Mala Spicy Chilled King Oyster Mushroom Salad 麻辣涼拌杏鮑菇

Hey hobbits out there, doncha just love, love, love mushrooms?  Then this is the dish for you!  Meaty mushrooms marinated in spicy mala sauce and a splash of numbing sichuan pepper oil, sprinkled with aromatics and then chilled to perfection.  This Mala Spicy Chilled King Oyster Mushroom Salad 麻辣涼拌杏鮑菇 is super easy to make and absolutely shroomy-licious!

Sugar Cane Imperatae Water Chestnut Tonic 竹蔗茅根紅蘿蔔馬蹄水

Here's a favorite Chinese tonic, perfect for soothing dryness, quenching the thirsties and expelling dampness from your body.  Sugar Cane Imperatae Water Chestnut Tonic 竹蔗茅根紅蘿蔔馬蹄水 is a tonic with a longish name but it's super simple to make and delicious and healthy to drink!

Strawberry Dusted White Chocolate Truffle

Here's a sweetie just in the nick of time for Valentines Day!  Recently my little girl and I have been just loving us some white chocolate, that luscious creamy deliciousness is just so sexy!  

So that's what led us to make some white chocolate truffles.  Seriously, truffles are sooo easy to make and sooo super yummilicious.  Easy and delicious, my favorite food combo of all time!  And what could be better paired with white chocolate than strawberries, amirite?!  So here it is, our Strawberry Dusted White Chocolate Truffle is totally something to fall in love with!

Coloured Macarons Filled with White Chocolate Ganache

I'm super excited to share this particular post with everyone!  Homemade macarons!  We love macarons so much but then who doesn't, amirite?   These dainty meringue based sandwich cookies have stolen the world's sugar encrusted heart.  So what could be better than to be able to make these at home, right?  We've previously successfully made scrumptious chocolate flavored macarons at THKC however, every time we tried to make other coloured macarons we have failed.  :(

Onwards in time...and this Christmas my little girl and I decided to participate in her school Xmas bazaar and thus needed to bake up a seeming truckload of cookies to sell.  And one of the cookies that my little girl really wanted for the bake sale was macarons coloured  in red and green, all the Christmas colors.  Yiks!  Could I do it?  Not sure but like a good and hopeful mama, I said yes to coloured macarons.

Ahhh...a challenge laid down.  Dear readers, the cookie game was afoot!

Buffalo Wings Baked in the Oven

This post is kinda serendipitious.  You know, happily accidental.  In my food wanderings online recently, I stumbled on this baked method of making buffalo wings by the famous Kenji Lopez at Serious Eats and got really excited by it.  Ironically, I totally didn't realize that Super Sunday, the holy grail of buffalo winging, was coming right up!  It's hard to remember that date here in HK, lol.

My hubby loves buffalo wings.  Not really sure why but it's okay cuz we love them too, just not as much, haha.  We've made them many times before, baking the chicken wings before dunking into that gorgeous buffalo sauce.  But they never seemed quite right, the baked skins lacking the crispness of the deep fried buffalo wings that you can get at restaurants.  Without that crispiness the sauce just doesn't cling convincingly enough, does it?

So Kenji's method is supposed to make the baked chicken wing's skin as crisp as if you deep fried the wings!  Does it work?  Oh yeah, it sure does!  Super crispy skinned juicy baked buffalo wings coming right up!

Gift Bearing Huggy Bear Cookies

Just in time for this merry season, we present our latest Christmas cookie, our Gift Bearing Huggy Bear Cookies!  This is one of the slew of Christmas cookies we've made this year and my little girl and I think it's the cutiest of the lot!  Little animal cookies bearing wee gifts in their arms are too cool for school, doncha think dear readers?

Homemade Turkish Delight Candy

I first discovered the mysterious name 'Turkish Delight' when immersed in magical world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, reading of poor Edmund lost in wickedly wintry Narnia and captivated by the evil White Witch, the Queen of Narnia, after one deliriously delicious bite of Turkish Delight candy.

"Is it dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently.  "What would you like best to eat?"

Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund.

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight.  Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.  He was quite warm now, and comfortable." -The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Baked Sweet Potato 烤番薯

Dear readers...winter draws ever nearer.  And as the chill winds of the season sweep over us what should appear on street corners all over Asia but the wonderful street hawkers that sell roasted sweet potato.  OMgosh, the aroma of that roasting sweet potato!  So good!  That hot plump sweet potato is exactly the thing to hold in your chilly hands.  Not to mention that first luscious bite of the creamy, sweet hot potato flesh.  Just the thing to warm you up and put you to rights inside and out!

And if, poor darlings, you don't have a friendly neighborhood sweet potato hawker, don't worry a bit, we're here to save the day!  Cuz, guess what, you can easily make superb baked sweet potato at home that tastes just as good as any you can get from a street vendor. 

Baked sweet potato 烤番薯 is so super simple to make.  And oh so yummy to eat: hot, sweet and creamy.  It just warms the ol' heart, it does.

Best and Easiest Pie Crust Ever

Do you love pie?  At our house we love, love, love us some pie!  There's just something so elegantly yummilicious about scrummy pie fillings neatly tucked into a golden flaky crust.  

The only thing is, pie crust is kinda a bitch to make, imho, what with having to blind bake, dealing with dough shrinkage after the bake, sometimes not flaky enough, sometimes not tender enough, etc.  We've tried all kinds of pie crust recipes until we finally found the ONE!

This is the one and only pie crust recipe that we use anymore.  The Best and Easiest Pie Crust Ever is just that, easy peasy, there's no blind bake and it bakes up perfectly golden, buttery and flaky every single time!  With the holidays just around the corner, get ready to make some pie!

Flat Croissants Dipped in Chocolate

Have y'all heard of these lovelies?  Flat croissants, that's right, completely flattened croissants are all the rage right now!  These flat croissants began in South Korea, then got picked up by some TikToker's and the rest is history.  They are now everywhere, at least in HK.  

Why flatten a croisssant, for gosh's sake, you may be asking.  Indeed, at first, that is what I thought.  Why the heck would anyone want to flatten the darn things after making so much effort to puff it out with layers upon layers.  But after I finally tasted one of these flat croissants I changed my mind!  The many, many layers of the original croissant, when flattened, create a crispy kinda of cookie now wrapped inside a caramelized exterior.  And to top it off many of these flat croissants are further dipped in a flavored coatings, yum!

We decided to recreate these flat croissants in time for my little girl's annual school picnic.  There was a bit of struggle at first but once we got the hang of it the going was pretty easy.  Check out our guide on making flat croissants with all our tips and tricks to make the going smooth and easy as peasy.  Result?  Only totally yummilicious caramel coated crispy on the inside amazingly flat croissants dipped in luscious chocolate and sprinkled with your favorite sprinkles!  Nom, nom...