Apple 'n' Oats Muffins

Wow! It's been almost a month since my last post. I feel bad and now I'm back to stop this procrastination and laziness... hopefully it'll last. Anyhoo, I'm in Virginia now and I just went apple picking in Charlottesville! I'm so glad I came down to visit bubs when the weather was not too cold for my Californian blood. The leaves are all kinds of colors and it was so romantic :) We picked fuji and pink lady apples. They seriously taste crazy fresh and sweet. Very unlike the old apples you'll find in supermarkets. So here's a recipe putting apples into my favorite breakfast item...muffins!

Give The Bonding Hormone to cheating men!
I first learned of Oxytocin as the hormone that triggers uterine contractions during child labor. But after some classes at Georgetown and reading this article, oxytocin is also super important in pair-bonding in couples. The levels of the hormones increase in humans after they enter a romantic relationship and after good physical contact with that partner (as in petting and holding hands...or more...). This study gave intranasal delivery (shot up the nose) of oxytocin and showed that it could improve communication in couples, emotional reading from facial expressions and increase trust!

Even more impressive is that there is now evidence that oxytocin can help maintain monogamous relationships. Married men given the hormone stayed FURTHER AWAY from attractive women than men lower oxytocin. Wow... we need to jump on this band wagon ladies..

Apple 'n' Oats Muffins
Makes 11-12 muffins

Nutella Swirl Cupcakes

I introduced nutella to bubs some time this year. I know. Who hasn't grown up with nutella sandwiches for breakfast?? Poor deprived man-child child. Anyway, we're in Richmond, VA for a quick tour. It's so damn hot right now even I'm sweating, and I don't sweat.

We're off to more BBQ wee! Excited!!

Factoid: Erythropoietin - Your Exercise Motivation Hormone
How much effort does it take to get you off your fat bum and exercise? Don't you just have those days where you want to just veg? I'm guilty. But I might just throw that onto how much erythropoietin (Epo) I have. Epo is a hormone present in small quantities that stimulate red blood cell production so you can supply those limp muscles with more oxygen while you power jog through the park.

Healthy people treated with EPO reported to feel improved mood, physical conditional as well as increased ventilation (yay oxygen). That helps you change how fatigued you feel and enhance exercise capacity. Other nerds from Switzerland this year injected extremely high doses of Epo into mice and even made genetically modified mice to produce Epo in their brains!  Both groups of mice showed more motivation to exercise than the control group.

Maybe they'll find a pill or injection for humans in the future? In the mean time, get off your lazy arse and hit the tread mill :)

Nutella Swirl Cupcakes
Makes a baker's dozen

No need for icing!

Ingredients
1.5 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup white or brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup (or just use all sugar)
2 egg
1/2 cup yogurt (or use another 4tbsp butter)
1 tsp vanilla
Nutella

Preheat oven to 350F
In a large bowl, cream your butter and sugar together. Once the butter is nicely incorporated, add in the maple syrup, egg, yogurt and vanilla.

In another bowl, sift all your dry ingredients together. Add dry to the wet mix and fold until just incorporated.

Divide it into muffin cups and fill up to 1/2 way. Drop 2-3 tsp of nutella on top of the batter in the muffin cups. Swirl it around with a toothpick.

Bake it for 18-20mins

Green Tea Cake with Red Bean Filling

I have all this left over red bean from making the red bean mochi and also a lot of time. Well, I have to write a paper but I have absolutely no motivation in any bone. Gah... So here is a recipe to use that red bean filling. Green tea and red bean go so well together!

Onto a totally different tangent. Have you realized when you're dating that you seem to look more and more like your boyfriend/girlfriend?? Or am I just crazy?

Factoid: Men Tend to Seek Women who Look Like Themselves
After dating for a while, we all know that people tend to find mates that are similar to them in many ways, such as cultural background, socioeconomic status, and intellectual ability. (Well, true for me...) It's been found in many surveys too that spouses more similar to each other are more successful in terms of having babies and staying longer together than less similar pairs.

In this particular paper, they got 150 volunteers and showed them pictures of the opposite sex, whose faces were warped/photoshopped to resemble their own face. They were then asked to choose a potential partner from 3 images: self-resembling face, non-resembling face, attractive face.  Men apparently rated the self-resembling faces as most attractive (egotistical tsk tsk). In cavemen terms, men choose a physically similar mate to enhance his and his spouse's fitness and the genetic fitness of your offspring. Meaning if they looked alike, there's a higher chance his genes will be carried onward. Like father, like son geddit?

