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beanmom:

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stunningpicture:

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

Stay woke

Is this true?

Not only is it true, it gets worse. The Susan G Komen For The Cure Foundation has actually successfully sued “competing” charities, because (paraphrasing) their “message or branding was infringing.”

You read that correctly: they took money that people had donated to cure cancer, and hired attorneys with it, to sue ANOTHER group of people trying to find a cure for cancer, who, in turn, had to us their donated money to hire their own legal counsel to defend themselves.

Yeah signal boost because not enough people know about this and seriously FUCK SUSAN G. KOMEN THEY ARE THE ACTUAL WORST

Some links…

http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/

http://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/for-the-cure/

http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/132728/susan_g_komen_foundation_has

(reblogged in honor of my mother, who died of breast cancer, 11/13/97)

Reog every time I see it. Roughly once a month.

Ah, the thing my prof talked about during my first year English class… Always do your research before donating…

(via orangecoat-adventures)

pumpkin and caramelised onion galette

Well, I suppose this is more of a autumn/winter recipe, but who cares? I love pumpkin and caramelised onion too much… Just the other day, I find myself craving for pumpkin soup, thankfully the cafe right below my office is selling some. Yum!

Anyway, I should really be packing up my room and desk for the week-long renovation at my home next week, but I just don’t feel like doing it. I found myself flipping through recipe books instead, and came across this recipe from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. It’s been a while since I cooked dinner, or made any savoury dishes, or baked a pie of any sort. And it happens, today’s a holiday (Canada Day or the Hong Kong SAR Establishment Day, take your pick), so I decided to make this.

The recipe’s originally posted on the Smitten Kitchen site, but Deb also had it in her book, so it’s definitely a must try for me! I did make some variations though, so feel free to compare and share your own as well!

Recipe makes one 12-inch galette

Ingredients:

For pastry:

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour (more for work surface when rolling pastry out)
• ½ cup of whole-wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 225 g of unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes
• ½ cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/3 cup of ice water

For filling:

• 1.2 kg of pumpkin/butternut squash (I probably added more :P)
• 3 tablespons of grapeseed oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of table salt
• ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 2 large onions, cut into thin half-moon slices
• ¼ teaspoon sugar
• 1 cup of grated cheese (I used a mixture of parmesan and emmental 
• 5 cloves of black garlic (optional, I had some lying around..)
• 40 g of goat cheese (also optional)
• 1 teaspoon of thyme
• 1 egg yolk plus 1 teaspoon of water for glaze

Steps:

Pastry - combine salt and flours in bowl, add in butter and use a pastry blender or knife to cut the butter. The butter should be mixed into the flour like pebbles. (Deb says texture should be cornmeal like). Whisk sour cream, vinegar and water, pour into flour/butter mixture. stir with your hands until a smooth large dough forms (don’t knead the dough too much though!) Wrap dough in cling wrap and chill in fridge for at least an hour (and up to 2 days -  yes, make the pastry dough ahead to save time!)

Pumpkin/squash - peel the skin off, scrap out the seeds and cut into ½ to ¾ inch cubes. place in a large bowl and toss them with 2 tablespoons of oil, ½ teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Spread the pumpkin pieces on a baking sheet, and roast in oven at 205 C (or 400 F) for 30 minutes, turning them occasionally. When tender and slightly browned, set aside to cool.

Onions - melt butter and 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet in medium low heat, and cook the onions. Add sugar and 1 tablespoon of salt and keep stirring the onion as they cook.Cook until soft and tender for about 25 minutes. (Keep an eye on it though, the 25 minutes is a suggested time by Deb. I use flame stoves here in Hong Kong, and the heat is spread evenly and quicker than North American electric stoves, so cooking time was on 15 minutes. It get’s very tricky to caramelise onions, so becareful, don’t over brown them!) 

Assemble! -Combine the roasted pumpkin, onion, grated cheese, black garlic (optional),  and thyme in a large bowl while veggies are still hot.

Remove pastry dough from fridge, and let it soften a bit (chilled but soft enough for rolling). Roll out the dough on a floured surface/in between baking paper/cling wrap into a 16-17 inch circle. Transfer pastry onto a lined baking sheet (or a pie dish like I did). Spread filling over the dough, making sure there’s still a 4-5 cm border. Fold and pleat the pastry over the filling. Brush the crust with the egg/water mixture.

