Hoppy New Year 兔 you!
03/02/2011
CNY in CA is pretty much a non-event. No worries, I restored balance in the force with an almond milk tea with pearls, and a good dose of Takuya Kimura.
C is for CNY Cookiieee
29/01/2011
shortbread cake with blackberry jam
Been slightly busy at work, but it’s going well. Am having fun at work, and people are nice. Cafeteria food is, cafeteria food, but I have managed to infiltrate other non-cafeteria bound groups for a good variety.
Been baking a little more, and had more success with cookies than with cake. Tried making pandan cupcakes the other day, but it didn’t go well. This weekend it’s cookie weekend – think that will go down better. Might also make some tarts, bought lots of butter, the good kind 
Earl Grey Tea Cookies (Recipe from Martha Stewart)
- 1 cup butter (softened)
- 1/3 cup sugar (original asked for 1/2 cup, but it was wayy sweet. I’d pinch it down to 1/4 or 1/3 if I had to do this over)
- finely grated rind of 1 orange – take care not to grate the pith (about 2 teaspoons)
- 2 tablespoons of ground earl grey tea (I put it in the food processor)
- pinch of salt
- 2 cups of flour
Cream butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. Add in orange rind. Whisk tea, flour and salt in a bowl, add to butter mixture. Mix until just combined.
Here’s the trick for a harder cookie. Leave it to rest in the fridge. Martha has some fancy way of shaping her dough, but it involves freezing it too. I found my dough too soft to really handle, so I stuck it in the fridge for a couple of hours, then took it out, cut it into 3 pieces, and shaped each piece into a 1.25″ diameter log. I wrapped the log with Saran wrap, and then shaped it into a square with a bamboo sushi mat. After shaping and everything, I put it back into the fridge. It’d keep well for a few days. When I’m ready to bake, I’m just going to slice the logs up into 1/4 inch squares.
If you like a soft, moist, crumbly cookie, don’t put it in the fridge. Put your soft dough into a piping bag with a large tip (extra large star will do well here) and pipe them out onto a cookie sheet. Looks very fancy.
Will bake in a 350F oven for about 15 minutes until golden.
Read (and watched) a few horoscope readings for the Year of the Rabbit, and it seems like it’ll likely not go well for both Mr C and I. He’ll have a tougher time, but it’s going not going to be a great year for my sign either. I think I would have been a little more upset a few years back, but now that we’ve been through a few “bad” years, I’m more prepared to just take it in stride. I’m not going to fret, nor am I going to ignore thousands of years of empirical evidence. I’m going to take it under advisement, and watch out for the pitfalls, but it’ll make the year longer just fussing over it. At this point, I just want the year to be over. 
Ah well. We can only take it a day at a time.
The weather has been unseasonably pleasant – while it’s snowing buckets on the East Coast, it’s a balmy 68F here with plenty of sunshine. The cherry blossoms have been fooled into thinking it’s spring, and the ones on our block have started blooming like crazy. Love it! Can’t wait for Spring.
Let them have cake!
31/12/2010
I was so sad about the new year I baked a cake. Devil’s Food Cake recipe too, and I upped the amount of chocolate. That’s how sad I get on New Year’s Eve.
Here’s the recipe, in case I’d like to replicate my success (and I do like to do that sometimes). It was a little on the dry side, so maybe next time around I’ll ease up on the flour. This will fit a round 6″ pan nicely. 6″ diameter, in case you’re wondering.
Devil’s Food Cake (aka chocolate cake, heavy on the chocolate). Adapted from a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com.
Serves up to 8 (if, like KF’s family, you only have room for a small wedge after a large dinner)
Ingredients:
- 1 cup flour (sifted)
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (i sifted this as well)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- a pinch of salt
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup butter
- 2 oz unsweetened chocolate (i used 100%)
- 1/2 cup boiling water
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
Preheat oven to 350°F
Melt butter and chocolate, leave to cool. Cream egg and sugar until thick and pale (4 mins on electric mixer). Add melted chocolate into the egg and sugar batter a little at a time (so the egg does not cook!). Mix well. Add boiling water in the same way – gingerly. Add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt; I used the balloon whisk at this point because it’s just easier. Scrape down the sides. Finally, add the vinegar into the milk, and into your batter. Only add the vinegar into the milk right before adding it to the batter, if you do it way ahead, you’ll get cheese. Mix well, pour into 6″ cake pan. Bake for 30-35mins (depends on your oven – mine took about 45 mins). The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Mine was a tad dry, but given the amount of fat I used, I figure it was good. Maybe more water next time, we’ll see.
A slice of that and some vanilla ice cream – that’s how I’m ringing in my 2011.
Here’s wishing you a sweet, chocolatety, rewarding, endorphin-laden 2011.
Last day of the year, 2010
31/12/2010
- Lunar Eclipse
Ok, I’m going to get real depressed soon. The end of 2010 is imminent, and not only is it the first year of the decade (sorry, but if you counted 2000 as the start of the decade before like most people did, the 2009 was the last day, so I guess it is one less thing to be sad over), but that for the first time in years I’ve to get back to work on Jan 3. How tedious. After the festivities and the abundant celebration at Christmas, it seems absurd to make people go back to work in January.
