Pusheen Roll Cake

I don't know when it happened, but I started to like the character Pusheen immensely. That gray tabby cat that you see as Facebook stickers? Those are the stickers I ever use. Then I saw this roll cake video on YouTube, and decided to make one myself. And which adorable character should I make? Pusheen of course!

Learning the Science in Cookie Making and Testing it Out in D.C.

New city, new kitchen, new people, new job (internship). But making yummy food for myself and to share and make other people happy hasn't changed.

Steamed Cake: Forget About the Oven

Most people think of cake being made in the oven, but today I'm sharing a new option: steamed cake. Steamed cake is delicious, it's got a texture different from baked cake, it's dense, soft, and perhaps a healthier choice than baked cake since there is much less oil involved. Steamed cake is somewhat of a traditional Chinese sweet pastry, in the Chinese household (or Taiwanese, East Asia in general) a oven is not a standard appliance in the kitchen, in fact, very few kitchens in Taiwan have a oven. Therefore, if you are a oven, and you really feel like some cake, give this recipe a try. When I was an exchange student in the Czech Republic the dorm kitchen did not have an oven, yet one day I felt like making pastry so bad and I thought of the steamed cake. I found a recipe online, and improvised a bit making my own chocolate steamed cake. I made mine using a traditional rice cooker, which is basically a rather simple apparatus that involves a big pot with a smaller pot inside, and water between the two pots heated by electricity. You just need a big pot, and a big bowl that fits inside the pot.

Catonese Egg Tarts on a Snowy Day+Recipe

I love potlucks, so when I got invited to one last minute, I knew I couldn't say no. Potluck means I'll get a chance to try a new recipe (a fancier one, too, because you want to impress people), eat great food made by friends, and ask the creator of the great dish how it is made and hopefully add some cooking knowledge and recipes to your pocket. It's also a great chance to find out who is a great cook, or a chance to prove to your friends you are a good cook. As you can see, a potluck involves a lot, so I always start thinking early on as to what I should try and make. But this potluck I only got notified the night before, and I didn't have the chance to go to supermarket, meaning I'll have to create some presentable food using only what I had on hand (*gasp). Since it was a Taiwanese people potluck, I wanted to make something that would remind us all of home, and egg tarts came to my mind. Searching the internet for recipes, and running to the kitchen to see if I had butter (oh my, just enough!), I wanted to bring the egg tarts we have in Taiwanese bakeries to the American living room.