Ever experience a time period in your life where you just don't know what to do? Well, I think I got the right answer for you. Don't let it get to you and just start spending time in the kitchen. It's magical and it works. =)

For the past few weeks, I fell in love with macarons. Why? Because, A: it tastes way too good and you can get so creative with it. B: When you take it out of the oven and see that it is not cracked but in a perfect shell. You just feel this crazy warm and fuzzy sensation in your stomache that makes you want to jump for joy.

So here it is, another addition of macarons. Try to bare with me and not get bored of me just yet. I promise that I will bake something more innovative over the week. =) 

Here are the flawless shells I have been talking about. Later in this post I will share with you on how to bake these flawless shells. You can never go wrong with blue and white. =)

Gah, I need a new piping bag or better piping skills. You see the top of the shell? It has a little "dip" and it's not suppose to be like that, I think it's because I kinda fling it out after I pipe it down. I will make sure I fix this. =)

All packed up and ready to go. Hope you like it! =)

Heres what you need to make this:
 Shell:
75 g ground almonds 
115 g icing sugar 
2 large egg whites 
50g sugar 
food colouring of your choice

Filling:
55g unsalted butter 
115g icing sugar sifted 
2 tablespoons of coffee

Place the ground almonds and icing sugar in a food processor and process for 15 seconds. (Very important part and this will determine the smoothness of the shell)
Sift the mixture into a bowl.
Line baking two baking sheets.

Place the egg whites in a large bowl and whisk until holding soft peaks.
Gradually whisk in the sugar to make a glossy meringue.
Whisk in food colouring of your choice.

Using a spatual, fold the almond mixture into the meringue one third at a time.
Fold until it forms a shiny batter with a ribbon-like consistency.

Pipe the mixture onto the baking sheets. It should make 32 small rounds.
Leave at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325F ( I usually do 310F)
Bake for 8-9 minutes. Watch closely and make sure they don't crack.

To make the filling, beat the butter, add sugar and coffee until smooth and creamy.
Now make a sandwich with the macarons and dust it off with icing sugar.

I have been meaning to update my blog for a long while but personal business came up and I had to deal with that first. So unprofessional, I know but here I am! And welcome to my utopia. Thankfully, I have the time to finish off the weekend with a nice post.

Sadly, I have been as active as I should but I did mange to spend some time in the kitchen. I baked a Bailey's chocolate cheesecake. I swear one day I am going to invest in a awesome camera but till then you will have to bare with me.

In order to make this cake a little bit more fun and personal. I mixed two recipes together, Jamie Oliver and Anna Olson. The reason being is that, I really love the way Jamie makes his base all you need is:

Base:
9 oz digestive biscuits crushed
11 tablespoons of butter 

Bake for 10 minutes at 350F

Every time I use this base, I get smiles and tears of joy all the time. Its packed with the aroma of butter mixed with freshly baked biscuits (drool).

For the filling:
6 oz semisweet chocolate
3 oz dark chocolate
3 pkg cream cheese
2 cups of sugar
1 cup sour cream 
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
60 ml baileys 

Olson always taught me that if I wanted to make a recipe more personal, add a little spice. ;) The baileys was seriously a nice kick and added the 18+ to the whole cheesecake experience.  The texture was very smooth, the sugar didn't over power the filling at all but instead the chocolate was very dominant which I loved. I got nothing but good remarks on this cake. Honestly, I was quite scared when it came out because the center was still very "jiggly" and the filling almost topped over the rim of the pan!

As a bonus, I baked a batch of macarons for the girls of the party. These are always "wow factor" desserts. Every time I bring them out, everyone would crowd around and they'd be gone in less than 60 seconds. I did spot a small error during the process of baking these. For future reference, I highly recommend you to process the icing sugar and ground almonds if you want a smooth and clean shell. Otherwise you will get a bumpy texture which is not pleasing to the eyes at all. Secondly, I tried my best to mix the colour brown but I didn't add enough food colouring and it turned out peachy. =( Which didn't go very well with the coffee cream filling. Blah oh well, now I know.

'Till the day I get a new camera, you guys will have lay your eyes on poorly designed apple cameras. =( Maybe I should have thought of that first instead of buying a new guitar. Oh well. I'll bake it till I make it if that makes any sense.

Keep on coming back for more. =)
P.S. That is my friends Husky. Her name is Holly. Say hi Holly, you are on my blog! =) 

Chinese families love one thing, and that is good company. It was my uncles birthday and we had a big celebration for him, therefore my old man had to do all the cook with some of my help too of course. Now I don't remember all the names he told me but the one above is potato skin with cheese, bacon and sour cream. It was a very simple appetizer but with a big impact. Everyone loved it, especially my grandma.(Who is most important, haha!)

Now this appetizer is a mystery to me, I totally forgot the name of this but I will tell you whats in it. Its basically a spinch dip wrapped with a pastry sheet. Baked for X amount of time. Sorry, I got to stay on top of my foods and names. =(

Next we got mini pulled pork sliders. These were to die for! I love how small it was, it was just the perfect sandwich for a cold winter day or in this case, fall. The pork was pressured cooked until tender, topped with bbq sauce and pickle! So easy and so enticing. Couldn't have just one.

This was one of the newest dish that I have never seen before. Apparently, its like a seafood mixed rice? Let me explain, there were three layers. The bottom layer was rice, second layer was veggies? And the top layer was mussels with cheese. Again something that I have to double check since I only had a little and this was such a new and refreshing dish.

Next you can see the whole fam jam pigging out and if you look closely, you can see my sister in her natural habitat. Eating with and talking with her mouth full. HAHA! Don't tell on me. Enjoy the rest and come back for more! =)