anpan

Seven years later and the food blog resurfaces under quite different circumstances; different city, different decade and how can one forget a pandemic? What a great time to document my COVID-19 food diary online through the revival of this blog. Although almost everything has reopened in the city, this pandemic is here to stay for the next little while and I figured it'd be a great opportunity to pursue my culinary experiments on this long forgotten blog.

anpan - classic japanese red bean bun

blueberry boy bait

After almost 3 months on hiatus, I'm back! It's been a very odd summer. I have to admit, studying full time rather than working is different. Although that three letter word haunted us everyday (and still does until next week!), I spent my summer studying, eating and playing with some of my favourite girls. Regardless of next week's outcome, it was a good summer and hopefully all of our hard work will pay off!

Anyhow, enough about the summer, and onto the baked goods! I had frozen blueberries that I never had the chance to bake during the past month and stumbled on this recipe while surfing on smitten kitchen. Deb's recipes never disappoint. With such a whimsical name, it had to be baked! Blueberry boy bait! ;) Who could resist this buttery cake?

blueberry boy bait

chewy oatmeal cookies

It's already June! I can't believe how time just flies sometimes! Busy season is over. Already fully back into school, but it feels quite unreal that I'll be writing my UFE this September! It has been such a challenge this past month adjusting back into study mode. It feels that I have so much more time on my hands, but I just need to figure out how to balance everything out. Anyhow, I completely forgot how I was craving omurice for the past two months! I almost forgot. After seeing on another fellow blogger's post about this amazing dish, I knew that I wanted to make it too. It makes use of one of my favorite condiments: ketchup!

OMURICE <33

I also made oatmeal cookies recently! As requested, you'll find the recipe in here ;). Please do excuse the instagram pictures. Papa unfortunately took back his camera so cheers to filtered pictures for now! These are one of my favorite cookie recipes! My love for oatmeal is truly unconditional. And so, I love all the rest of its by-products.

my perfect blueberry muffin

What an ambitious title I've got here! Over the years, there's one type of muffin that I could never get fed up of and that is my dearest blueberry muffin. Most probably overated, but I love them! I have tried different variations of this muffin, with oil, butter and lemon, but I don't think I've ever had my "perfect" blueberry muffin until now! I had one that I overused because my mom loved it, but I was getting fed up of that same old blueberry muffin. So I present you what I consider as my perfect blueberry muffin, at least for now.

baked strawberry oatmeal

I can't believe I haven't baked anything with strawberries yet. It's one of those fruits that I just love to eat. I think I could eat it every day just like bananas and oatmeal. I present to you, the baked strawberry oatmeal. I'll admit that it looks terrible and not quite appetizing, but I like to think that it is its rustic charm.

 baked strawberry oatmeal

pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins

After a zillion of hours watching this drama, I've fully gotten my dose of kdrama that I needed. Midterms were quite something this semester! It's especially hard to get back on track after summer vacations. I'm not yet in my "work" mode, but that's over with work coming up in less than a week! Anyhow, enough rambling and onto the baking! After receiving amazing pumpkin spice mix from Cars, I decided that I needed to make something with it, especially with all those pumpkin recipes out there. The only problem was that I didn't have canned pumpkin puree. So the closest thing I can get to pumpkin spice muffins was pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins.

spiced applesauce muffins

zombified blueberry muffins

October only means one thing to our kid mind: HALLOWEEN. I'm not a big fan of horror movies, but I have to admit that I love The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I caught yesterday's episode thanks to my game "Tapped Out" that kept me posted on when the next episode was coming up! Haha, advertisement at its best! Anyhow, I did not intend for my muffins to turn out this way... They looked terrible out of the oven... You can judge for yourself with the picture below!

muffin invasion!!

apple fritter muffins

I really love autumn. Although the trees are getting ready to go to sleep for winter, everything else is amazing! The weather is getting chilly enough to wear boots and scarves. Coffee shops are serving their seasonal pumpkin spiced lattes. And best of all, APPLE PICKING time. Seriously, what is there not to love about this awesome season?

apple fritter muffins

banana muffin comeback

I am still alive! And doing just fine. It's the flu season and I might have caught something. Let's just hope its allergies. On the bright side, I did buy a lot of bananas over the week. Like, when I mean a lot, see for yourself here. Ever since my parents came back from their trip from Cuba, our house has not been out of bananas. They are such a great fruit! (awesome for eating, baking or cooking) I think it's the perfect food.

On that lovely picture, you can see that there were some on the far right that were super ripe, almost black. I think those are truly the best for baking. And no worries, no bananas were harmed in the making of these muffins. (well the fulfilled their banana destiny ;)

simple banana muffins

lemon blueberry loaf

I always have a stash of frozen blueberries whenever I feel like making blueberry muffins (my favorite!). These berries are so versatile since you can eat them fresh, bake them and even make smoothies out of them. Thank goodness that I'm not yet allergic! I decided to get creative and change up my blueberry craving so I decided to make a lemon blueberry loaf.

when lemon meets blueberries

banana applesauce muffins

Bananas would be a staple in my diet if we had any at home at all times. It just goes well for anything, especially with oatmeal since it acts as a sweetener. It starts my mornings on the right foot, but is a hot commodity in my house. Whenever we have any laying around, they don't stay that way. They can disappear in a day or two. That's just how much we love them. I was lucky to have three overripe bananas laying around so I decided to make banana muffins!

Breakfast!

pancake madness

I've always had a sweet tooth when it comes to meals, including breakfast. One of my favorites to eat in the morning would have to be pancakes. They are so fluffy and light! And when they are soaked in maple syrup.. ahh so yummy! Who can say no to pancakes?! Definitely not Jan Di from Boys Over Flowers (go to 1:19 to see what I'm talking about)!

Can you spot them?

Anyhow, even though I love pancakes very much, I have always had a problem when coming to making them. It has always been a challenge. I'm not sure if it's the amount of batter I'm putting on the skillet or my actual recipe. I really can't tell! You can see a few burnt pancakes in my pile of pancakes. Actually, I think some of them burnt because I was drinking a glass of OJ while they were on the stove... I guess I was slightly distracted. However, most of them turned out pretty nice! And on top of that we have blueberries at home.. <3