Dessert By Candy

Please visit me at http://wscwong.typepad.com/dessert_by_candy instead.

For some reason, I always associate traveling with a fleet of backpacks as something that belongs to my days as a student. Besides, dragging around more than one backpacks at any time is just clumsy. To feel like that I’ve truly left those days behind, I’ve been slowly expanding my luggage collection. I already own a large Delsey suitcase in blue grey for week-long trips and a carry-on size upright Benetton suitcase in lime green. They are both very practical and so easy to spot out in a sea of black. However, with the increased number of weekend trips that I make, I find that I really need a good overnight bag.

For my weekend trips, I usually travel with my skate backpack containing all my skating essentials. However, I also need a seperate bag for all my non-skating belongings such as street clothes, pajamas, shoes, and toileteries. Luckily, I found my perfect bag at Lululemon yesterday. Their Activa gym bag is now on sale at $49 for selected colours so I quickly snapped one up. It is roomy, sturdy, and stylish yet it is still a good size for carry-on luggage. What I love most about this bag is the seperate shoe compartment at the bottom of the bag (a girl can’t wear running shoes for every outfit after all). The inside of the bag is lined with easy-to-clean material. I can fit a water bottle on both sides of the bag and I can slip my phone or camera in the hidden front pocket for easy access. Now I can’t wait until my next weekend trip so I can start packing!

I am intrigued by traditional English puddings because they have such great comfort food qualities to them. A rich bread pudding is my all-time favourite dessert obviously. However, I do wish to expand my repertoire. Summer pudding is a simple pudding of a mold lined with bread and filled with macerated fruit. In those hot summer months when berries are aplenty and turning on the oven is the last thing that I want to do, this is a wonderful dessert to make.

The following isn’t really a recipe but more like a general direction of how to assemble a summer pudding. Depending on the size and shape of the mold that you use, the amount of ingredients varies.

Ingredients

• good quality white sandwich bread, sliced (I prefer the white pullman bread from Bakery Nakamura in J-Town)
• medley of berries, enough to fill your choice of mold(s)
• sugar
• lemon zest, finely grated
• lemon juice
• Grand Marnier
• raspberry puree
• yogurt

Method

1. Line the mold with plastic wrap with plenty of overhang. I prefer to use a round bottom bowl of about 5 inches diameter for easy unmolding.
2. Wash and dry the berries. In a large bowl, toss together berries with sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and Grand Marnier. Let it macerate for about an hour in room temperature so the sugar can draw out juices from the berries. If you use blueberries, you may want to lightly crush some of them.
3. Trim the crust from the bread. Cut the bread to size so that they line the inside of the bowl neatly. Neat is the key here because once you unmold, your handiwork will be the exterior of the pudding! You want it to look pretty.
4. Fill the bread-lined bowl with berries and juice. Close your pudding with one layer of bread. Fold the overhanging plastic wrap over the pudding.
5. Over the pudding with a large plate and weigh down the plate with…something heavy such as a large can of tomato. Chill in the fridge for at least 24hr until the juice saturate the bread. You want the bread to turn from white to deep pink.
6. When you’re ready to serve, unmold the pudding and peel off the plastic wrap. Drown with more raspberry puree if there are still any white area on the bread. Serve with creamy yogurt or for a richer alternative, whipped mascarpone cheese.

I lost my temper at practice last night because someone jokingly called me names. I’ve fought for years to keep my temper under control but that does not mean I do not get upset. It only means I’ve gotten better at not letting my temper get the best of me. However, I didn’t let those comments slide last night as I normally would do. Unfortunately, I did not react in a way that explained why I was upset by such comments. Rather, it just looked like I got angry totally out of proportion (and people could conveniently brush it aside as oh-must-be-PMS).

MM once told me that an adult-based sports club lacks a ready-made volunteer base (aka parents) that most children-oriented clubs have. In order for the club to flourish, it requires dedicated volunteers from club members. Yet with everyone leading such busy lives, it is difficult to recruit any volunteers. MM is a person whose opinion I respect. Since I started skating, my club has provided me with many resources and opportunities to develop into a better skater. For that reason alone, I decided that I want to give back to show my appreciation.

I am offended when I am being made fun of for being responsible, dependable, and organized. Those are valuable qualities which allow me to contribute to the operation of the club. Those are the very qualities that get things done. Volunteering my time and effort is not something that I’m required to do. Standing aside and laughing at people are easy and effortless. However, when was the last time you get anything done without making an effort?

It has been a long time since I last baked anything. I’m going to mail a care package to my skating coach in Europe so I decided to include some sweet treats to cheer him up. Blondies and brownies are both sturdy enough to withstand shipping so I gave another two recipes a try from the Martha Stewart’s Cookies cookbook. The one on the left is Butterscotch-Cashew Blondies (p. 277) and the one on the right is Chocolate-Ginger Brownies (p. 276).

Due to a lack of ingredients at home, I made some minor changes to the recipe. For the blondies, I replaced the toffee bits with equal amount of butterscotch chips. Alas, the toffee bits would have added such a nice crunch and a deeper layer of butterscotch flavour. This is the third blondies recipe I attempted from this cookbook and it is by far superior. The use of cashew is a nice change from the more popular walnuts or pecans. The buttery taste of the nuts made these blondies a rich treat. The texture is cakey and tender.

