucky Charms marshmallow-lined waffle cones. Thank you, and good night.


Some baker's notes:

• To make this ice cream, I used the cereal and marshmallows from one family size (20.5 ounces) box of Lucky Charms cereal. I hand sorted out the marshmallows, which gave me around 1 1/2 to 2 cups worth of marshmallows (sorry, I'm not exactly sure since I ate a lot of them while I was doing the sorting, lol) that I needed for this recipe. HOWEVER, thanks to comments from my trusty Instagram followers, I found out that you can actually just BUY straight-up marshmallows from Amazon! So do yourself a favor and make your life easier and buy that instead. 


• Toasting the Lucky Charms in the oven before steeping them deepens the flavor of the milk. I didn't add any additional sugar to my steeped milk since I was going to be adding plenty in the ice cream custard base, but if you want your ice cream a little bit sweeter, add up to 2 tablespoons tightly packed light brown sugar. The recipe for Lucky Charms cereal milk below makes more than is needed for the ice cream custard, so you can drink the rest (and it definitely tastes better with a dash or two of sugar). It'll keep in a clean pitcher, refrigerated, for up to 1 week.


• The ice cream recipe I use is a custard base containing cream, milk, and eggs. Before starting the cooking process, make sure you have the bowl and ice bath ready to cool down your base as soon as its finished cooking. This is essential, since the hot custard will continue to cook for a while, and if you overcook the custard you'll end up with sugary scrambled eggs for ice cream. Which... no thank you.


• To make the chocolate and marshmallow dipped waffle cones, I used about 1 ounce of melted dark chocolate and 1 tablespoon of Lucky Charms marshmallows per cone.

get the recipe »

Available link for download