Posts Under ‘~ Only Kotomi’ Category
How cute are these!
I’m so excited to have them (thanks, secret santa!).
Yumbots silicone cupcake molds are made by Fred and come in a set of four colors – Steely Blue, Galaxy Gold, Gearshaft Green, and Mars Red.
Added Bonus: the head swivels!!
MAN these are cute.
The box is clearly marked “NOT A TOY” but I get to differ! They’re sitting on my desk with all the other toys and trinkets.
For the cupcake, I used this recipe from Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice:
The Best One-Bowl Yellow Cake
And for the frosting…is courtesy of Miss Betty Crocker, because I was lazy.
The holidays have turned me into a full fledged sloth.
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by Kotomi on December 29th, 2010 in Off Topic | ~ Only Kotomi | 2 Comments »
Tags: christmas, Family
Tied neatly with a bow.
For the sake of my own sanity, I like to think that everyone’s family gatherings involve the level of chaos and absurdity that I observe on holidays —
* Dad taking us back to the days before calculators and imploring the younger generation if “you even use pencils anymore.”
* Multiple parents pleading me not to sell my kidney for cash (note to self: need to be more careful about subject of jokes), but please try for safer alternatives, like selling my eggs.
* My younger sister vowing to marry before me, because the first wedding will be “more special for everyone.” Fair enough; I did get the privilege of being born first, and enjoyed three special years of undivided attention. I will give her the first wedding.
* Say parents, hands clasped tightly forming a united front: “We will write her out of our will if she gets a tattoo.”
This is my Christmas Day. And Thanksgiving, and Fourth of July, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way: full of crazy & full of love.
Our family dog, Chelsey: 8 years old and acts like a lazy cat.
I turned to Smitten Kitchen’s Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms for the big dinner. It’s so good!
On the morning of Christmas Eve, alone in my Los Angeles apartment, embracing the calm before the storm.
I remember feeling supremely blessed in this moment, surrounded by gifts for and from the people I love.
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Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!
In a few hours I’ll be driving southbound on the 405 to my family and friends. If I’m lucky I’ll be going over 6mph. Merry, merry holiday traffic.
I’m not quite sure what the curly Q on Rudolph’s forehead is supposed to be. At first I tried to pipe a healthy tuft of hair, but it looked like a pigeon had pooped on his head.
Small tale of tragedy: I had originally made a dozen cookies, but only 4 made it to the end alive. This is because one night, well into the AM, I entered the apartment in the dark and tossed my 15lb purse onto the table. I woke up the next morning to find that I had effectively smashed most of them.
Wishing everyone a safe holidays!
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by Kotomi on December 15th, 2010 in ~ Only Kotomi | 49 Comments »
Tags: giveaway, Japan
Happy hump day, everyone!
I love things from Japan. So cute, so well made! I’ve put together a small box of cute things that I’ve brought home from my last trip as a big thank you for supporting this blog & BakeGreek this year 
Details on how to enter is at the bottom, and here are some things in the goodie box:
mini strawberry tin cups
cookie cutter trio: dolphin, penguin, & turtle
Hello Kitty charm in a bunny suit. Sitting on a cake!
Lilo & Stitch goodie bag
There’s much more in the box, but I want some of them to be a surprise!
I’m also throwing in BG cookie cutter of your choice. Yay!
TO ENTER:
Leave a comment with the answer to this Q, by FRIDAY 12/17, 10:00am PST.
There will be a random drawing, and the winner will be e-mailed.
If you could take 2 weeks off from life and visit any place in the world, where would you go?
*yes — everyone is eligible to enter, even if you live on the moon!
49 Comments »
Peter Parker is such an unassuming fellow, just a pair of smartypants, living in quiet existence.
Who’s to know that he’s saving the world in a flashy bodysuit with superwebs coming out of his superwrists?
How does a crime-fighting superhero prioritize his calls for help anyway?
How does Santa hit EVERY house, and how does Spider-Man have the time to be Peter Parker AND attend to his villains?
Do heroes ever sleep?
I wonder if they ever receive a distress call and say, “aw man, not today. so lazy.”
To make the eyes for my Spider-Man cookies, I used the run-out technique. Outlined in black, filled in with white, let it dry and peel them off the wax paper.
Then I outlined and filled the face in red and placed the eyes. After the surface dried, I piped his web pattern.
Yeah…the bottom lines are squiggly. I know this is not an excuse, but I may have been a LITTLE hungover.
Nod of approval from the little man.
If you’re wondering about that brown orb he’s holding, it’s takoyaki — a kind of Japanese street food and one of my favorite snacks of all time.
24 Comments »
by Kotomi on December 2nd, 2010 in Off Topic | ~ Only Kotomi | 6 Comments »
Tags: Hello Kitty, Japan
Firstly, oops. Sorry for the unexpected hiatus that was November.
To be honest, October burned me out, and then I seemed to fall off the wagon entirely. I’m back up in arms though, and ready to start bakin’ again. December always makes me happy, but especially this year — lots of exciting plans, friends coming back home for holidays, and Christmas all around.
