Seoul 11.12 - near the hotel

We stayed at the Western COOP Residence in Seoul, and because it's located near (even though not right inside) the Dongdaemun shopping district, there were night life going on in the area.

First off, there were plenty of street vendors near by, where you could get snacks and little fashion accessories and such, and there were also restaurants in small streets everywhere.



And there was a police station near by. Looks pretty cool!

Oh, and there were many, and I mean many, different convenience stores within a few blocks of the hotel. Most of them were GS25 stores. You could find simple household necessities, snacks, and all sorts of beverages at these stores, and you could also buy tickets to events and trains. Convenience indeed!

The baked goods section at a GS25.

Snacks!

Different milk and coffee drinks.

Korean food essentials: gochujiang (chili paste), sesame oil, soy bean paste, etc., and cute mini mayo!

Most of the canned sodas we saw were 250ml (1 cup) in volume.


Someone recommended these Melon Flavor Ice Bars from GS25 and we tried one. It was creamy and very honeydew-y!

Browsing at convenience stores was fun!

cookies

I bake everything for the shop, and pretty much everyday there will be cookies. I've been making a few different types of cookies: butterscotch, chocolate chips, sweet and salty butterscotch, "blackout", etc..

Since I have to bake everyday, and the making dough part of the cookie baking usually takes a little while, I would make a bigger batch of dough, put it in a container and store in the fridge, and when I'm ready to bake the cookies I'll use a small ice-cream scoop and scoop out the dough onto a cookie sheet to bake. This method has been saving me time and energy, and helping to produce yummy cookies!

Here are a few that I like to make these days:

butterscotch cookies.

mocha chocolate chip cookies.

sweet and salty butterscotch cookies.

"blackout" cookies.

I'm thinking about making pumpkin or more autumn and winter "relevant" cookies one of these days.

mmmmm cookies.

Paris 2011 - there's a bakery below the hotel

There's a bakery below the hotel. John and I got quick breakfast treats from there pretty much every morning.




This bakery is more of a bread store, or a "boulangerie." Every morning people line up for some baguettes, croissants, brioche, and such. We had our shares of good times and yumminess from here.


Now this was a nice plain brioche.


These were what we had for breakfast the first morning we were in paris.

I saw the bakery had mini caneles and had to grab a couple to try. They were not as tasty as I'd imagined, but I guess from what people say, since caneles are very regional-specific (Borduaex), very rarely can you find awesome caneles from just any bakery.

The brioche and croissants were delicious.


On the patio of the bakery.

After our quick morning rendezvous at the bakery in the mornings, John and I were ready to take on the day in Paris.

Paris 2011 - Pierre Herme's macarons

This is the bag I was all willing to carry all the way back to the hotel.


And there were two boxes.


This big one was a Japanese-inspired matcha and azuki work of art.


Oh my.


12 beautiful little creations.


You've never had macarons until you have one of these.

There was a macaron flavor list that came with our macarons. It was a very handy "tool" to help us determine what we were eating.

The macarons from Pierre Herme was made to perfection. The meringue, the filling, the flavor combinations, and the textures... everything came together so harmoniously yet exciting. I was in love.


Let me admire this piece of artwork one more time before I sink my teeth into it...


omg.

They were so very, very, tasty.

Paris 2011 - with a Pierre Herme bag in my hand

After getting my box of macarons from Pierre Herme, John and I enjoyed our walk back to the hotel.

Along the way I saw more intriguing things.


This gentleman was carving and repairing vintage ivory statues! He was so concentrated on his work and so cute.


Macarons from another shop.


More macarons.

If I didn't have the bag of Pierre Herme in my hand, I'd probably go into the shop and get a few macarons at this point, but I had my mind set on the Pierre Herme macarons, so I only looked around the shop and enjoyed the festive-treat-heaven-atmosphere.


A pile of huge meringue cookies!


And a lot of cute chocolate art pieces.

Oh my. There were so many treats and sweets!

We continued walking down the street, and a couple doors down I was stunned to see a huge chocolate gorilla in the window!


I think this dude was taller than me! He was sitting in the window and looking down at everyone that walked by and admired him.


I wonder if anyone would buy him and eat him up.

With the Pierre Herme bag in my hand, I didn't get any additional treats despite all the lovely temptations from all the cool shops I passed by.

san Francisco 07.11 (7) - Fun Treats at JapanTown

There were two places in JapanTown that I visited multiple times for delicious treats during our most recent trip. 

The first one was Andersen's Bakery inside JapanTown Mall. 