Bake the galette in oven at 205 C (or 400 F) for 30-40 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Done!

Serve it hot, warm or at room temperature.

Cheesecake brownies! My colleagues are getting a treat!

I’ve been spending my whole Easter break doing some major spring cleaning. Surprisingly, it’s very easy to throw things away this time round, and it’s in fact quite therapeutic. Some of the stuff are hopefully going to a good place, especially some books that will be sent to my nieces!

But seeing it’s a super long weekend, I told myself I need to do my favourite thing, to bake. That’s what I see as even more therapeutic. It’s been a while since I baked, but it was great!

Recipe to follow. It was basically the recipe from the Smitten Kitchen.

Ah, Rosenmunnar - Swedish Thumbprint Cookies!

I probably broke my record for baking. I baked two items in 2.5 hours!

It was the day before Chinese New Year, and my boss treated us with a meal (we Chinese call it tuen-lin-faan) to celebrate the end of the lunar year. Finishing our work day early, I still only managed to get home around 3:30pm to prepare for the family tuen-lin-faan which as usual I had to bring dessert. I definitely had enough time to bake Deb’s (and now my) oh-so-famous red wine chocolate cake, but then I heard Father Marci will be joining the dinner, so definitely a change in my game plan.

So who’s Father Marci (not his full name)? He’s a family friend of ours, and probably the funniest catholic priest one would ever meet. There are some really amusing stories involving him that one would not imagine from a priest, something about playing cards at my grandma’s home and snooker at some sketchy place with his students? I love having meals with him, and I love baking things for him. I haven’t seen him in quite some time, so I decided to bake something extra for him to take home that evening.

I only decided on baking these cookies after I popped my cake into the oven. Thinking hard for something easy to make with the limited supplies I had, this recipe came up. It’s quick and simple. Yes, four ingredients, and half an hour, it’s all done. Somehow it seemed harder when I last baked them when I was a Uni fresher… Haha, my baking skills must have improved a lot! :)

For some reason the original recipe said it will yield 6 dozens, but don’t trust it. I halved the recipe and got 16 cookies only!

You will need:

• ½ cup butter (I used unsalted)
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• Jam of your favourite choice (I got a jar of blueberry jam)

Steps:

1. Prepare a cookie sheet with baking paper, and preheat oven to 190C (or 375F) 
2. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl until fluffy
3. Add in sifted flour and mix until it forms a smooth ball of dough which is firm and not sticky or crumbly.
4. Shape dough into one inch balls and place them onto cookie sheet with sufficient space for each cookie for sideway expansion (otherwise they will stick together when you pull them out from the oven)
5. Use your finger to indent the top of the dough ball (that’s the thumbprint!) add a small drop of jam onto the indentation (stress on the small and don’t be greedy, otherwise the jam will flow out when the cookies flatten in the oven. You can always add more jam when you take the cookies out from the oven) 
6. Pop cookies into the oven and bake until golden (around 15-20 minutes depending on the strength of the oven)
7. Remove from oven. Let them cool and harden in a cooling rack. Done!

The softest bread you will ever bake (and they can stay soft for quite a while!)

When I was in Canada and Scotland, one thing I really missed was the soft bread that Hong Kong bakeries sell.. The yummy sausage buns, pai-bao (排包, the sweet buns) and the pineapple buns (that really has nothing to do with pineapples).. hmmmm, freshly baked, they are the best when served warm. I can only find them in those Chinese groceries, but god knows how long ago they were removed from the oven. In Canada, it’s probably easier to find good ones with supermarkets like T&T. Even so, I still think something’s missing from these made-in-Canada Hong Kong style bread… I am never a big fan of really dry western style breads unless they are for sandwiches, so I am really glad Hong Kong people know how to make good bread.

Of course, I am back in Hong Kong now, so I get easy access to these tasty buns, but as a baker, I’d love to try baking some of these nice soft breads…. One of my favourite recipe blog has the answer. Thanks to Christine Ho’s blog, she explained the method in creating the soft, fluffy Hong Kong style breads.

The method that she used is called the Tangzhong method (湯種), which involves adding an extra mixture of water and bread flour (5:1 ratio) into your regular bread dough mix. This magical mixture involves an extra cooking process that will only take maybe 10 minutes, but it results in a complete difference in the texture for your average bread.

