A touch of Claire- baking, cooking& life

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...

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...

I feel that the winter of New York has come to the peak (maybe one of the peaks) of its power recently. Oh, yeah, I should mention the 'happening' snowstorm this week- yay snow-white New York/nah,,, snow-ruined traffic...  I'm always so late in sensing what's going on. Like this time, I didn't even do my regular weekly grocery shopping, while all my friends go crazy stocking up their fridge (btw, it was said that the electricity system might shut down because of the snow) and got back telling me that supermarkets were empty... Luckily, until now things are fine. The graduate school is closed for today (Tuesday) but lab buildings are all open lol. I'm enjoying looking at the now through my window, writing this blog and procrastinating to go to work lol... Excited about the snow, I'm actually the kinda of person who hates coldness to death (a leftover effect of an extremely unforgettable, chilled camping trip.) So since the winter came, I hav...

I got to say that, I've been procrastinating about this post for too long- from 2014 to 2015 lol. It was made for little Sam's baby shower party back in December of 2014; by the time this post is on, he should be delivered at any time!  It is exciting to post this cake as my first work of 2015.  I tried to add more fun to the cake, coz I was asked to make something special for the party~ FYI: the biscuits surrounding are made of meringue and the tidy bear is made of marzipan and cocoa powder. As for the cake, it is a layered cocoa sponge cake with raspberry cream cheese mousse. Was doing a terrible job taking the pics though as I was in a rush :( Not gonna do lots of ramblings about 2014 or 2015. A lot more happened in the past year than I thought/ Should always appreciate what I have at this moment./ Will try worry less and do more in 2015. Most importantly, will keep baking and posting :) xoxo~