Sweets

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Sweets

BA-DA ‘BINGS’

There’s a Chinese saying that goes “A loser in love, a winner in casinos.” It simply means that the good fortune you lack in one aspect in life will be compensated in others.

Well… it’s total bullshit. Just like all Chinese superstitions are.

But having said that, it would leave my current streak of grand slams over an age-old kitchen nemesis – at a time when my every other single happiness in life seems to be throwing themselves under a train – completely unexplained. I mean, lay… layers? Is that you? Have you come back to see me? A predicted failure in my first attempt to replicate an iconic staple in northern China, came not as anticipated but instead, a smashing, success.

Ladies and gents, may I introduce you, the explosively layered… bing.

01.19.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

BLUEBERRY SLAB-MUFFIN FRENCH TOAST

Actually… I was saving this post for another time. Because first of all, something borderline “sweet” and similarly “French-toasty” had already taken the space next door. And secondly, it hasn’t exactly left yet. Yeah, so to avoid the suspicion of repetition, I was going to let this one ferment in my draft-box for a bit until you turn bubbly and matured for it.

However… shit happened.

01.11.2014

In All recipes, Snacks, Sweets

THE NONSENSICAL HOT PEPPERCORN PEANUT BRITTLE

They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. They say that there’s a very thin line, separating laughter and pain… humor and hurt. Sounds like comedy is just an accidental kid of the abusive reality-junkie mom called life, trying hysterically to grow up as sane and functional as possible, maybe go to college, trying to make sense of it all like we all are, by drinking pain as fuel for jokes.

Well, if all that is true, there’s nothing funnier… than telling stories about a dead pet.

12.16.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets, Top Posts In 90 Days

TIRAMISU CHURRO + WARM COFFEE CUSTARD

The problem with me as a recipe ~~dreamer~~ hallucinater during the still-ongoing Thanksgiving carnival is that every year, in utter rudeness, I always feel like leaving the table even before the turkey makes it out of the oven. Evidently from my premature and inappropriate blabbering of the X’mas blend coffee bars in last November while the whole town was still chattering about tweaking pumpkin pies to death, to now this uncooperative side-tracking dessert that doesn’t even rhyme with “ies” and ” akes”, it is obviously true. I have no table-side manners. Now before I leave, pass me the damn stuffings.

11.28.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets, Top Posts In 90 Days

PERFECT… WINTER SCONES

As a reluctant and often times struggling home-baker, I have an unfounded, persistent, borderline sickening obsession with making biscuits and scones. Nobody in the family eats them but me really (it isn’t saying much when you scan through all members in the family). I have to endure the look of lostness and concealed disappointment in Jason’s eyes every time he comes home to the smell of butter and sugar, and yet I put myself through it often (yes everything is about me). They aren’t the most foolproof things to bake either, evidently from the ghost of dead doughs past that still lingers in the apartment. So I don’t know, I guess they just feel so much more earnest than cookies and cakes, a warmer and friendlier thing to break over a conversation or a cup of tea… well, with my imaginary friends at least.

But the truth is until a few days ago, I had not been able to tell them apart in the kitchen.

11.08.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Sweets

APPLE PERSIMMON PIES

Season-transitioning flu… they just love me so. A tender… suffocating love. So listen here’s what I can do. With my energy level slightly above a wheezing squirrel, I’m gonna save any effort on an elaborate sales pitch with delicious stories for you to try this. This being – fry your damn pies and do it this way. I’m not gonna go there… Instead, I’m just gonna give it to you straight, as in bullet point-style. As in STONE-COLD FACTS. Yeah. Because we all believe in science. Right? So eat this because:

11.05.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets, Vegatables

SELL OUT

I recently landed in a couple of situations where I had to articulate the idea of my blog, a sales-pitch so to speak. The effort quickly brought brightened realizations to myself that whatever effort I made to explain the original vision or benchmark that I set out for when I started doing this, is now tainted with contradictions. A derailment, so to speak.

10.19.2013

In All recipes, Snacks, Sweets, Travel

POST-HAWAII BLUE & COFFEE CRUSTED NUTS

The danger is real. There’s a paradise out there.

You can’t move two steps without hearing old-time tales of unsuspecting wanderers who passed by and never left, got sucked in by that boundless flickering of Pacific blues so wicked that they dared plunging into the terrifying anxiety of a slowed down life. Made home, even a family, grew roots. Their next generation, born-and-raised, has fascinating stories to tell about their unwavering connections to being the children of these captivating islands, seeding ideas inside visitors with a less affirmative mind such as myself who all, at one point or another, fondled the unthinkable… could I live here? Oh you’ll see. Just a split second of carelessness and you too would find yourself romancing the same idea.

Hawaii is that kind of hazard and I barely made it out in one piece.

10.11.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

FAKE CHOCOLATE CAKE + REAL BANANA BUTTERCREAM

Last few days were a nightmarish montage of my extended kitchen-agony. Three whole days covered in a choking dust of flour with smudgy grease from a beastly amount of butter and sugary stickiness haunting my finger tips. Electrical outlets being pushed to a near brink of melt-down and an unprepared dishwasher running past its adrenaline threshold into a disoriented state of ecstasy. After three nights of stress-induced binge eating, two stone-tough should muscle groups and one extremely cranked neck which all ended in a final coma that took place in a dark and questionable foot-massage parlor, despite nature’s best effort to stop me, I said I’d make a cake.

09.21.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

The nuttiest profiteroles

I of all people, know how intimidating it can be to play with ingredients that are completely outside of the comfort zone. You see, it’s for the exact same reason that I seriously hate poker games with complete strangers, with unpredictable displays that I have absolutely no talent of reading, or in knowing that if I went all-in with my last stick of butter, would I be left with no chips… or anything for that matter on the table. But you know what, sometimes… well, most of the times actually, these ingredients are just little fuckers who lie! And that if you just call their bluff, you’ll find that the pot is totally worth it.

09.05.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

rum and raisin baked tapioca pudding

How many times does a recipe have to fail you before you decide that it just isn’t meant to be? I used to simply set my maximum at three, the same philosophy… no, discipline really that I vigorously apply to all pursuits in life, but as it so proved in the course of the past few weeks, the kitchen, is a much more complicated world. Actually, it isn’t that difficult to explain my unwavering faith in this particular case because as we all experience first-handedly, nostalgia is a powerful form of religion. And with this, hoho… we go way back.

08.25.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

teardrop, tart-hearted coco donut

I wish I could tell you – after an exhausting trip in the quest for the only MRI machine for animals in China – that the kids are all right. That we are all right.

08.13.2013