I love combining chocolate with sweet spices. These chocolate-ginger brownies has a nice bite from the ground and freshly grated ginger. I skipped out on the grated nutmeg and added 100g of dark chocolate chips to the batter to add some bulk. Only afterward did it occur to me that some chopped crystalized ginger would be a great addition to this recipe. The recipe calls for 8 inch square baking pan but I doubt the batter yields enough. Even with the use of the chocolate chips and a 7 inch pan, the finished brownies are merely an inch tall. This is a dense, almost fudge-like, brownie. I would recommend cutting them in smaller servings.

I really don’t know what to do. I feel as if there’s a huge weight on my chest, so heavy that I can’t breath. I am very certain that I do not want to be romantically involved with him (and to be involved with him at all was a mistake). However, having him at the outskirt of my life remains a test of my toughness every day. I cannot yet wrap my head around the idea that there is something so nasty about my personality that made him drop me like a hot potato within the span of one weekend. I really hoped that was not true but when confronted, he only evaded and offered not even a hint of denying. How can I not be convinced I really do disgust him so much?

I am scared that I am really such a horrible person and the only reason my friends have not abandoned me is because they have not yet find out about this other side of me. This has been a fear of mine for as long as I can remember. When he rejected me for, essentially, the core make up of who I am, my worst nightmare came true.

I wake up every morning and pep talk myself into a more cheerful person. I try my best to look at the world around me in a more positive light but I am not sure anymore that I am not fighting a losing battle. I try hard to give as much of myself as I can to my friends and family. Yet the fear that they will find out what a phony I am is looming ever so near. It has already happened once with EG so who’s to say if he’s with the majority or not? I certainly don’t have that unwavering belief in myself right now to say his decision was the exception.

Growing up in Hong Kong in the 80s, a lot of my childhood food memories are associated with western-style cuisine as interpreted by Chinese. The sizzler plate is one particularly memorable item. Typically, it is a steak dinner served on a hot heavy cast-iron plate. The waiter would gingerly place it in front of me with a silver gravy boat at the ready. That is the cue for me to unfold my paper napkin and hold it like a curtain between my face and the food. As the gravy was poured over the steak, everything sizzle along with smoke and aroma which would linger on my clothes long after the meal ended. I love the theatrics and the multi-sensory experience of a sizzler dinner.

Nine times out of ten, restaurants serve sizzler as a set dinner (aka prix-fixe) to make the whole western dining experience complete. There is always a choice of cream or borscht soup (borscht of course) and sometimes a side salad for appetizer. A sweet dinner roll accompanies the soup and it is best when sliced in half with a nice cold slice of butter slowly melting by the warmth of the bread. The fries and blanched mixed vegetables are the best accompaniment to the steak to mop up all the excess gravy. Of course, no meal is complete without coffee/tea and dessert. Dessert is usually a little cup of jello or mango pudding drizzled with evaporated milk.

Now that I am all grown up, the sizzler dinner does seem a little cheesy but it still holds a special place in my heart. It is what I immediately think of when I crave a "steak dinner". Luckily, there are restaurants in Toronto that specialize in this type of Hong Kong-style western cuisine once you venture to Richmond Hill/Markham. My favourite haunt is only five minute drive from my home so I don’t even need to make a special trip to satisfy my craving. In recent months, I’ve drastically decreased my consumption of red meat. One problem is that it is difficult for me to get enough iron from my meals. Since iron plays a very important role in my athletic performance, I’ve decided to start eating two meals a week with red meat. At $15.99, it is certainly a very affordable way to enjoy a steak dinner with all the trimming!

I have been feeling a little better after a successful and fun-filled road trip to Detroit last weekend. I did not let history repeat itself and that by itself felt empowering (such an over-used word). I feel like I take control of my own life once again. Not only that, I did so in an upright and honourable manner.

It is very important that I do not let my stress get out of control. When I feel like myself, it is a little easier to treat him just as one of the many people I meet every day. I do not like how my emotion would be so affected by a person who is not even involved in my life. I still have some de-programming to do but I hope that I am at least making tiny improvements.

I’m still getting over a cold from last Wednesday. I’m itching to bake again but I need to be completely healthy first. I’m no germophobic but I don’t feel too incline to treat my friends to my baking when I even have a hint of illness. My next recipe to try should be a gingerbread white chocolate blondie.

Patterns can be down right scary. I have not been feeling good about myself recently at practice and this feeling of negativity is beginning to snowball. The last time I felt in a similar way was back in September before a series of important races and it accumulated into me getting dumped. Of course, being single now, I know that I would not get dumped this time around. However, the very sight of him is giving me all kinds of horrible feeling that something terrible is about to happen. Of course this is an illogical fear but the mind can be a strange little thing sometimes. I must have learned to associate him as a physical representation of rejection, embodiment of the idea that my ailment makes me an unlovable person.

I cannot stand this.

I cannot allow myself to fall into the same trap again yet I do not know what to do. I’m not in a very good place right now.

Making blondies into individual portions using a muffin pan appeared to be a rather nice idea. That was the main reason that drew me to this recipe. However, a regular muffin size of this dense treat packed with coconut, chocolate chips, cranberries, and walnuts is just too much. I think a mini muffin size would work much better, not to mention a shorter baking time.

I think the cookie part of this blondies stray a bit to the dry side. The addition of crunchy coconut and walnut highlighted that as well. Without some moist ingredients (I’m thinking majool dates or black mission figs), I feel like there’s something missing. I will probably take the idea of shaping blondie/brownie batter using muffin pans but apply it to another recipe instead.