My favorite at Andersen's Bakery? Creamy French. These are little French bread slit length-wise and filled with creamy custard. OMG yumminess.

The other one was the little Japanese-dessert-drink-treat place (not sure if it had a name, but it's in the same building of JapanTown Mall as Sapporoya, in the center hall area.

John and I visited for quick and simple Ujikintoki Kakigori (matcha green tea-azuki bean-shaved ice dessert.)

Yummers!

a box of treats

Doris comes in every morning to have her espresso shots, a small steamer, and a hot tea to go before she heads off to work.

She also likes the treats I make for the shop, and sometimes she'll order a few treat and have me make a "treat box" for her to bring to her office.

Yesterday she wanted to get some brownies and cream cheese bars for a colleague's birthday. "Can you cut those into smaller pieces so everyone in the office can share?" And this was what I did:




Simple, but kind of cute, huh. :)

box of lychee

My friend Joyce came and said that her sister had sent her a present. She would like me to open it with her because she knew I'd appreciate the present as much as she would.


It was a box of lychee from Taiwan!

The packaging was super old-school. My grandfather was a citrus fruit farmer, and there was always these super solid "fruit boxes" in the storage at his house.

Anyhow, this box of lychee brought back so many memories!

But this was not a regular box of fruit of lychee:


It was a cute-tiny-little box!

It had all the "markings" of a traditional Taiwanese fruit box... stamps, trademarks, inspection forms, columns to fill in... you name it. It was awesome!

And what exactly was inside?


Lychee candies!

These delicious little lychee candies were soft and delicious, and they tasted EXACTLY like fresh lychee fruit. Oh my.

Ahhh. Lychee...

florentinas!

I love trying different treats from different places. These days some of my favorite cookies are from Mexico! I found these Florentinas the other day and I'm loving them!



I got the strawberry Florentinas. There were also caramel ones on the shelf, but I'll wait until next time to get them. These are like little strawberry tarts or pies with slightly sticky filling. They are sweet, but not too sweet... they are tasty!

cucu pudding candy

I bought this Jiyugaoka pudding candy from the Japanese UHA Mikakuto company.



I think this is possily the best hard candy I've had for a long time. It's even possible that thi is the best hard candy EVER.

What's not to like... It's from Mikakuto, it mentioned Jiyugaoka, and its flavor is "Japanese pudding". Mmmmm.

Mikakuto uses Sanonto (a special sugar that dedicated bakers like to use in Japan) for the caramel part of the candy, and delicious egg custard for the rest.



So tasty!

roasting chestnuts is fun

My friend Andrew brought me fresh chestnuts.

I had never roasted chestnuts before, even though I enjoyed them very much. When I was little (back in Taiwan) my dad would buy me a bag of "wok-roasted" chestnuts (糖炒栗子）from street chestnut vendors when we were out about.

I loved holding a hot paper bag full of chestnuts and enjoying the aromas in a cold winter day. Ahh.

Anyhow I checked out a few chestnut roasting techniques and decided to roast them in the convection oven at the caffe.


The chestnuts Andrew gave me were HUGE.

Here's what I did:


1. Preheat the oven to 425. Wipe clean the shells of the chestnuts.


2. Cut a little X on the more rounded side of the chestnuts. I used a knife with "teeth" and "sawed" the X.


3. Place the chestnuts (flat side down) on a baking pan. Sprinkle some water on the chestnuts.


4. Bake the chestnuts on convection for 7 minutes (conventional oven 10 minutes), carefully take the pan out and turn the chestnuts (rounded side down) and bake anothet 7-8 minutes (conventional oven 10 minutes).

The outer shells would "bloom" so they are not too hard to remove. The inner shell did require a lot more work for me to peel.


The first chestnuts were all broken because I didn't know how to properly remove the shells. BUT they were really tasty!

And then Andrew brought me more chestnuts!

We roasted some more at the caffe, and they turned out very well. I even successfully removed the shells on one of them without breaking it!



Here are a few tricks I learned during these couple times of chestnut-roasting:

a. Cutting the X on the chestnuts while they are around room temperature makes it easier to insert the knife into the shells. 1/4 inch cut is what I'd do.

b. John suggested that dipping the chestnuts in water before baking may be better than sprinkling the chestnuts with some water. I did also read from an Asian lady where she soaked her chestnuts before she stir-fry them in the wok. I have yet to test this theory, though.

c. It is a good idea to use a small knife to help "pick" the inner shells off the chestnuts.

d. Chestnuts are fun and yummy.

I saw a simplified home-version of the "Wok-roasted chestnuts" technique and will probably try it out some time.

Yay for chestnuts.