.: button cookies :.

I found this posting through my endless blogventure, fell in love with the illustrated recipe and declared that one day I will make them.
An opportunity presented itself: after a super failed attempt to bake strawberry macarons.

{macaron-wannabe turned into almond-flavored cookies} 

I have too much egg yolks waiting to be turned into something edible. And I refuse to make another egg foo young.

Somehow an image of the gorgeous button cookies appeared in my head. I switched the shortbread recipe into Emeril's butter cookies. I don't have food coloring so the cookies stay natural-looking. They tasted pretty good and they're just as cute as buttons (ahaha... sorry, can't help it) Wish I have food coloring so they look prettier.

.: vegas gluttony trip :.

I'm not a gambler at all, so when I go to Vegas I spend my money on the real deals: food, lots of them. On this trip we went home with so many sugary treats and very bloated tummies from the buffet. I also tried Payard's macarons because I failed his recipe. Want to see if he really know what he's talking about. Heh. I was disappointed because the packaging was so lame. For $8 surely they can come up with a nicer box? The macarons came pre-packaged in a thin plastic bag and taped with the label. That's it. I prefer Paulette's macarons because theirs are less sweet, but that's probably just my personal preference. Plus their box is nice. We also went to Wicked Spoon. The food was okay, but the dessert section was to die for. We probably tried 8 flavors of ice cream there and I ate almost all of their pretty desserts.

Yummy macarons.

Assorted dessert from Wicked Spoon

Payard's macarons.

Payard's meringue. Love the mint.

Dunkin Donuts

Bouchon's Croissant

.: singsong :.

Back to my Youtube Wednesday. I do want to be sent away with words of a love song and I'll be wearing white. Hope someone remember me liking this song when I die old.

.: relentless baker :.

The barely edible scones didn't squash my baking spirit (well it did for a few hours...). If anything, I wanted to tackle a slightly more complicated baking project: macarons. A bit ambitious for someone who can't bake without disaster, but what the hell. Never know until you try it, right? This time I made sure I have all ingredients are available. I got the recipe from David Leibovitz' website because he already tried several baking techniques and this one was the no-fail-guaranteed-it-will-look-like-macaron-so-help-me-God recipe. I did switch the cocoa powder with Starbucks' mocha powder. (caffeine+sugar! woohoo!) At first everything fell according to plan...

Then I bang my head on the cabinet door and drop my egg yolks into the bowl of egg whites that I separated earlier. What a coincidence that the egg whites bowl was just right there?! So I redid the egg whites and that was why we ate egg foo young for dinner that night. :p

I used double layers of parchment paper because some people commented that their macarons stick to the parchment paper and cracked when they tried to remove it. My piping job was inconsistent so the sizes sort of varied. After a few minutes in the oven I was so pleased to see the 'little feet'. However this was done closer to 10-12 minutes as opposed to 15-18 minutes as mentioned in the recipe. I tried leaving one batch for 18 minutes and they cracked.

I use the chocolate ganache filling using Ghirardelli's bittersweet 70% chocolate bar, but maybe next time I'll use the 100% cacao unsweetened because it balances out the sweetness of the macarons (5 cups of sugar is too sweet for my taste)

And voila! The rugged, natural-looking macarons.

.: clueless housewife chronicle :.

I'm trying to see if being a homemaker is my calling, since the graphic-designer thing didn't seem to work out lately. So far it's been quite interesting; try to take care of cactus, cactus dying, replace dying cactus with new ones to calm my conscience, trying new recipes, meal planning, change meal plans because I suddenly lost my appetite for a particular meal... You know, the usual wifey-duty. I originally thought that cooking and baking will not be super hard. I am a woman after all, supposedly it's in my genes and whatnot, right? Wrong! Cooking I'm quite okay with, but baking requires patience, organization and precision; all of which I don't have if you know me quite well.

So it all started on a bright, sunny day. All is calm, so I decided to bake scones out of the blue. I have flour, sugar, eggs, salt and milk. Yup, scones coming right up! I was confidently whipping the dough, quite happy because it smells yummy.

While comparing my dough with the picture on the recipe book, I realized my dough is too soft. I transferred it to a floured surface anyways and it became this piece of disaster:

What makes sense in my head is to add more flour. Then I realized I used up all the flour. Then I begged my beloved husband, who didn't ask for scones in the first place, to get flour. My husband, the flour-bearing hero saved the day!

After I got almost-unlimited flour, I went nuts. I put flour everywhere. When it started to resemble the picture on the recipe book, I was so relieved. And after 15 minutes there were scones to be had:

Not the best scones I've ever had, but it smells like them. Good enough for now.

.: introduction to domestic life :.

(the happy, healthy cactus the day we brought it home)

So I'm not built for domestic life. My baking skill is lacking (a blog post will follow); I prefer Swiffer for cleaning as oppose to manual, down-on-four-knees sweeping (and the dust return in the morning, wth?); and I can't even take care of a freaking mini cactus. It sorta died on me in less than TWO weeks!! A cactus!
That's one thing to add to my series of failures this year. Maybe I'm one of those people who just can't do anything right, so that someone (aka husband) can step in and become a hero. Right?

.: instagram :.

The very important reason i bought ipad is because i love instagram. I have very serious iphone envy everytime my friends posted their instagram photos. I absolutely love my ipad, although there are times I sort of wished I bought the 3G instead :p My academic career has been ignored for quite sometimes, but now that I got ipad it's been completely abandoned :p
So many games to play, books to read... If only I can do my homework on ipad...