When Life Isn't A Piece of Cake....Bake one.
It's been one of those days when nothing is going right. All the kids swim classes were cancelled by accident so we had to re schedule each one week by week, then tried to hit up our favorite lunch spot to find that it wasn't open and just knowing that tomorrow is Monday again is putting me in one sour mood. I'm hoping that making a fluffy loaf of Pumpkin Raisin Milk Bread would put me in a better mood.
Read MoreI love a good bun... and these Coconut Green Tea Cream Buns are divine! This is another one of those Chinese bakery staples. It was one of the only things I would pick out at the bakery, This Coconut cream bun and a pineapple bun... which I need to do a post on really soon. But back to this cream bun. The bao (Chinese for bread) was soft and flavorful, topped with shredded coconut and filled with a slightly sweet and silky smooth cream. It took me forever to find out what kind of cream it was. My parents always thought it was a whipped cream, but it was silkier than whipped cream and didn't have it's foamy bubbles. I thought maybe it was margarine or some other weird ingredient that made it so delicious. But after searching all over, I finally found a youtube video in Chinese that showed me how to make it. It was just butter! Basically it's the inverse of a buttercream. More butter, less sugar. Once whipped it creates a silky smooth texture that's truly addictive. The traditional version of this is a plain sweet cream, but I had to kick up up and turned it green.
Read MoreFor my dad's birthday, I needed to make him a cake that was all about him. What does he like? Whipped cream, soft, soft, soft sponge cakes, and strawberries. I think I've waxed quite un poetically about the Chinese bakeries that we frequented as a kid. I never enjoyed it because it was where my parents always went. It's where we always got our birthday cakes, it's where we bought pastries to bring to other people's houses as hostess gifts. It wasn't until I stopped frequenting these bakeries that I developed a particular fondness for the bao and cakes we had so often growing up.
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