Secondly, a brief update on life. I spent the last 8 days in Japan with two great friends. I live for vacations, and this was one of the best ones yet — lots of food, lots of beer, lots of weirdly unique things. I’m ending this post with a few pictures
hiking in Tokyo
fresh sushi at the Tsukiji fish market
wouldn’t be a trip to Japan without going to the Hello Kitty store!
6 Comments »
Halloween is not the same anymore; I don’t race home to count my bag of candy, separating KitKats, Twix, and Skittles from the disgusting pink bubblegum (“trash pile”).
I stumble in at 3am, empty handed and unable to count anything, even my own steps. I enjoy a nice cup of hangover the morning after, cursing the holiday and wondering if 364 days is enough time for my body to recover for next year’s shenanigans.
But I suppose nothing beats seeing a Chilean Miner, Pauly D, and Jake Sully all in one room. And Snow White & Harry Potter holding hands.
Happy Halloween everyone!
P.S. Why are costumes so expensive? They use the crappiest fabric on the market, wigs that tangle in 6 seconds, and accessories “sold separately” — damn you!
I don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen.
I love to cook, but 5 days out of the week I am a cup-of-noodles kind of person.
At 7pm, defeated by work and LA traffic, the last thing I want to do is stand in the kitchen and labor over my meal.
I want whatever is available and edible in less than 2 minutes. This usually narrows my options down to the freezer or the pantry.
My attitude is drastically different earlier in the day, though.
I’m going through my Google Reader, bookmarking and favorting all the new food blog posts. I fully intend to make these. Soon. This weekend. Tonight!!
My early morning enthusiasm is where I found the diligence to compile this:
Things that look and sound delicious and eventually want to try myself.doc
I have been chipping away slowly at the now MONSTROUS word file (over 400 pages long), and wanted to share my recent favorites
Jack’s Quick Salmon Soup
So easy! And so good.
Steak Sandwich with Grilled Onions
From Good House Keeping
Potato-Mushroom Pie
From Martha Stewart – good for Thanksgiving potluck.
Mixed Tomatoes with Balsamic and Dill Bruschetta
Also from Martha Stewart – use good balsamic & olive oil!
Pasta with Bacon and Mushrooms
From Pioneer Woman, to whom I also secretly refer as wonder woman.
You can search high and you can search low, but sometimes the cookie cutter you want is simply not in existence.
Making your own custom shaped cookie stencil is pretty self-explanatory and I’m sure there are plenty of ways to do it, but here’s a quick step-by-step, peppered with one or two wisdoms I’ve gained from some failed and ugly cookies.
For this cookie, I only wanted her head.
Sorry Kitty, may your soul rest in peace.
When I don’t conveniently have the physical printed image of a shape I want to make on hand, I just turn off all the lights in the room and trace an image straight off of my laptop screen. A regular 8.5″ x 11″ paper does just fine, but cardstock is too thick.
It’s also important that you back your stencil with cardstock or some other thick paper so that you can lean your knife against it the edge without it crinkling up and generally fucking it all up.
Going around the edge of the stencil, I like to STAB, not DRAG the knife. The dough tends to stick to the tip of the knife and dragging causes little rips in the dough (see below). Stabbing results in a much cleaner cut.
The top kitty was dragged. The bottom kitty was stabbed. Sorry for the morbid descriptions.
You would think small imperfections like that would disappear in the oven, but it it doesn’t. You can always try to smooth the edges with your fingers before they go in the oven, but I like to take preventative measures against tedious tasks like that.
And there it is!
Do let me know if you have any additional tips/hints!
Happy Friday! (this was such a long week. Did anyone else feel this way? Waking up on Tuesday morning, I was unable to come to terms with the fact that it was only Tuesday.)
I loved Barbie dolls. There are some people who think they do more harm than good (namely the League of Uptight People), but I never recall wanting to look like her — which, at 5 years old, asian, and with the bowl cut, I didn’t even come close — I just wanted her clothes.
I loved the sparkly dresses and the colorful heels. I loved braiding her hair. I REALLY, really wanted the naked bathtub Barbie that came with a can of foam that you used to make her a foamy dress.
I would wake up in the morning and say, “Today Barbie is going to a party.” They’d dress up, and all the other disproportionately large (a dalmatian plush 5x her size) and disproportionately small (polly pocket girls, 1.5″ tall) toys would all congregate into one big mess in the living room.
My least favorite part of playing with Barbies was the clean-up. I wished they’d just walk back into the bin themselves. My mom was always yelling at me for that (“WHY are these still HERE?!”).
These were so fun to make! I used the drop icing method for all of the circular cookies, where you pipe the design on a sheet of wax paper first. I had the hardest time with the letter B; I think I broke 4 or 5 of them before I got the hang of it peeling it off the paper.
Everyone has a favorite childhood toy..I think mine were Barbies. And Polly Pockets (they don’t make them the same anymore! The dolls are ginormous! I guess the ones from back then can be a choking hazard).
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