Women are less superficial far more complex when it comes to making mate choices. They didn't show any preference for similarity, just preference for the most attractive hotties ;)  It just goes to show that physical appearance is only one of the many influencing factors to making our decision. Another important factor is scent!

Oh women are so much more evolved than men~

Green Tea Layer Cake with Red bean Filling

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp matcha powder

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 small/medium eggs
1/2 cup yogurt
1.5 tsp vanilla

Red Bean filling

Preheat oven to 350F
In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, yogurt, vanilla) and sugar.

In another bowl, sift the flour, mix the dry ingredients and add that to the wet. Mix until JUST incorporated. It's okay if there are a few lumps.

I used a huge 10" x 13" pan to get a large thin sheet of cake. But you can use 2 smaller pans for the same effect. Liberally grease the pans and add in the batter. Bake for 15-20mins or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let that cake cool for 20 mins. Invert it onto a plate. Cut the cake in 1/2 if you used a large pan. Trim the edges if you want to make it pretty. Spread red bean over the top side. (The cake is amazing on it's own too!)

Slap on the other layer. Dust with some powdered sugar and cut up and serve!

Lemon Raspberry Cake

Hooray for four day weekend!! I'm currently writing this blog post at a Korean hair salon. No, I'm not getting my hair did. But bubs is. His hair is high maintenance. Haha omg he's going to kill me. I feel that only korean people can cut my hair. I don't get it. But it gets MESSED up if some white person touches it. I guess they just don't understand that I have thin wispy hair and not luscious locks like Lucy Liu #aznjealousy.


I decided to bake a spring time cake using lemon and raspberries. Berries are so delicious right now and this cake is so light and airy. Hmm.. You can always use other berries like blueberries or blackberries. Whatever you fancy. It is a great cake for afternoon teas and for sharing with friends :)


Now onto my short health factoid of the day!


Bring water into exams, get 100%
Last month, at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference held in london, a research group presented their study on students' ability to perform in exams when they brought water to the test day. Apparently, they found out that just by bringing a water bottle into an exam correlated to an improvement in their grades. Holy moly. I always bring my water bottle to exams. But, I don't think it has made me any smarter... unless that's all the best I can doOOooo  :(


Anyhoo, drinking water during an exam can alleviate some anxiety. So, listen to your Uncle Sam. "Stay hydrated. Stay in school. And stay classy."


Um yea...


Lemon Raspberry Cake

Ingredients
5 tbsp margarine/ butter softened
3/4-1 cup white sugar (I like to err on the less sweet side, but I feel that most people will use 1 cup!)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup plain yogurt (or lemon yogurt if you really like lemon)
Juice of 1 lemon + zest (about 2-3 tbsp lemon juice and 1 tbsp zest)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup raspberries cut in half

Preheat oven 180C/ 350F.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until nice, light and creamy looking.
Add the eggs 1 at a time, then add in the lemon juice and zest, and finally the yogurt.

In a different medium sized bowl, stir in the dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, salt). Gently stir in the dry mix with the wet stuff in the large bowl. Remember to only mix until moistened!

I probably would toss the berries in 1 tbsp of flour before adding to the batter so it doesn't sink to the bottom. Fold in the raspberries gently too so you don't pop and streak red everywhere!

Bake for 40-50mins or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 10 mins before you cut and serve it.

You can always decorate it with some icing sugar on top. Also, I only have a cake pan out here, but I'd use a loaf pan next time.

Studded with raspberries Hmm!

Chocolate Banana Maple Cake

I like to eat my own baked goods because I know how much butter has gone into it and I can adjust the sweetness of it. When I eat a cookie that's soft and chewy, I can bet at least 2 sticks of butter and a cup of sugar went into making them. When I eat a piece of decadent cheesecake, I know that's a pound of butter, cheese, sugar, and if it's frosted, that's another pound of butter, powdered sugar and food coloring. Yeah, I'm guilty of eating all those goodies...I like to indulge myself once in a while. What can I do?

So sometimes I come up with ways to justify eating a ton of sweets! Which leads me to my factoid of the day for you in this journal article. It will make you want to eat that evil chocolate cake sitting in your fridge.