I hate the first few days of January. Not only because you’ve to get back to work, but when you’re in school, it means the end of your holidays and back to school with new classmates, or a new school. Very unsettling. It’s the 0 part of the year, and you’ve to edge yourself through to maybe July or August before it really starts to feel like the tide is turning. More often than not, you start the year knowing if it’s the PSLE, or the O Levels or the A Levels, and you know how crap the next 12 months is going to be.
It’s pretty much the same at work, except perhaps things change pretty quickly, so you don’t really have to endure the whole 12 months of crap. The only way to get around the beginning of the year fallout is to focus on the tasks at hand. However, sometimes it’s months before you de-focus and really feel like you can take stock.
But ahead we’ll go, there’s no where else to go but forward anyway.
Happy New Year, and may 2011 bring peace, happiness and prosperity to everyone.
Christmas 2010
26/12/2010
We’re a little past the solstice, my favourite festival of the year. I had my tong yuen while watching the full Lunar Eclipse, very very satisfying.
We had Christmas dinner at a cousin’s, and I signed up to bring dessert, and so fretted over what to make for about a week. For one, the nephews don’t like chocolate. Add to that, adults who don’t like a whole lot of butter or cheese. So I decided on an elaborate sponge cake – the swiss roll.
After some to-and-fro over Orange, Lemon, Chocolate or even Vanilla, last night I decided on Green Tea or Matcha. It was to be a surprise hit. I tried adapting a chocolate swiss roll recipe, but I had a little bit of a mishap with the parchment paper. So I eventually busted out my trusty 6″ round cake pan and went for just a plain Green Tea Sponge. The proportion was a little too much for a 6″ pan, I had enough for 4 cupcakes on the side; I think it’d do for an 8″ pan. Here’s the recipe.
Green Tea Sponge Cake
1 cup flour (sifted)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup matcha (the matcha I have was a gift from a friend from a visit to Japan, it was already sweetened, so I just used 3/4 cup of sweetened matcha powder instead, and did not add any other sugar to the batter)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
1/3 cup water
Preheat oven at 350F.
- Cream egg yolks and sugar until fluffy and lemon coloured (because I used the pre-sweetened matcha, I creamed yolks on their own till thick and lemony, then added the matcha powder and creamed it some more – 3 minutes on an electric mixer)
- Gradually add flour, salt and baking powder, alternating with water, and beat it in well
- Whisk egg whites in a clean metal bowl until stiff peaks form (4 mins)
- Fold in egg whites into the green tea batter 1/3 at a go – use a balloon whisk, it does the job well
- Pour batter into a 8 inch round pan
- Bake for 35-40 mins, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. The top should also spring back when lightly pressed
If you like you can serve it with some whipped cream. I whipped up some cream with the intention of adding it in my swiss roll, instead piped it onto the top of the cake when the swiss roll plan went out the window.
Cake topping:
- 50mls of heavy whipping cream
- 2 teaspoons caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon of green tea powder aka Matcha
Add sugar and green tea powder to cream, and whisk until peaks form (about 4 minutes). I then piped it out of a bag, and added canned tangerine segments to the top of the cake.
Some tips:
- Bring eggs to room temperature – room temperature eggs hold more air than cold eggs
- Balloon whisk works better for folding in egg whites than a spatula
- Line pans with greaseproof baking paper for sponge cakes – buttering and/or flouring the side of the pan does not help
Hope that works for you!
C is for Cookie… and Christmas
12/12/2010
It’s a couple weeks to Christmas, and we’re done with our Christmas shopping. At least I am. KF volunteered to participate in the Christmas shopping this year, so he’s got to get the presents for his cousins and the nephews and nieces. I took care of the presents for his aunts and uncles, and my family. I’m glad that he’s getting into it finally, especially when he doesn’t really enjoy shopping all that much (especially when it doesn’t involve some weird gadget and/or anything electronic).
With that bit of Christmas taken care of, I’ve been finding other things to obsess over. This year, it’s cookies. I’m still hunting for the perfect cookie, but keep ending up making shortbread cookies cos I’m equally obsessed with butter. I just can’t get over how handy that whole half fat to flour ratio is. My favourite combination this season is one cup butter, creamed with 1/2 cup sugar (ok, I usually cheat and use less sugar) and a teaspoon of either vanilla or orange extract. Add 2 cups flour and combine until it forms a dough. Herein is the fun bit.
If you portion out and bake the cookies now, they’ll be soft. And sorta moist. Bake it at about 350F, for 12-16 min. If you keep the dough in the fridge before baking, the cookies end up firmer. I think I like them firmer. Besides, nothing easier than taking out the cookie dough and just rolling out little marbles onto a cookie sheet. I flatten them with a glass cup, and voila, happy cookies 20 mins later.
