After weeks of cooking, tweaking, fine-tuning my takes on traditional Chinese favorites, I needed to step away for a bit and try something decidedly non-Asian. On my list of “pastries I want to bake” were kolaches, those puffy, tender yeasted pastries with a divot in the center usually filled with sweet cheese and fruit or…
Month: June 2020
Sweet construction…or ode to the Layer Cake
A party without cake is just a meeting. Julia Child Also, I would argue, a birthday without a layer cake is not a celebration. Okay, I know some people would beg to differ–like those who prefer pies over cake…or favor individual cupcakes to cutting a slice…or simply don’t like sweets (honestly I can’t relate). I…
Shredded Potatoes, Smoke Detectors and Shaun Cassidy…or my journey to making the perfect hash browns
I know I’m dating myself with the Shaun Cassidy reference. He was the Justin Timberlake…scratch that…Harry Styles of my generation. Boyishly handsome, teen actor/pop sensation of Hollywood pedigree–both his mom Shirley Jones and half-brother, heartthrob David Cassidy, co-starred on the popular 70’s musical sit-com The Partridge Family–Shaun was for a brief time our teenage obsession….
While visions of ice cream scoops danced in her head…
Got to say, not my most flattering childhood photo. It was the only one I could find of myself at that age eating something remotely resembling an ice cream bar or popsicle. I could’ve sworn there was more photographic evidence, much much cuter, of my voracious appetite for anything sweet, creamy, and frozen. My brother…
Lunch Date with Grandma, Pt. 2…or is that a flying saucer I see?
Lunch date is a bit of a misnomer here. This isn’t a tale about another lunch time excursion–though Pau Pau and I had many during my childhood and young adulthood. No, it’s more a fond memory of something she frequently made me for lunch when I was little, especially on school holidays and summer vacations…
Lunch Date with Grandma, Pt. 1
I think what made my grandmother such a good instinctive cook, despite having spent a large portion of her life outside the kitchen–much of the time playing mah jhong apparently–was that she was a savvy eater who knew how to sniff out great food. It wouldn’t take her long to suss out the best market…
Sit a spell…or the pleasures of afternoon tea snacks from the Chinese bakery
One of the positive things about being quarantined and not working in an office on a set schedule is that I’ve been able to focus some (okay, a lot) of my creative energy on cooking and baking projects, which consequently provides me with ample snacks to indulge in with my afternoon tea. In the beginning…