Bread & Bread Pudding

I saw this hanging on my friend's interior rear view mirror one day.

It's not a real bread, it's some kind of spongey decoration thing. I looked at it and I thought, "Hey let's make real rolls and draw Doraemon faces on them just like this!" So, I went home and started mixing my bread dough. I warmed some milk in the microwave and sprinkled active dry yeast on top of it. Just when I put my hand into the mixture to dissolve the yeast, I realized... HOT!! TOO HOT!! The yeasts were probably screaming for help before they died -____-" I let the mixture cool down, added a little bit more yeast, mixed in the rest of the ingredients, and prayed that my dough would rise. Which obviously didn't. I didn't give up, so I just put the dough inside a bowl on the counter to let the yeasts continue fermenting. And of course, I forgot about it until the next morning. My dough was over-fermented, it was unpleasantly spongey and had a strong yeasty smell. I still didn't want to throw it out so I kept going and made rolls from the dough. I was going to put fillings in the rolls but the dough was too soft. In the end, I just baked them with no filling.

They didn't look half bad out of the oven. Well, they didn't rise as much, but I didn't really care as long as I had enough space to draw Doraemon faces on them :p I piped chocolate ganache on the cooled rolls and voila!

 

Cute eh? :D I bit into one and it was decent. Not bad. I put them in a plastic bag and went to sleep. The next day, I opened up the bag and the faces were all messed up. Apparently my ganache hadn't set up before I put the rolls in the bag so the drawings were smeared. I took one roll out and it was hard as a rock :((( I didn't want to throw them away, so I decided to make bread pudding out of them. I cut the rolls into chunks, mixed the custard, and added different toppings into each mini loaf pan: chocolate chip, rum raisin, dark chocolate cherry pistachio, and raspberry. Basically, the custard base was the same and the flavors came from the toppings. I absolutely loved this recipe from Giada de Laurentiis. 

Chocolate chip

Raspberry

Dark chocolate cherry pistachio

Rum raisin

The custard was sooooo good!!! My roommate and I finished almost 2 mini loaf pans in an instance :p In conclusion, the custard saved my disastrous bread and turned it into delicious bread pudding. So people, don't give up when your bread doesn't taste good, just add enough cream and sugar, you can definitely save it from being thrown into the garbage can ^o^v

Matcha Overload

It's been quite some time since my last entry. I'm so busy with my research nowadays that I always come home feeling drained and have no will power to construct sentences. To make matter worse, I haven't gotten any good results yet despite all my hard work. Now I'm so stressed out and scared that I won't be able to graduate on time next year :(((( What do I do when I need to calm down and get my mind off the crazy things? Bake, of course! :D I've been baking tons of stuffs since my last post and a lot of the baked goods had matcha in them. Since I'm still too lazy to write down the recipes, I'll just post the pictures for now. Maybe I'll post the recipes when I feel like it :p

 Matcha azuki mochi

 Matcha azuki marron layer cake

(matcha sponge cake + marron cream + azuki puree + dark chocolate ganache + matcha cream)

Matcha entremet 

(chocolate sponge cake + marron cream + azuki puree + matcha mousse + matcha cream + matcha macaron)

Every Girl's Dream..

Time flies by so fast. Suddenly, I'm at an age when a lot of my friends are getting married and having kids. I panic whenever I check Facebook and see my friends changing their status from "In a Relationship" to "Married to" or "Engaged to". Basically, they're moving on to the next stage of their lives. Don't get me wrong, I'm not panicking because I want to get married or have kids now. I'm not ready for that. I panic because many of my friends are beginning a new journey, while I'm still stuck in school -___-" Sometimes, it makes me feel that my world is moving in such a slow pace and I'm always running but I never get to the finish line. Well, regardless of my resentment of being stuck and my envy of their new adventures, I feel really happy for my friends. Honestly. A huge smile always appears out of nowhere when I look at their pre-wedding or wedding pictures. They all look sooo happy and full of love. Makes me wonder, will I look like that when my time has come? Or will I get frustrated by all the little details being a control freak that I am? Oh well, I don't really care for now :p

For all of my friends who are leaving behind their single lives, I made this especially for you. Congratulations for reaching every girl's dream. I'm truly happy for you from the bottom of my heart and good luck for your new life with your loved one :)