Category Archives: My favourite things

Yes, I’m actually a videogame nerd

Posted in Asian cooking, Baking Recipes, Cupcakes & Muffins by

Well it’s not a secret, but it’s not something I get to discuss at length. I super love videogames. I love it so much I once made concept art for a game I had an idea for. (Also something you didn’t know about me, I love to draw!) When I was in high school, I played a ton of RPGs on the Playstation 2. Ahhh memories… The downside to RPGs is that it takes time and dedication to finish, and if you’re a perfectionist like me, you try to finish all the side-quests (eg. Finding all 101 Dalmatians in all the Kingdom Hearts games) and unlock all the bonuses, which takes more time of course. Time– it’s something I no longer have much of these days. The real world kind of sucks that way.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be a proper videogame nerd if I didn’t love Super Mario. It’s one of the most iconic games in the history of videogames. One of my favourite ways to play a Mario game is through the Wii. Ever since the Wii was invented, the Mario-verse hasn’t been the same. It’s become even better! As in make-a-cupcake-as-a-tribute-to-Super-Mario-awesomeness better!

Coming across this recipe was pure luck. I knew I wasn’t going to settle for a simple vanilla cupcake and top it with red frosting; it didn’t feel very Mario. So when I saw this Japanese cheesecake recipe, I knew it was “the one”.

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The day I fell in love with Wildflour Cafe + Bakery

Posted in My favourite things, Random Eats by

Last Sunday my family and I headed out for an early morning “obstacle course” run after about 6 months without any running training. Baaaad idea.

I used to run 10k on a regular basis but stopped when I got too lazy to get up in the mornings. Hihi. Now I do TRX thrice a week but being in running condition is way different from being fit overall. My legs could feel the burn right after the first kilometer. I finished in approximately 15 minutes because I skipped the obstacle to the finish line which had you crawling through the mud. (Sorry but I couldn’t bear it, and neither could my favourite pair of running shoes!) In the end, with only one obstacle aside from the mud-crawl, the 3k was too short to even allow me to break into my second wind. I wanted to keep running to at least finish a 5k which until this race was my minimum distance, yet at the same time my legs felt tired already.

Instead we did the next best thing: We went to eat breakfast!

When I knew the race was going to be at Bonifacio Global City, I already honed in on the place I wanted to try come hell or high water: Wildflour Cafe + Bakery. I don’t get to come to this fine city as much as I’d like. It takes me 45 minutes via train and bus to get here from my house, but there are days when I just have to come here. This is where my favourite bookstore and some of the country’s best restaurants are now located!

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An excuse to bring out the strawberry jam

Posted in Baking Recipes, Bread-making, My Comfort Food, Yeasted breads by

Once upon a time I had a craving.

I went down to the kitchen and opened the pantry doors, pushing aside bottles until I found the one I was looking for: strawberry jam. I picked it up and stared at it a long time. I don’t know why I like to make life harder for myself. I could have just toasted some bread and slathered on the jam, craving satisfied, but I pushed that idea aside. As I held on to the bottle, staring at but not really seeing the label on the jam, a flicker of a memory crossed my mind.

When I was little, my nanny would buy me these munchkin doughnuts from the local Dunkin’ Donuts. Apparently they were a prize for my being a good girl, though I’m pretty sure I persuaded her to buy me some even on my mischievous days. She would buy the light, airy, cakey little doughnut holes in different flavours. The chocolate and bavarian flavours are fantastic, but my favourites are always the strawberry-filled ones. I would always save them for last, savouring the way the powdered sugar melted in my mouth before giving way to the sweet explosion of gooey strawberry.

Flash forward to the present; to me standing there like an idiot with a jar of strawberry jam in hand with only one thing on my mind: I wanted a strawberry-filled doughnut, which was completely weird since doughnuts don’t even come close to the top of the list of things I like to eat. It’s not that I hate doughnuts either. I’m just uncomfortable with the way most of them are drowned in oil fried. But I would be a liar if I said doughnuts taste bad, because they really really don’t. Not especially when they’re filled with glorious strawberry jelly yumminess. So the easy solution was to make a baked doughnut.

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A semblance of Lemon Macarons + I need a new oven

Posted in Baking Recipes, Cookies, From the books, J'adore macarons, Lemon Obsession, My favourite things by

I’m officially obsessed. I want to make every macaron flavor in the Universe– every odd, outrageous, and wonderful flavor known to man– and file all the really memorable ones into my repertoire. But right now I have to experiment with recipes and techniques to find the ones that produce consistent results for me. And then I have to master them. And I also seriously need a better oven, but more on that later.

Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of hands-on application to become an expert at anything. And I know this is only my second try at macarons, but the improvement in knowledge from my first to my second try is immense. The recipe I tried this time was the French macaron recipe from the adorable Les Petits Macarons book. It’s a little difficult to bake from because the base recipe is a few pages away from the flavor variations so you have to flip pages, but you can easily remedy this problem by typing the full recipe up into one piece of paper or recipe card. (Luckily I’ve done that for you already!) Despite this, the instructions in the book are very informative, and it has a troubleshooting portion at the back with scenarios and pictures which is beyond useful.

The smorgasbord of flavor combinations between shells and fillings the book offers is probably enough to allow you to clock in the 10,000 hours if you make them all. There is no doubt in my mind that I will get there, but for now I’m going with something very simple, straightforward, and fresh-tasting: Lemon Macarons.

Baby-steps, you know?

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Hi chocolate, it’s nice to matcha!

Posted in Asian cooking, Baking Recipes, Bread-making, The Breakfast Bin, Yeasted breads by

Did I really just write that title? I’m sorry.

So I finally managed to track down some matcha powder some weeks ago, and unfortunately it’s not the sort I’m looking for. It seems like a really mild type of matcha. From what I’ve been seeing in photos, the concentrated one has a greener hue; and from what I’ve been reading, it has a stronger taste. I can barely taste my matcha in this bread. No, scratch that– I can only taste the matcha if I concentrate really really hard. If I close my eyes and really try to unlock my tastebuds, I can taste the wonderful green tea notes with a hint of sweetness at the end. Unfortunately it lasts only a few seconds, not to mention I look kind of odd doing that at the table.

And yes I’m pretty sure it’s not just my imagination.

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Lemon cakes and well wishes

Posted in Baking Recipes, From the books, Layer cakes, Lemon Obsession by

It was an incredibly dreary day when I made this, and yet I could not allow it to permeate the purpose of this cake. The summer weather has been odd, abruptly throwing rain in the middle of heat waves whenever it felt like it, like a child throwing a tantrum, or maybe a person splashing water into the face of another in the heat of an argument. Either way, the clouds had caused the sun to cast a dark gray sheen over everything, but thankfully not on our moods.

Jason was holding my camera as I messily assembled his birthday cake.

‘Hurry up, will you!’ He told me as he snapped some process photos. ‘I’ve got tons of things to do!’

‘Shut up and concentrate on taking good pictures!’ I called back.

He checked the LCD of my camera. ‘Oh please. I think you’ll be pleased with all the photos I took,’ he responded, a smug smile crossing his face. In truth he took several blurry photos, but I was in too good a mood to care an awful lot. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right of me to rain on his parade while I’m making a cake to celebrate his high school graduation.

‘Hmph, being narcissistic again, are we?’ I chided him playfully.

It’s been this way between us lately, and anybody who knows what my relationship with this particular brother of mine is like would comment that we’ve come a long way. People make jokes about cats and dogs fighting but those jokes got nothing on us when we fought as children. I remember distinctly a lot of name-calling, body-dragging, and sabotaging of personal belongings, but all of it feels like another lifetime ago.

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