lead to a dozen blueberry muffins. I love muffins and cupcakes. However, I can't figure out which I love more. Cupcakes are adorable, airy and sweet, with a dollop of icing for measure. Muffins are grand, dense and savoury, with wonderful surprises inside. I really cannot decide, as I love them both so much.
My friends tell me that I'm a great little baker. I guess it's partly true. I'm comfortable in the kitchen, and love cooking and baking. I have my parents to thank, though. It's not as if they raised me in the kitchen - heavens no, they would definitely not do that as Asian parents (the stereotype is partly true in this case).
My father is a wonderful baker. I remember when I was little and had a day off of school, I went to school with my father. He had a baking class, and while I don't remember the lecture at all (ha, some things never change), I distinctly remember walking into the class, holding his hand, sitting on one of the stools, and then being called up by the teacher/professor/who knows what he was called at the college. I was lifted up onto the counter and was asked to answer a question. I remember the laughter from the rest of the class, doing a little curtsy, and jumping off the counter to run to my dad. That's all I remember of that day, but from that, I take other memories of being in the store kitchen and bothering my dad while he baked a new batch of treats.
I can speak of my mother's wonderful skills as a baker, but she is also a fabulous caterer, so I'll share those kitchen tales of her for another time. In the mean time, I'll have to look for the recipe again as I seem to have lost it in my mess of a room. I'll edit the post to have the recipe another time.
I have somehow, inadvertently, locked myself in my room. It is currently 5:15 am, and I have to go to the bathroom to pee.
I have no idea how this happened, but I figure something went wrong before I closed my door many hours earlier. The inside doorknob is sort of ... pulled out of its "socket" and I have already tried to jiggle it or push it back in. Nothing is working, and I do not want to do anything else to it for fear of not being able to work the other side. I just texted my roommate, but she's sleeping and most likely did not hear it. Blast! Also, again, it is 5 am during exam period and I feel so bad for waking my roommates who have to study for upcoming exams.
ETA (5:45 am) K responded to my text message by freeing me. Thank goodness.
I've been meaning to bake some bread for awhile now. When I stumbled upon this recipe on dlynz.com for English Muffin Bread, I could not resist.
First of all, the act of baking bread is great. I mean, through the magic of yeast, dough just doubles in size (I know how yeast works, by the way). It's amazing and wonderful. I made the dough during How I Met Your Mother*, and let it rise during Heroes**. Unwittingly, I forgot to divide the dough into the pans before I left it to rise. That explains the depth/height/whatever of the bread. When I did remember to divide it, it was wonderfully bubbly and yeasty that I lamented my mistake, but left it to rise more before putting it in the oven.
Which leads us to my favourite part of baking bread: the smell. Oh, the wondrous smell of baking bread. It seriously fills up the whole house, and no one objects to the smell because it is just delicious. The whole time the bread was baking in the oven downstairs, the smell would drift up the stairs into my nostrils and make me drool a little bit. I've already had a couple of slices, and cannot wait to have some for breakfast. And, yes. I'm sharing with my roommates.
* Excellent episode. I've missed the whole Robin/Barney story, and of course Lily told Marshall that Barney loves Robin. The Ted line reinforced his annoyingness but I still like him despite it.
** Not gonna lie: I don't know why I'm still watching this show. To be fair, it has been getting better these past couple of episodes, and I liked the Angela backstory (still do not know what Charles Deveaux's power is exactly - some sort of telepathy). Unfortunately, I thought it was going to be a fiercer episode than It was.