I’ve tried two recipes recently, the first being a regular white bread loaf and then I tried a herb and cheese loaf (as seen above). Below is the recipe from Christine’s bacon and cheese loaf:

Ingredients of tangzhong (湯種 The amount is enough to make two loafs):

• 50gm/ 1/3 cup bread flour
• 250ml/ 1cup water (could be replaced by milk, or 50/50 water and milk)

Ingredients of bread:

• 350gm/ 2½ cups bread flour
• 55gm/3tbsp+2tsp caster sugar
• 5gm/1tsp salt
• 56gm egg (equals to 1 large egg)
• 7gm/1tbsp+1tsp milk powder (to increase fragrance, optional)
• 125ml/ ½cup milk
• 120gm tangzhong (use half of the tangzhong you make from above)
• 5 to 6gm/2 tsp instant yeast
• 30gm/3tbsp butter (cut into small pieces, softened at room temperature)

Fillings:

• bacon, to taste you favourite herb mixture, preferably freshly chopped (I only had my mum’s dried thyme, but it turns out ok. the amount is up to your own preference)
• cheese, to taste (like above, choose your favourite cheese, I used some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese from my local bake shop which they claim is good for bread making because of the heat resistance, well, I am no expert! again, amount is up to your personal taste)

Method of making tangzhong:

1. Mix flour in water well without any lumps. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring consistently with a wooden spoon, whisk or spatula to prevent burning and sticking while you cook along the way.
2. The mixture becomes thicker and thicker. Once you notice some “lines” appear in the mixture for every stir you make with the spoon. It’s done. You get the tangzhong. (Some people might like to use a thermometer to check the temperature. After a few trials, I found this simple method works every time.) Remove from heat.
3. Transfer into a clean bowl. Cover with a cling wrap sticking onto the surface of tangzhong to prevent from drying up. Let cool. The tangzhong can be used straight away once it cools down to room temperature.  Just measure out the amount you need. The leftover tangzhong can be stored in fridge up to a few days as long as it doesn’t turn grey. If so, you need to discard and cook some more. (Note: The chilled tangzhong should return to room temperature before adding into other ingredients. )

Method of making bread:

1. Combine all dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar and instant yeast in a bowl. Make a well in the center. Whisk and combine all wet ingredients: milk, egg and tangzhong, then add into the well of the dry ingredients. Knead until you get a dough shape and gluten has developed, then knead in the butter. Mind you, it’d be quite messy at this stage (That’s why I used a bread maker). Keep kneading until the dough is smooth, not sticky and elastic. To test if the dough is ready, you might stretch the dough. If it forms a thin “membrane”, it’s done. The time of kneading all depends on how hard and fast you knead. (Note: I use bread maker to do this hardest part and messy job for me. I added the wet ingredients into my bread maker first, then followed by the dry ingredients. The yeast is the last to add.) 
2. Knead the dough into a ball shape. Place in a greased bowl and cover with a wet towel or cling wrap. Let it proof till it’s doubled in size, about 40 minutes (Note: the time will vary and depends on the weather. The best temperature for proofing is 28C. I still used my bread maker in this stage. And my bread maker has a heater.)
3. Transfer to a clean floured surface. Deflate and divide the dough into four equal portions. Knead into ball shapes. Cover with cling wrap, let rest for 15 minutes.
4. Roll out each portion of the dough with a rolling pin into an oval shape. Sprinkle bacon herb and cheese evenly as much as you like. Roll from the upper, shorter end down to the bottom (as picture shown). Flatten the dough with your rolling pin. Then roll once again. Then seals face down.
5. Arrange the rolled-up dough in a greased or non-stick loaf tin (as picture shown). Leave it for the 2nd round of proofing, about 40 minutes, or until the dough rises up to ¾ of the height of the tin inside.
6. Brush whisked egg on surface. Bake in a pre-heated 180C (356F) oven for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and tin. Transfer onto a wire rack and let cool completely. Slice to serve or place in an airtight plastic bag or container once it’s thoroughly cooled.

Read more + detailed photo guide: http://en.christinesrecipes.com/2010/03/japanese-style-bacon-and-cheese-bread.html#ixzz2bdsQ7Pp3

While I say the bread can be kept soft and fluffy for a couple of days, that would not happen with my bread, they are generally gone in a day or two anyway. Half of the herb and cheese loaf was eaten the day it was made when my mum requested me to bring it up as afternoon tea for her mahjong-playing friends.