For someone who’s technically unemployed, I don’t know if this would violate the definition of such word but actually, for the past 2 weeks, I’ve been enjoying some sort of a “holiday”. Well… a holiday on house-arrest if you will, but nonetheless, a holiday. Despite the… minor inconvenience that we’re currently bound to thelast place on earth that we’d like to spend more time in, Jason had decided to take the longest vacation-days he’s ever taken in his entire work-life, ever, an entire 14 blissful days to spend on doing something that we’ve practically elevated to an art-from… that is to do ab-so-lute-ly… nothing.READ MORE
THE CAKE HAS VENTURED BEYOND CHEMISTRY, INTO THE REALM OF PHYSICS…
EVERY time I unearth a truly fantastic recipe out of the landslides of materials and inspirations that bury most of my time nowadays, regardless whether it is original or reinvented, I experience a flush of anxiety which I’d like to call the competitive blogging disorder. Symptoms include increasing heart-rates and twitching ankles, a not-exactly-little voice inside my ill-motivated head saying things that don’t exactly reflect my best, generous self.
Things like, gah I hope I’m one of the few living bodies on earth who know about his. Gah I must publish this recipe now, like right now!, like in any given second somebody else might hijack my discovery. Gah I hope when I Google “flan cake”, nothing, and I mean nothing… in the English-speaking world at least, would show up on the first page.
But of course, like most of my wishes nowadays, the answers from God-gle, are usually negative.
When I stumbled on an Asian baking-blog by accident last week, and discovered something called the “flan cake”, I thought ding-ding-ding! I mean after all, it isn’t everyday that I look upon a cake-recipe that has ventured beyond chemistry, into the realm… of great physics. A cake with two distinctively different layers that bake simultaneously, but magically self-separates. A cake that bakes on the laws of physics, that lighter mass in weight (in this case, the sponge cake-batter), will float above denser mass (in this case, the flan custard), and that there’s nothing you can do to sabotage it. It’s not just a failsafe cake. It’s an anti-fail cake. Guaranteed by science. How could I not be excited?
But of course as it turns out, like all other great ideas, God-gle already knew a few. Fuck.
BUT again, a closer look into all the flan-cake recipes shown up on the research, my CBD relapsed. Not only that most of these recipes uses a cake-premix, but even the ones that don’t, involves the dull and tiresome sponge cake-method of using vegetable oil or creaming butter. Gah, I’m back! I could still be the first second third… number of handful people to tell you about this, ahem, fucking awesome cake. Because. the true genius of this particular flan-cake lies not only on the magic of the two self-separating layers of flan and sponge cake, but also on the miraculous outcome of a butter-roux cake batter. Yes, a roux cake. The combination of the two wonders, a cocktail of miracles, from what I can tell, is still a relatively under-exposed secret.
“VALENTINES, STEP ASIDE. THIS IS PROFESSIONAL LOVE LIFE”
I was born a cynic.
I mean was that not obvious? Had I been able to remember I’d say with certainty that I came in this world, a genetically negative and unpleasant baby who cursed at the color pink if she could form words, who went on to earnestly suggest divorce as an alternative lifestyle for her parents at age five. Perhaps the last ounce of my lacking fluffiness died with the moment when my best friend stuffed Raccoon was brutally trashed in a random afternoon while I was away citing ABC’s at pre-school, the last straw in leaving a cold, hardened human being walking this lonely planet believing that all loves are, ultimately, just temporary. So yes, I was born with, and still have now, a good faith in cynicism.
But somehow at the age of 27, I married my very first boyfriend. How did that happen?
How many times does a recipe have to fail you before you decide that it just isn’t meant to be? I used to simply set my maximum at three, the same philosophy… no, discipline really that I vigorously apply to all pursuits in life, but as it so proved in the course of the past few weeks, the kitchen, is a much more complicated world. Actually, it isn’t that difficult to explain my unwavering faith in this particular case because as we all experience first-handedly, nostalgia is a powerful form of religion. And with this, hoho… we go way back.
What’s the one picture you put on facebook that attracted the most attention? If I ever cared (and who cares…?), it would be that one innocent shot I took in Paris with my two lovely morning-cups of venti Starbucks sitting leisurely on the bridge minding their own business. Yup. Not any of these painstakingly-orchestrated-to-appear-unorchestratedly-beautiful shots of my humble creations (Guys guys look! Sauce is reacting to GRAVITY on my donuts!). Neither are shots of my unpretentiously handsome dogs keeping it real in their typical unorderly formation (Totally unlike any of the ones on pinterest whom I suspect are wax-models, because mine are totally NATURAL). And sadly with reasonable doubt, probably not even a bikini shot of myself could surpass (Guy. Half-nakedness here~ Somebody’s half-NAAAKED!)(… scroll right through it. Nice).
