cream cheese sugar cookies.

with homemade colored sugar, red and yellow for chinese new year's. :)

tong yuen (湯圓).

"mon jeu" the blind prairie dog. (family inside joke)

a turtle! with its legs all inside the shell, i suppose.

"thursday cake."

it's a birthday cake for my mom!
she doesn't like the american style birthday cake,
all sweet and filled with buttercream,
so i especially thought this recipe up to match her tastes.

-2 chocolate chiffon layers
-almond whipped cream
-toffee "sauce" filling
-chocolate ganache

so i'm super proud that i thought this recipe up,
but not so proud of the results.
first, when the toffee sauce cooled,
it hardened (i should have expected this) but according to the images in the recipe,
it should have stayed, well, "saucy".
second, i couldn't find real almond extract,
so i had to buy imitation almond extract. after i added it to the cream,
it smelled horrible.
it was nothing like almond!

well at least i learned some new things..
and my mom was okay with it. :)

healthier banana muffins.

same recipe as the banana crumb muffin but without the crumb and reduced the sugar by 50%.
the bananas are sweet enough and the crumb is not necessary for a great muffin.

coconut peanut mochi.

coconut mochi with a sweet and crunchy peanut-seasame filling.