A touch of Claire- baking, cooking& life

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Isn't spring the moving season? Yes, to me I guess as I've been moving for two years in a row at this time of year. Sadly I finally moved out from the glorious upper east side of New York after being there for 4 years (can't believe! is it that long already??), to the "humble" Queens.. However, after I moved in, I'm starting to love my neighborhood. There is actually quite a few to explore and to discover (I mean, hmm, restaurant) in Queens. Indeed, I can't just improvise to make a call to order some Chinese food delivered to my door, or walk to the French bakery a few blocks away whenever I want. Luckily I can opt to make my own.  With a good multigrain bread, some jam/spread, slices of good cheese, I am considering myself having a perfect breakfast/brunch. Of course, the world is even better if there is a cup of tea :) Multigrain batards are the most frequently-ordered bread I do in store- they're crust

Long time no see! I've got to explain my dropping one of the most pleasant things in the world-BREAD MAKING, yasss... My sourdough starter died! That was real heart-breaking for me. Yes, you need to feed& maintain your sourdough starter by adding new flour/water every week. Bring them out from the fridge, reactive them in warm place, and, all in all, make them happy by using/refilling them frequently.  I was doing a totally bad example- I was lazy for the summer (busy with some traveling) so I didn't touch my baby for a whole month. And it was too late when I thought of it. Sad story... Even after I finally ended all the hustles of the summer, I wasn't able to restart my new sourdough starter culture. So I moved on to some other hustles and fed myself with bread from the Wholefoods- they are OK to live on with compared to most crappy breads in other markets in my mind.. And time flew to the end of the year! I was deeply feeling something was missing in

What is you favorite chocolate glaze like? Rich, thick and melting in your mouth, or syrup like that is shiny and sticky? Of course you can say both- come on, it's chocolate! Chocolate is just among the most magical things to me whose texture changes so much in different temperature when combined with different other ingredients. You can totally make a flourless chocolate cake with just egg, cocoa powder and cream; or with only egg white and chocolate, you can create the most stunning chocolate mousse in the world! We buy really good ~70% chocolate at home for baking, of course and for directly putting into our mouths. We as small kids absolutely preferred sweet milk chocolate, but our palates gradually develop as enjoying more of the biter aromas as many people grow up. Getting back to the cake today, it was made for a really good friend's defense party (alas, one more friend graduated, sad face..). Hopefully the decorations on the cake remind somewhat of festival

I feel that I haven't been properly baking for such a long time! I spent some time with families when they came to visit us, tried to focus on my science a little bit more (failure!!!), and attempted to writie something science related ( ??? ). But most of the time, I guess I'm just so scared of the hot weather and crawled in the cough daydreaming lol.  Before I even realized, it is September already (which is also related to back-to-school season, ouchhhhhhh ...). I guess it just somehow reminds me to stop wandering in the lazy summer time and start do/bake something. Chance came that I was asked to make two cakes in one weekend. So here we go: The green tea charlotte is an adapted version of mine. I once made a similar one here . But here it just made total sense that I used 2 egg white to make the lining meringue biscuit and the egg yolks went to the mousse filing- no waste at all XD. I love the versatility of green tea; it basically go with anything, yet it ju

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