Finally. After a string of failures culminating in the Chocolate Cupcake Disaster of March 29, I've pulled cupcakes out of my oven that aren't dense, vinegar-flavoured messes. I've chucked my Six-Minute Chocolate Cake recipe out the window in favour of Katie's accurately-titled Never-Fail Chocolate Cake:
1.5 c white sugar
0.5 c cocoa
2 c flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
.75 c oil
1.5 c milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
Mix all in bowl. 350, 35 minutes in greased 9 x 13" pan, or about 10 minutes for cupcakes. Easy!
I also concocted some super-yummy chocolate icing. The process was something like this: put cocoa and a bit of butter in a saucepan, mix over low heat, adding as much milk as necessary to make stirrable. Take off heat and mix in enough icing sugar to make stiff. It's not scientific, but it's certainly delicious: more chocolatey than sugary.
The cupcakes' success may have also been aided by the wee wrappers they are snuggled in. Check them OUT! I can't even handle the baking supplies here; I just found out that I can order 10,000 customized wrappers for, like, $100. That's a lifetime of "CTB"-swaddled baked goods, people!
Yikes! Has it been that long? I guess I was too busy making tiny muffins in my new OVEN! (*Wild applause, cheerleaders cartwheeling*) Chinese apartments don't come with ovens - even the lucky foreigners who think they've rented a place with one often find it's actually a little dish sterilizer. Alas, my kitchen had neither, and I've been stirfrying, boiling, and sautéeing (badly) for the past six months, staring pensively at the place where an oven should be. In the baking aisle of the imports store, I would slow down my cart, eye the baking powder and sigh disconsolately, knowing my kitchen could produce nothing that needed puff.
But then! Two weekends ago, Poppy and I were at a Huaihuai Lu (French Concession shopping mecca) department store and found a scratch-and-dent table bearing highly discounted appliances, including a very reasonably-priced, generously-sized toaster oven. Poppy graciously listened to me pro-and-con for ten minutes before basically suggesting that I do the only sensible thing and buy it. Which I did. I haven't looked back. Especially as I now have a reason to buy hundreds of the great cupcake wrappers I found at a wholesale place down the street.
Any recipes not involving too much butter or chocolate welcomed; it's hard to think of what to make without them, I know, but they're really expensive here.
Photos:
1. There she is, at home in my pantry!
2. Check out my balanced meal. That's macaroni and cheese (cheddar AND blue cheese, snap)
3. Darling cupcake wrappers
4. Eee, carrot-pineapple muffins!
Hi everyone!
Hands down, one of the best things about China - and, it seems, Asian countries in general - is the plethora of adorable stationery to be had at pleasingly inexpensive prices. It's hard to express the kind of excitement generated by particularly excellent finds of the paper variety (Aunt Maureen, I know you understand), so I've resorted to that old standby, haiku. Actually, it's not my old standby. But it sure will be; I seriously feel ten times more Zen than I did twenty minutes ago. Please feel free to use your own 22 syllables to vote for your favourite book - the winner will receive it in the mail, because I love sending stuff home.
When I am depressed
The notebook store cheers me up
Zebra bums: so cute!
Gambol's so stylish
"Most outstanding achievers"
I hope they mean me
The big fat pink "M"
And the blank pages are great
Also, it has weight
I hate computers!
iPhoto won't flip these pics
Sorry they're backwards :(
Also just realized
You can't see the Gambol text
Okay, here it is:
"Gambol notebooks, made with future technology, for tomorrow's most outstanding achievers."
With only five days left in Shanghai before Laura had to board her Vancouver-bound plane, we’ve had a lot to take in and not a lot of time to take it in in. (Grammar experimentation is exciting.) We got right to it and hit the pearl market, the fabric market, and the glasses market; we’ve been balancing the shopping with, of course, eating: dumplings, hotpot, and home-cooked stirfries and soup have been on the very full menu.
Yesterday, we went with Claire’s friends Eric and Allison to the fabric market, stopping along the way to admire the oodles of buttons for sale in hole-in-the-wall shops (see below for Button on buttons); at the market, Claire ordered a tailor-made hat while Laura agonized over a suitable cotton print for new kitchen curtains – and just happened to find the perfect wool skirt for those cold Clarenville winters. Everyone left happy, especially those of us who got to come home to make soup and watch episodes of Monk before indulging in copious amounts of Laura-imported chocolate.