Factoid: Too little sleep activates Fat Genes
It's a well known fact that your BMI is highly heritable and we have a lot of genes that are involved with satiety, fatty acid storage, energy use and metabolism. If you're sleep deprived, it'll activate the expression of those genes that promote obesity.

So which devil would you choose? Study more, maybe get an A and get fat fat fat or go to sleep, get a B anyway and be slim.

Eh, I prefer sleeping... besides this cake is healthier than your average fair. But you'd never know because it is SOO delicious.

Chocolate Banana Mabel Maple Cake

Oozing with chocolate

Ingredients
1 tbsp butter
100g (3.5oz) melted Dark Chocolate (60% Mexican chocolate, otherwise add 1 tsp cinnamon)
1/4 cup Olive oil
1 Ripe banana mashed
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup + 4 tbsp raw brown sugar

1.5 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup slivered Almonds (Optional)

Preheat your oven to 350F.
Then, melt your chocolate and 1tbsp butter in the microwave at 20 secs at a time. Remember to stir each time so that it doesn't burn. Once that's all fully melted, leave it on the side for a bit.

Whisk all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) together in a separate large bowl.





Do melt your chocolate in a large-ish bowl and put in the oil, smashed banana, vanilla, yogurt, egg, syrup and sugar.  (cinnamon if not using mexican chocolate)


Then add your wet ingredients with the dry and stir until JUST mixed. If you've never baked, you don't know the power that is to NOT mixing your batter like crazy. Mix it too much and your baked product becomes a dense dry brick!

Gently fold in your almonds and chocolate chips if you want. Reserve some almonds to sprinkle on the top.

Put it in a 9x11 baking pan, sprinkle almonds and bake it for 25-30 mins. A toothpick poked into the center should come out clean when it's done.

Let it rest for at least 5 mins before you try to cut it and devour it. Because it is a really moist cake so you need to let it cool down to hold its shape.

After that, you can go all cookie monster over it!

Straight out of the oven!

Oatmeal Ricotta Choc Chip Cookies

So I was thinking that I should do health myth busters or some factoid about medicine in each post. Ya know... just going along with the MD theme. For those who have asked. MD stands for Medicinae Doctor (latin). Like how JD stands for Juris Doctor, a law degree. So yea.. I realized people didn't get my blog name.. "does that stand for Mabel Dddd...duhhhh iono???!" 

@$&*@% it doesn't.

Soo.. I give you Health caution of the day. Don't Double Dip.

Studies show that every 3 times you dip that chip back into that delicious green salsa, that's 10,000 bacteria going from your mouth and to that reservoir of GERMS. And then imagine that going back into your mouth when everyone else has dipped in it maybe 2983 times?? 

HMM delicious. 

BUT that doesn't stop me from dipping my fries into mah ketchup a gazillion times. Ketchup is so damn good! Like suck it out of their packets good! What? Ketchup has 7% of my daily sodium intake in a tbsp? *shrug*

Bacteria, germs and what not. Now aren't you in the mood for cookies?? :D

These cookies are like pillows and healthier-than-your-mum's cookies. Only 2 tbsp of butter and 2 tbsp of olive oil in two dozen of these bad boys. My taste-tester bubs thought a stick went in. A good use to that left over ricotta you had making pasta. Give it a whirl!

Oatmeal Ricotta Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chips!!!

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp soda

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup Brown sugar + 2 tbsp white sugar

1⅓ cup Quick cooking oats (instant, rolled)

2/3 cup Ricotta

1/3 cup Yogurt (or just 2/3 cup yogurt w/o ricotta)

2 tbsp Vegetable oil + 2 tbsp melted butter

1 Egg

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 cup Chocolate chips

1/2 cup Nuts (optional)

I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I forgot about that while mixing my ingredients!
Anyhoo, mix all your dry ingredients from flour to oats in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate medium sized bowl, mix your wet ingredients (from ricotta to vanilla) until smooth. I melted my butter in the microwave for ~10 secs.

Then, add your wet to your dry ingredients and mix until no lumps or dry spots. The batter appears to be really dry but that's okay. The cookies come out really moist!

Fold in your chocolate chips and nuts if you like. Dried fruits like raisins are also yummy.

Bake them for 11-13 mins at 350F. Or until the edges are a little bit brown. These cookies appear a little pale because of the ricotta. So don't over bake them!

Leave them to rest on the tray for 5 mins and then leave them to cool.
Makes about 24 healthy cookies!

I enjoyed it with some tapioca pudding...nomzzz