A touch of Claire- baking, cooking& life

This summer of New York has sneaked here with no one's attention! I can't believe that it is already mid-May now. (It' officially BBQ season, yay!!!)  I'm never really into grills, but I love BBQ parties! On a perfectly sunny day, with the perfectly adorable people, just indulge yourself to all the fun games and all the high-calorie yummy goodness  (burgers, sausages, cheese, fruits and of course sweets!! )XD  Here is what I made- pavlova cake perfect for the BBQ. It is so easy to make, I literally spent no more than 10 minutes preparing the cake base (not including baking time in the oven) and another 10-ish minutes to pipe out the chocolate cream cheese and pile on all the fresh& lovely berries. I used this recipe for the cake. The filling is a 1:1 mixture of whipped cream cheese and melted chocolate . The reason I didn't use whipped cream as most recipes here is only because one of my friend is not tolerant to lactose, but she can eat certain ty

I had almost given up cooking before my boyfriend! I've always been enjoying spending time in the kitchen, but, often time, I just gave in to my laziness. Plus, I had my perfect excuses: 1. I'm a busy phD student; 2. I'm spending most of my "kitchen time" baking. So I'm really used to a rather simple meal plan myself: homemade bread for breakfast, salad for lunch and yogurt for dinner. (I try to balance the protein and starch in it, so, don't worry, I can totally be filled up.) With all my passion (and time), I made bread for myself and cakes for friends. However, all these routine somehow changed when I started to take on the responsibility to feed someone- someone who is an ultimate meat lover, who hates salad (I mean, all the green leaves), who would never join my meal plan. Alas, the game completely changed- only I'm still the lazy girl as I've always been. So I came up with a couple of tricks for the "game": 1. Make it simple

For some reason I stopped blogging for such a long time! (I moved, a couple of travel plans, friends' visit, being confused &being lazy...) I didn't actually stopped baking, but I feel that typing words requires more commitment. Ironically, I'm starting to realize that I could be really enjoying writing! I ended up taking a writing course called "Effective Academic writing" at CUNY (amazing class!), and wrote my first science writing piece on cancer immunology~ Besides, I'm still so indecisive about what I should be focusing on right now. Graduate school (of course???) or career development? Current "the one" or once "many friends"? Of course it would be wonderful if I could have them all, but at lease in my experience, it never happens lol Enough ramblings and coming back to the baking theme today, it is much easier to attempt to incorporate everything to a bagel. Sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried onions/garlic, course sea salt