Almost Crazy

Couple of weeks ago, my supervisor's daughter got married, and for the rehearsal dinner my supervisor asked if I could make a cake for her. A slow week for my classes and some imbalance of chemicals in my brain led me to agree to make the cake for my supervisor.

I never stopped to consider I make everything from scratch. Why couldn't I be the "cake from the box type" and just give her a two slabs of cake held together by frosting? So this is what I agreed to make: green tea fraisier.

This cake required three separate components: the green tea sponge cake, the mousseline, and the green tea whipped cream.

The measuring of ingredients took me half an hour, and removing the pots and baking sheet from the oven took another ten minutes. This situation doesn't help that I have a tiny kitchen. The only counter space available is about the size of school desktop.

The sponge cake required two different batter: one egg yolk based and the other egg white based. The mousseline needed a custard that has to be heated and cooled. Plus, I had to wait for the unsalted butter to soften before mixing it in the custard, then this has to cool in the refrigerator for another 2 hours. This entire process took 5 hours, and I started at 6:00pm Thursday night.

The next morning killed me. I almost cried when the whipping cream would not hold shape. Not matter how long or at what speed I was whipping it, the damn cream remained a bubbling pool. This forced me to run out to the store to get ice and a new carton of whipping cream, since I believed my house was too hot for the cream to form. After an hour and a half, I was able to pipe the cream on top, toss them in a box, and ran to work with a box of uncut strawberries in hand so I can decorate it later.

From this experience, I learned never to promise anyone I would deliver one of my creations in less than 24 hours. Probably a good choice to not go to culinary school.

Yuck, yuck, yuck

Some readers might know about the limited options for food at UMass Boston. Today, not feeling so hungry, I decided to just get a fruit cup. I mainly hate the fruit cup because they tend to have an enormous amount of honey dew melons, and I feel like I'll cough a lung out if I eat it. Seeing a cup with about two pieces of honey dew, I fell for the trap and bought a fruit cup for lunch.

I never knew that cantaloupes could be sour. I've had unseasonably bland cantaloupes, but a semi-rotten sour taste was new to me. I'm not sure if I even want to eat the pineapple chunk. Lunch ruined. Thanks UMB. 

 

Many Merry Choux

This past weekend, I decided to try my hand at making cream puffs. I've heard from various bakers that this is one of their biggest challenge. It's not tough to make. The process just requires sifting flour, heating up butter and flour, add eggs then mix it all together. See, it's so simple.

The minute I added the eggs to the heated butter and flour, I can feel that there is something wrong. It's too liquid, not thick enough to hold the shape of a puff pastry. I thought, "What the heck?" and popped it into the oven. Sometimes when things don't seem to work, they probably won't work out. Thus the first batch was a complete failure.

The second batch yielded a different result. The batter was thick enough to hold the shape. Half way through I checked the oven (without opening the door) and the pastry puffed up. By the time they were ready to come out of the oven, they were golden on top with a light sizzle (the effect of having so much butter). They looked perfect, but the true test is the inside. Would it be hollow? Or would they be perfect?

The world decided to give me perfect puff pastry....and thus the final creation.

HK style milk tea

I was told by the lady at Juice Bar that you can usually tell if a person is from China or Hong Kong, based on the drink they order. If someone orders milk tea, they are most likely from Hong Kong and someone from China would order coffee.

I don't know if this is true, but milk tea for me, please.

Juice Bar is the best place in Chinatown for drinks. A few years ago, they closed, I was devestated. So when they reopened, it was heaven for me.

Many Merry プリン

プリン (purin) is Japanese for pudding. It's not the typical pudding you find at the market, in vanilla or chocolate. It's more of a baked custard pudding.

My sister was in Japan last winter; each time I skyped with her she was eating a pudding. She'd tell me how good it was and I was missing out. Trust me, the very fact that she was in Japan was good enough reason to murder her. After her experience with "real" Japanese pudding, she have declared that whatever version America has is incomparable.

So here is my shot at making Japanese pudding.

It's not pretty, but who said good food had to be pretty. According to my sister, my pudding resembled real pudding. It wasn't bad, but could definitely be perfected. 

The pudding was sweet and creamy. I might have browned the caramel a bit too much, since there was a hint of bitterness. It might take a few times to perfect the pudding, but it would definitely be worth the effort.

Oh yeah, check out this video. The Japanese love プリン.  giga purin

Many Merry Cafe au Lait Memory

Every time I get a cup of crappy coffee, I'm reminded of the best cup I've ever had. Sadly it was not found in the US, but overseas. I went to Paris a few years ago (god, it was so long ago). I was waiting for a shop to open, and since it was February at the time, it was freezing out. There was only this tiny cafe that was opened, so I just went in.

The shelter of the cafe and the smell of coffee immediately melted all my frozen senses. Every customer before me ordered espresso, but that was just too strong for me. I just settled for a cafe au lait. From just the smell, I knew it was going to be really good...and it was the best.

I guess I captured the name of the cafe.

Something about me

As much as I love baked goods or other sweet-tooth satisfying products, I'm actually not a big fan of candy. Hard candy, gummies, cotton candy, etc. I don't really like them.

Candies are more tooth ache causing than sweet-tooth satisfying. I get so sick after the first piece, that it's not really worth eating. For example, this weekend, I saw a bag of hi-chew (a Japanese chewy candy) and I was like, "I want some." After the first piece, I wanted to die. Regret sat in every crevice of my teeth. It took all day before the sickening feeling went away.

Lesson learned. Now let's wait for me to make another stupid mistake, when I think I want some candy.