The argument for a 4 day weekend
05/12/2010
Once we start working, our weekends are far too short. Two days pretty much only gives you a day to get all your Cost-of-Living miscellany (getting the groceries, getting gas, cleaning the house, going to the library) done and a day for real rest. Sometimes, some of the chores spill over to the second day, and in a bid to save time, you start organizing your weekend to optimize for planned activities, the weather, special occasions, and rest maximisation.
After this blog, and for the next hour or so, I’ll have to stop surfing, set the laundry going, start ripping the audiobooks I borrowed, and get onto knitting that scarf that’s taking me almost a year to finish. As a treat I get to watch NFL Football while I knit. That’s a lot more work done in an hour and a half than I get done in 3 hours at work.
Perhaps productivity rate and time resources available have an inverse proportion. We go through life making the assumption that the more time we have, the more work gets done. I say, while that is true, productivity is reduced to a dimished rate after the 2nd hour, and therefore you expend exponentially more effort to get the task completed.
Therefore, if we reduce the work week to, let’s say, less than half the available days in the week – we’d then have to apply our super weekend multi-taskin mad skillz to the work day instead. With 4 day weekends, people have more time to shop (great for the economy) and rest (happy workers), it’s a win-win!
Yes. I’m at my most creative and eloquent when I’m trying to weasel out of starting the laundry.
33% of the way
03/12/2010
I’ve been at the job for 4 months now, that’s about a third of the way. Here’s what I’ve found in my few months back in the corporate environment, after an extended period of nothingness and the past to reflect on:
- It doesn’t matter where you go, the corporate setting is just a microcosm of life – if you run into less than effective people and processes at the bank, supermarket, post office or cafe, it stands to reason that you’ll run into the same thing at work. Just because you work for your dream company, doesn’t mean it’s not human.
- Just as you are a reflection of your parents, at work, you are also a reflection of the person that made the decision to hire you. It’s not always the hiring manager. But people gravitate towards their own kind.
- Your project team/group/department/organisation/company is only as effective as its leader. He sets the tone and pace, and the standards.
- Leaving the baggage behind makes the world of difference.
I feel a lot more positive at work these days, and mentioned how I wasn’t sure whether it’s just the time off, or age taking the edge off my angst. But I find the work challenging, and the team environment competitive enough for me to want to do better than I can, and so far, it’s been a blast.
The two things I’ve done that made the biggest difference in my stint this time around:
- Contribute towards a solution, not to noise. That makes things work better, and move along faster, the upside is not having to deal with a sticky situation for longer than necessary.
- Be nice first. 忍一时，风平浪静。退一步，海阔天空。Pearls of wisdom in 14 characters; ahhhh, four thousand years of civilisation certainly has a fascinating effect on language.
What do you think? Agree, disagree, have something to add?
jake gyllenhaal
26/11/2010
Totally off topic, but have I ever mentioned how Jake Gyllenhaal reminds me of some dude from college. Unfortunately, out of the two dudes in college, he was the one that never happened, and I’ll put it down to bad timing (which incidentally, is the story of my life). A pity, really. But my nieces will now benefit from my mistakes, and will vigourously be taught that you ALWAYS ignore the Dunman High boy, and NEVER pass up on the Chinese High boy.
That’s about right.
I wonder about him each time Jake Gyllenhaal does his publicity rounds for a new movie.
thanksgiving 2010
26/11/2010
While not a tradition I’m used to, I do find the general point of Thanksgiving to be benign. I think people do need to stop and take stock of what they have, and be thankful they’re alive, and for the most part, fortunate. Since I’m pretty cognizant of my situation, it’s not a big stretch for me; I am thankful for my semi-charmed life, I’ve no real complaints.
Except for turkey. It’s not a very appetising meat at all. And cranberry sauce is weird. The only part I really like about Thanksgiving dinner the whole thing is roasted potatoes and carrots bit. If I’m lucky, I get some celery thrown in too.
We started our Christmas shopping early this year. My niece turns 9 this year, and I figured it’s about time to introduce her to the world of good music and proper English, so this year my gift to her is a little iPod shuffle that will get loaded with my favourite music and audiobooks: some are my favourite books (Alice in Wonderland and the Sherlock Holmes stuff), some of Neil Gaiman’s work (my favourite author) read by Neil himself, and my personal favourite, Ralph Fiennes reading Rudyard Kipling. To borrow an expression from Netjackal, Ralph Fiennes can “read me the phone book”, I’d still be enchanted. I suspect her taste in music is already somewhat damaged by my brother and his being partial to sappy songs. I do not aim to replace, but to augment — for I am a realist.
This year KF decided to partake in the whole Christmas present pleasantries, so he’s in charge of getting presents for his cousins and his nephews and nieces. I stand by the sidelines, offering advice here and there, but for the most part, he’s left to his own devices. It’s going well, I think he’s enjoying shopping. You should have seen his disappointment when he tried to go shopping yesterday – on Thanksgiving Day – and the stores were closed. We did, however, go back today, and came back with a decent haul.
So be happy, and be thankful this season. I don’t know about you, but I’m already looking forward to my favourite Chinese festival – the Winter Solstice – and the Christmas break. Yay!
