Chinese Couplet Cookies Remake! With video and revised recipe. 春聯餅乾食譜

It’s that wonderful time of the year again. No, not Christmas, but Chinese New Year. In some cultures and places, Christmas may be the most important celebration; in Chinese culture, it’s Chinese New Year. You can also call it Lunar New Year since it’s the new year based on the Lunar calendar, meaning the date changes every year, or you can call it Spring Festival. It’s a time where families get together and relatives travel from afar to gather at usually the house of the most elder person in the family. In my case, it’s my paternal grandparent’s house. It’s a time when you can buy all that junk food and eat it, get money without working (this only applies to the youngsters), eat all day, watch TV specials, and hang out with all your cousins. It’s a time when stores blast that New Year’s music, big sales happen, red colored décor starts appearing everywhere. If you’re lucky you get a five day vacation to eat and drink and play cards and give money to kids. The center of all of it however, is family.

Cream Puff Video from Last Year Posted Now...Why?

I made a batch of cream puffs, and decided to make a serious video while making them. Meaning I spent time putting on some makeup, taking out my tripod, and deleting files from my phone to make space for the long video files to come. It's been about three months since I uploaded that video to YouTube, but until today did I make it public.

Mel Makes Apple Pie (Video)

Apple pie, what could be more classic American. If I had to pick one baked good to represent America, it would be Apple Pie. Actually, maybe it would be a tie with the chocolate chip cookie. For the coming Thanksgiving, I went in to pie baking mode and had to peel and chop 16 apples. But the pie turned out so nicely so it's all worth it. I made a video about pie making fun and you should watch it (and like my FB page).

Soybean Milk Recipe (with Video)

I love soybean milk. I used to have every morning, sometimes I like it so much I get for lunch, too. I've read a lot about the benefits of soybean milk, it's rich in protein, minerals, vitamins, and most importantly, it tastes good. Since coming to U.S., I haven't really had any good soybean milk. Sure, you can find Silk at your local supermarket, but it's just not the same, or as good, as the soybean milk breakfast shops in Taiwan would make fresh every morning. Therefore, I thought I'd make my own, and it turns it out to be, it was pretty easy, and I am very pleased with my soybean milk, it's just the way I want to be, and when you make it, your kitchen smells delightfully warm and sweet. The smell of fresh soybean milk.

國慶酒會--國旗蛋糕食譜

在美國，如果十月十號沒和其他的台灣人一起過，就像任何的一天。今年決定要召集在學校的台灣研究生，讓十月十號變得不平凡! 想台灣駐各國使館在國慶日都有國慶酒會，但從沒機會參加過。那時還沒到捷克做交換學生時，看到已經在捷克做交換學生的同學在問有誰要去國慶酒會，我也好想到布拉格吃國慶酒宴，但根本人都還沒到歐洲。所以現在我要再次在國外，決定自己來辦國慶酒宴!

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!

World Cup 2014: Support your team with cookies!

Tomorrow is the U.S. versus Germany game, we are having a viewing party at where I intern, and donations of dessert are welcomed. Since I love sweets I know I will be eating a lot of desserts. To not feel guilty about eating other people's desserts, I feel I should provide some desserts as well. An opportunity to make something sweet and yummy? Of course, I don't mind at all! Instead of just bringing some baked goods, I wanted to bring some themed baked goods. I challenged my self to make world cups cookies, and here is what I came up with. An very important tomorrow, since it's the U.S. team playing, so I shall take the viewing party seriously and make seriously awesome cookies.

Cutest Panda Cookies

The last semester I baked cookies for my students (I’m a TA, you can learn more about me under the “About Me” tab), so I thought I should do that again this semester. Everyone likes chocolate chip cookies, but I wanted to wow my students and give them something memorable, so I made panda cookies. There is nothing complicated about these cookies, they are just your normal sugar cookies, but with some creativity, time, and love, I made your plain sugar cookie in cookies that are super cute and would bring a smile to your face.

Easiest Strawberry Tart+Video

Hurray! My first baking video!

This strawberry tart is super easy and super fast. It's basically just putting things together. To put in plain terms, this tart is just a store bought crust, vanilla pudding, and lots of strawberries, but put them together, it looks quite fancy! I feel almost a bit guilty revealing how simple my tart is.

Store Bought Crust
Vanilla Pudding Mix. I used two boxes of pudding mix to fill my crust.
Milk for your pudding mix
Strawberries
Jam (optional)

So the instructions are very straight forward here:
1. Have your crust ready.
2. Prep your pudding mix according to instructions. Usually it's just stir with hot milk.
3. Pour slightly chilled pudding mix into crust.
4. Cut your berries and arrange them in a pretty way in to your pudding filled crust.
5. It's optional, but you could brush your berries with some jam, this gives your tart a glossy look.

See my video on how I made my tart!

I made a strawberry rosette for the center of the tart.

Requested by the grad student association whether I could make a dessert for our Valentine's day party, I said yes. Of course I said yes, it's an excuse to make something that's too much for me to finish and a chance to try something new. Since it is spring (more or less) and the season of berries, I decided to make something with strawberries, and red is a good color for Valentine's.

It may be pass Valentines, but a lovely strawberry tart is good for any time!

I've been having lots of academic things to read and write, so I hadn't had enough time to write here. But I do like writing here, so I am trying to update as often as possible! There has been some interesting food/recipe things happening and I'd love to share, so subscribe to this blog if you'd like to know when I update.

Happy Chinese New Year! Chinese Couplet Cookies Recipe 春聯餅乾

The biggest and most important festival of all in Chinese and Chinese influenced societies....Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year is on its way! This year the New Year's Eve is on Jan. 30. Even though I am far away from home, I will be celebrating this important holiday with fellow Taiwanese students with a big dinner. I also decided to celebrate and share this wonderful holiday by making some Chinese couplet inspired cookies! Chinese couplets, or chun-lian, or 春聯, are pieces or red paper with lucky words or phrases written on with calligraphy, or nowadays, printed. These are put on doors and hallways or basically just anywhere when Lunar New Year is close, they bring such a festive cheer to the holiday with the bright red color. These are basically sugar cookie shortbread hybrid dyed red, with chocolate piping. Yum.

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.