Saturday, November 29, 2008

Still in Baking Mode!

Yup, more baking! Baking is so much fun and satisfying, well... at least when they turn out the way I want them to...

So I finally made a durian cheesecake. I really like the recipe because the cream cheese taste isn't so strong (if you can taste it at all) and did not dominate the cake. Yup, it's not about the cream cheese, it's all about the DURIAN! I know... this ain't exactly everyone's favourite cake flavour, but I love it!

And I was right, LP smelled durian from miles away! Even though I cleaned up everything before he came home that day, he still smelt durian (or in his words "cat pee").


Green tea yogurt mousse chiffon cake...


Yea... you must have noticed by now that I'm a fan of anything and everything green tea! I guess it was also because I bought a package of green tea powder. Each recipe only needs maybe 4-6 tablespoons of green tea powder, so might as well make more desserts with the rest of the package. My favourite so far is the Green Tea Yogurt Mousse Chiffon Cake.

And here's the cake from the last lesson of the cake decorating course I took...



I must say, I am the worse at the rose. We learned to do it over the course of 4 lessons, 1 step every week. Some people in my class got it right away. You've no idea how many roses I tired to make and how much time it took me to finally come up with 4 somewhat decent ones for my cake. I had a lot of fun in the course and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in cake decorating.

Well, this is all the baking I will be doing for now. I will be back to Montreal on Tuesday! Vacation is over... back to crazy work work work mode in Montreal. January Wedding Show preps, here I come!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Been Busy in the Kitchen

I guess there's nothing else better to do here besides being in front of my computer 24/7 trying to get some work done while I'm away from Montreal. Nowhere else to go in this small little town. So I've been busy in the kitchen trying out some desserts...


Fruit Arrangement for Calvin & Karen



Green Tea Pound Cake


Green Tea Cheesecake w/ Raspberries



I am taking a cake decorating class every Wednesday evening, 2 hours a week. This is a buttercream icing decorating course. Probably not icing for Chinese people... at least for me, it's too sweet, but the icing does look great. The first lesson was all talk, blah blah blah. Lesson 2 was hands-on. We had to do a rainbow cake in class.



I've to admit, while the rainbow is nice and all, but the cake wasn't edible. HAHA! It just won't bake properly for some reason, I guess I did something wrong. I'll try another recipe next time. But I flat iced the cake anyway and took it to class to decorate it. Then it was sitting on our kitchen counter for 1 whole week because I didn't want to throw it out.

A good student practices what she learns (but who am I to talk about being a good student when I was never a good one since high school and throughout university). I actually baked an edible cake. A soccer chocolate cake! The church had a soccer game last night and they ordered pizza for dinner, so I made dessert. The white icing is almond flavour and the dark part is chocolate flavour. It was a two layer cake and I put even more chocolate filling in the middle!




More pics of the cake and some "in-progress" photos.

And more calories for them...




I made more than enough chocolate chip cookies for everyone to have at least 2. Of course there were left overs because some of these people who played soccer weren't exactly very young... but LP were more happy to keep the rest in his office. He tried to convince me not to make him bring all of the cookies to church so he can eat all of them.

I also tried to make mango pudding and taro tapioca, but nothing special. Those are the easiest desserts to make, any Chinese can do that.

Next on my list... DURIAN cheesecake! But I've to wait until LP's at work to try it out or he will kill me. And... find a way to keep it in the fridge without stinking up the rest of the fridge. Although I probably won't smell it anyway, but I guess for LP he'll be able to sniff it even with the fridge closed.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Oh My!

I can't believe what I just did today... I reused a ziplog bag! That is SUCH a SI LIE thing to do! I think I'm becoming more and more like my mother... that scares me.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A Little Seafood, A Little Exercise!

LP had to preach in Vancouver this past Sunday, so of course we made the most out of our trip. Coincidentally Micah was in Vancouver for a few days for an interview at UBC. We went for seafood at The Sandbar in Granville Island on Saturday. That was oh so very yummy!




Jadon and Nolan were very well behaved. Besides Ivan and Jason, they are the most well behaved kids I know!


After a little seafood (you can never have enough of seafood!) we went back to the Wan's for a little dessert from True Confections Inc., and a little Wii Fit!


Nolan's such a cutie, he's like a little Buddha and you cannot find any other baby or adult with a back as straight as his!


More photos...

Monday, November 3, 2008

Fall in Abbotsford