Wednesday, January 4, 2012

A HONG KONG CHRISTMAS



This year's Christmas was extra special mainly because I celebrated it with my hubby in HK. Usually, we would go home to Manila for the Holidays, but with my baby due soon, we decided to stay put here. At first, I was a bit apprehensive and reluctant to spend the Holidays in Hong Kong as I spend every Holiday season in Manila.




Though the HK's main religion is not Catholicism, most residents are keen to celebrate Christmas. The city certainly does celebrate the holiday, gets into the spirit of things, spruce up the malls where you can hear Christmas carols playing in the air. During the season, the weather is nice and cool with temps dropping to the low teens C. With the decorations, nice weather, off course endless shopping makes HK a perfect winter destination for people in Manila. And with a 90 minute flight from Manila, it's definitely my home away from home...happy to be close to family and friends. 90 minute flight vs. 20+ hrs from NYC last year to get to Manila...priceless and price savings!!! =)




Here are some of the foods that we're binging on last Christmas:


Rack of Lamb with Balsamic Reduction




Lawry's Prime Rib




Chocolate Molten Cake



Tuesday, November 22, 2011

2D ELMO CAKE



This past weekend, we were asked to create an Elmo cake which portrays as a gift box. Originally, the mom of the little girl wanted a 3D version of Elmo, but we were pressed for time, so I instantly thought of making Elmo's face in 2D cut outs instead. Since there was no specific cutter for Elmo's face, I had to improvise and make my own by drawing his face on a cardboard paper and cutting it. The cut-out served as my cutter for Elmo's faces were incorporated in the cake. I also wanted the cake to have green bows and green stars (Sesame Street colors), but the mom requested the pastel pink instead. Overall, I think the cake turned out to be cute and striking speacially made for the birthday girl as requested by the loving mom.







Saturday, October 1, 2011

PERSONALIZED COOKIES


Happy weekend everyone! I just want to share some pictures of cookies that we did for a corporate event.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

DESSERT BAR FOR INIKO

Last weekend was my god son's Christening and I could not think of a better way to complete the celebration than preparing a dessert bar. Since the reception was held at home, my cousins and I helped decorate the dessert table. One was assigned to make the tags and labels for the desserts and candy bar. As you would expect, I was responsible for whole dessert spread and while other folks made the lanterns, banners and posters that you see in the picture. You can really call this a family project :-)

the whole set-up




irresistible bars


the candy bar--assorted flavors or lollipops, mallows, gummy bears, chocolate kisses and choco wafer sticks

moist chocolate cupcakes in baby theme toppers

sinfully rich cookies

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

ANGRY BIRDS CAKE FOR BEA

This cake was especially made for my niece Bea, who celebrated her 8th birthday last month. With the advent of Ipad and its increasingly popular Apps for games, it looks like the Angry Birds fever is really hitting an all time high! At first, I was clueless as to how to design the cake that I decided to download the game from my Ipad and actually play it. By doing so, it greatly helped me to visualize what design would I execute. This is what I came up with:


This was a moist chocolate cake with espresso caramel filling.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

UPDATE AND A TASTE OF HK

a glimpse of our new flat---still a work in progress
view from The Peak
boxes from NYC

Dimsum Academy

I apologize for my absence in blogging these past few months. I actually have been travelling frequently as my husband got a new role overseas. We had to visit our new location and find our new "home". My husband and I actually relocated to Hong Kong...yes Hong Kong in the Far East. If you noticed, my last posting was May which was the time we found out of my husband's new assignment with Pepsi and we had to be based in HK by July. Since then, we have been on a whirlwind of never ending things to do ---- find a home in Hong Kong, decide what we will be bringing to HK or what we will leave in storage, sell our cars, see our friends/family, fix our apartment in New York so we can rent it out, etc. On top of the new job for my husband, new work & home location for us...we have actually been blessed as well with the coming of our 1st child. Yes, I am expecting and I'm on my 4th month. You can just imagine the never ending "chores" we had to do to make us "ready" to move our home, our life to HK. Now in HK, we have more "chores" as we have to get our apartment here in the Mid-Levels to be our home in HK at least for the next coming years.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of moving boxes marked "Kitchen". When the movers here in HK started to bring our air shipment to our apartment, they were scratching their heads with the amount of boxes destined for the kitchen. Dear friends, HK is one of the most populated cities in the world...something to the tune of 60,000/sq ft or sq m...can't recall but something ridiculous. Hence space is a premium in this very, very vertical city. With space as a premium, my oven in out apartment here is probably just 1/4 the size of my LG in NY. This is no joke, some of my baking pans won't fit the oven. Very different...maybe this is an opportunity for me to create "mini-me's" of my work in NY...hahaha. I will post a picture of the oven so you can see what I am talking about.

Given the pregnancy, everything for me is sensory overload. HK Island is like Manhattan but with A LOT LOT LOT more people...this is no joke. If you think it is a jungle walking the streets of Manhattan during rush hour...you haven't seen anything yet like HK. It is ridiculous the amount of people specially in Central & Causeway Bay...I am not even talking about the tourist spots on the Kowloon side but more so the place where Hong Kongers live.

Oh well, a lot of things going on. As much as I want to work, our OB here advised me to take it easy. I will try to test out my oven and see what I can do out of it. I will also blog about my adventures in Hong Kong Island - both personally and from a culinary perspective.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

JB PRINCE: KITCHEN WONDERLAND




Yesterday I decided to go to JB Prince in Manhattan to buy some chocolate molds and some pastry toys. I went totally nuts seeing all the kitchen gadgets, equipment and tools for the professional chef. Every imaginable kitchen tool can be found here. Most importantly, JB Prince carries top of the line, superior quality brands such as the: Robot Coupe Hand blenders, Japanese mandolines, Silpats, Misono Knives, Ateco cutters, Chocolate molds from France, Refractometers, Digital Thermometers and much more.

As a baker, I was very happy and pleased with the wide selection of pastry/baking stuff (who doesn't want Silpats, metal cutters, flexipan molds and every size and shape of ice cream scoops) and the gamut of kitchen necessities that you would want in your kitchen cabinet. As these gadgets are precision tools, I must warn you that prices are rather steep, but remember they're long-term investments.



Also, it's worth pointing out that JB Prince is not visibly located along the street. The store is located inside a nondescirpt Midtown office building, on the 11th floor and behold JB Prince. Even if you don't have any intentions of buying something, you'll find yourself carrying a loot bag!








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