Somebody in charge knew today was our last day in Shanghai, because it was raining all day – the clouds followed us all the way to the Bund, the city’s must-see destination. We took in the lower half of China’s tallest buildings, and amused ourselves with umbrella sightseeing: seriously, check that one out below. A spur-of-the-moment elevator ride in the Ritz-Carlton rounded out the afternoon. A note to prospective hotel lobby crashers: be confident when you ask directions to the washroom and act like you’re definitely visiting the penthouse when you step into the elevator. Even if you’re wearing MEC and your shopping bag comes from Carrefour.
So: Claire will be on her own tomorrow night and Laura will be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean with 400 other people, who are hopefully keeping their microbes to themselves. (One more bout of strep throat is needed not.) Another great holiday!
1. Laura testing the padded sidewalk near Claire’s apartment. Rating: 7/10 for bounce, 10/10 for capturing the moment
2. Rainy reflections along Nanjing Donglu, Shanghai’s most famous shopping street
3. Universities look the same all over the world; Claire in front of her classroom building at Donghua University
4. In the textiles neighbourhood: don’t mess with PMS security
5. Laura N. Button… or is it Laura and Buttons? (Ha, ha, ha.) Thousands of buttons nestle into shelves and drawers in button shops near the Shanghai fabric market
Before embarking on our 13-hour journey to Beijing, we stocked up on snacks at the local supermarket. Not on our list: $14 Cheerios (Claire’s not-so-silent tears below), handy can of Sweat (we’ll make our own at the Olympic Stadium, thanks), or tennis racquet bag full of meat. Seriously. More tempting were the darling Valentine’s bouquets at Taikang Lu, where we’d visited earlier in the day.
The road to China’s capital city was paved with goat cheese, trés twee crackers, and, of course, our Nalwinegene. Sleeping quarters were cramped but we made it; thank goodness the hostel had the Itty Bitty Welcoming Committee waiting. Sooo cute. Sooooooo puntable.
We snacked on dumplings (extra garlic – nice work with the Swiss Army, Laura) before heading to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City; Beijing welcomed us with beautiful clear blue skies to go with the crisp northern air. Laura was feeling under the weather that evening. Fortunately, China has a reliable 24-hour pharmacy service (see below); by the next morning, though, we decided to make the trip to Beijing United Family Hospital to see about uniting our sick one with some serious medication. As every traveller knows, though, the first step was to notify the insurance provider. Unfortunately, as Claire discovered, the number listed on Laura’s plan card was actually a hotline for “feminine company.” Nice one, Manulife. Anyway, everything worked out fine. We made it to the hospital, where Claire roughed it in the waiting room while Laura chilled with the Duke intern sitting in on her appointment. Now we know how the other half lives…
That afternoon ended up being the highlight of our trip: we rode the metro to the Olympic Park to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. Sooo big. Sooooooo cool. Our excitement was definitely documented by many a Chinese camera as few others were as demonstrative of their enthusiasm. Claire talked our way into the Water Cube fifteen minutes before closing (and fifteen minutes after ticket sales had stopped): wit, persistence, and a couple of white lies about Laura’s life dream of being an Olympic swimmer did the trick.
Day Three: we woke up to the first snowfall of 2009 and beat the crowds to the Great Wall. We beat the treacherously slippery slopes at their own game by sliding down – great (Great, ha, ha) fun. The snow-covered mountains were stunning, and we were lucky to catch them as most of it melted away by that afternoon. Another feed of dumplings capped off our trip before we caught the metro from Tiananmen Square to the railway station. The trip back was long – no luxury sleeper car for us this time – it's taken this long to blog about it as we recover from the train hangover.
Enjoy the multiple-posts from our adventures to date.
1. – 3. Grocery store finds
4. Nothing says “I love you” like a dozen tiny bear heads
Christmas is coming so seriously soon, I am starting to freak out. I still haven't found a way to hang the silver and pink balls from my ceiling, which is apparently made of solid cement; I can't find any pine-scented anything; and my attempt to melt chocolate for pretzel-dipping resulted in a first-degree microwave disaster. Thankfully, though, SOMEone has it together and organized a German-style Christmas market outside Shanghai's most ginormous German restaurant/brauhaus. The little huts were adorable, and even though most of the wares for sale were priced beyond our reach - Y45 ($9) gluwein (mulled wine)! Come on! - I did make an exception for a set of three gingerbreadmen cookie cutters. How I will bake the cookies is still undetermined, but I feel like I'm halfway there.
Our Y25 entrance tickets entitled us to a Y25 discount off anything on the (highly expensive) brauhaus menu. We poor-studented it and each ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, delicious potato-sausage soup, and shared a pretzel. The restaurant could best be described as a homey palace - all wooden beams and grand staircases (see photo).
The puppy? My favourite sight of this week. I'm not usually a small dog person, but look at his tiiiiny nose and pensive gaze! He reminds me of Oliver, my old dog.
