Mish-mash

Okay, so I'm getting lazy and definitely not-writing-detailed-recipes anymore.

BUT THAT'S OKAY because it (hopefully) means more regular entries (with pictures!) instead of long, empty months of abandonment.

Lemon-thyme Yogurt Cake

The lemon cake base was very tasty, but the addition of thyme, though interesting, made it a little too savory for my taste.  A friend commented that it reminded her of cornbread (texture-wise it was still quite cake-y).
A special point: it has olive oil and Greek yogurt!
Lemon-thyme recipe.  Original lemon yogurt cake recipe.

Marshmallow Cake

This no-bake cheesecake (the true nature of this deliciously fluffy concoction) is a recipe I had bookmarked for about 4-5 years before finally trying it~~  Originally found it on AllRecipes while looking for a way to use up marshmallows.

Spinach-Cheese Swirls

For these, I vaguely followed this recipe, found on the inside of the Pepperidge Farms Puff Pastry Sheets package.
My significant changes include: using fresh, instead of frozen, spinach (not a great idea, it got messy and weird, though taste-wise it was fine); using whatever cheese I had in the fridge; adding sun-dried tomatoes (delicious~).

Cold Osmanthus Honey Dessert

 Okay, I'll post a recipe for this one because, a) it's really easy, and b) the original one is in Chinese (somehow I got it right!...I think).
I made this because I really wanted Osmanthus Jelly (桂花糕) but I could only find osmanthus sauce, and no dried osmanthus flowers (have since found/bought the flowers, will make some proper gui hua gao sometime soon).
Note: it's very very sweet (well duh, 1/4 cup honey?), probably accentuated by the osmanthus sauce's high sugar content.  Were I to make this again, I would switch the sauce out for flowers, compensating for this by: infusing flowers in 1/4 c. hot water while making gelatin/water mixture with only 1/2 c. water.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 tbsp gelatin (um...I guesstimated this into 1 tbsp.  maybe. don't quite remember.  Also, now that I'm re-reading the recipe, it seems you're supposed to use tapioca flour...oops.)
• 3/4 c. water
• 1 tbsp. Osmanthus Sauce (桂花醬)
• 1/4 c. honey

Steps:

1. Add the gelatin (or tapioca flour, haha) to the water, slowly heat until it dissolves completely.
2. Add osmanthus sauce to hot gelatin and water mixture, heat to a low boil.
3. Remove from heat (remembering to turn off the heat, too), add honey, stir until well mixed, then pour into flat bottomed pan*.
4. Place pan in refrigerator.  Once contents have cooled and completely congealed, remove from refrigerator and cut out cute, bite-size shapes to serve (and eat!).

*I didn't do this part right, haha (you can tell from the photo..?)!  Instead of following instructions (because I didn't understand them before, I suppose..), I poured the mixture into little silicon molds, let it cool in the fridge, then ate them out of the molds (because it seemed too difficult to pop them out).  Turns out that only the top layer exposed to air is stubbornly sticky, once you cut through that part, the rest comes out fairly easily.