Friday, February 11, 2011

My Funny Valentine


I really shouldn't be writing this post. My apartment looks like a giant explosion of toiletries, winter clothes, summer clothes and plastic bags. That's right, I'm packing for vacation! This time around, Blammo and I are hitting up New York, Chile, Argentina, Savannah and The Bay Area for about 2 weeks. Yeah. It's going to be nuts. And awesome. And delicious.

We will arrive in Santiago on Valentine's Day, so I decided to bake some vday sweets well in advance. One of the season cake classes at ABC is a White Chocolate Strawberry heart shaped cake. It was adorable but not really my kid of cake. Buttercream frosting seems to be exclusively American and cakes in Japan are almost always topped with whipped cream or ganache. Nothing wrong with that but just not my style. It's pretty though, right?

For my lovely coworkers, who I am getting to know more and more these days I made a batch of Pink Frosting Cookies. When baking for my expat office, I try my best to bring a little piece of home to them and one bite of these cookies will bring you back to elementary school. My birthday is in October near Halloween, so whenever it was my turn to bring in a treat to share for my class, I always got white sugar cookies with bright orange frosting from Safeway. Well, regardless of what color the frosting is the taste will bring you back to those store bought Lofthouse style cookies.

The batch I made tasted spot on and I was so pleased to hear all the Americans say "oh my gosh, these totally remind me of ". Because I always use a 50/50 mix of bread and cake flour, the texture of my cookies turned out more cakey than I would have liked. They were basically cupcake tops. Not a bad thing at all. I don't mind the softness but maybe next time I'll try an 80/20 bread to cake flour mix to see if it makes a difference. 

Ok, I'm running out of things to say about Valentine's Day. I've watched all the new TV shows on my Apple TV and washed every single dish in the house which means, I have to either go to sleep or finish packing.

See you in 2 weeks with lots of pictures and stories from far and away!
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1 comment:

  1. MaraFebruary 16, 2011 at 11:19 AM

    The cake looks so pretty! I know the type of cookie you're talking about. I used to stare at them longingly whenever I went grocery shopping with my mom. I was convinced that buying sweets from the bakery section of Safeway was equivalent to a religious pilgrimage. And it very nearly was - especially when you're seven years old and it's something that is both sweet and PINK.

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