Nice to see you again!

Wow! It's been SUPER long since I made a post! Sorry, guys!

Been busy...
I started my MBA class! Juggling work, school, and other stuff that I need to do is really hard.
Akk! Too many things to do.

Anyway. While I was "away", a few big things happened!

1) My birthday
2) Cooking class
3) New Year's Party

Jump jump!


1) Birthday!
Yay! It was my birthday last month. (Oh wow, it really has been a while since I posted...)

My parents got this awesome cake from Stella's bakery. It was a raspberry truffle cake. It had this wondrous layer of ganache all over it. Super chocolately; the sugar kind of melts your brain, but I enjoyed it a lot. :)

I really like ganache covered cakes. Fondant is pretty, but I don't really care for the taste. And of course, buttercream and whipped cream are also tasty... :)

Tasty insides

The cake is a lie!

And presents!

I got presents from my sister (Blu-ray and DVD's. Yay! Bolt and Monsters, Inc. Looove.) and Amy.

omg. Amy's presents were awesome! They were baking related!

She got me two presents - a cookie cooling rack (Very handy. The paper bag method can get a bit unwieldy and space hungry at times) - and a book, How to Start a Home-Based Baking Business. I am super excited for this book, though I am really bad at getting around to reading books. (I just started reading the Harry Potter books (late, I know) and it took me over a month to finish The Sorcerer's Stone, because I would forget that I had it.)

However, just looking at the table of contents, it looks very interesting. There is even a section on the legal aspects of starting a home-based business.

Must get around to reading that.

At work they also got me a fruit tart from Whole Foods. It was pretty tasty as well.

Messy fruit arrangement, but it tasted okay...

Speaking of tarts...


2) I had my first cooking class!

It wasn't tarts - that is next, next week - but PASTA.

I love pasta.
And I've always been afraid to try making it.

This class definitely helped raise my confidence and taught me a few helpful hints about it.

The way the class was set up was that there were six workstations and four people to a station. I was grouped up with a pretty young set of people, so that was really fun. There was a grandma of one of the students and she was very "srs bsns" about the whole thing and that was really funny.

We had two recipes, a spinach-ricotta ravioli with a shrimp and Alfredo sauce (Alfredo sauces is so bad for you! Just butter and cream - I am not joking!) and a pappardelle pasta with a sausage ragout. (I'd never heard of pappardelle before this class. They're really easy to make.)

Alfredo sauce before cooking: Butter and Cream.
Isn't that disgusting?!

Ragout

Creating the pasta was really fun. During the first rolling, our pasta shredded up into pieces. However, the instructor came to us and said that is exactly how it is supposed to be. He said that our pasta was the best one of the class because it did that.

Durum flour, eggs, water and oil

MIX IT UP!

"Walking" the dough to prep it to be rolled though the rollers

Square of dough

Though the rollers!

The second rolling was much better and easy to work with.

After that, we let the dough rest and we started on the sauces.

I was sort of appointed by the others to work the stove. This was nice because I hate doing prep work. :)
Afterwards, we rolled out the pasta dough for the last time. We rolled it to the pasta roller's thinnest setting. That was really fun, because we started with this small square and then it stretched into this huge sheet! The pasta was also really durable and the feeling of the rolled out dough was luxurious and cool to the touch. It felt really nice against your skin. :)

The ravioli was really good! Except our team accidentally put the chili pepper flakes that was supposed to go in the ragout into it. Oops!

Cooked up; you can see the pepper flakes...

Everyone wanted to try it though. A happy mistake.

I didn't really care for the pappardelle, though it was really easy to make and fun to cut up. I felt it was too thin. If I ever end up making some of my own, I think I would roll it to the roller's second thinnest setting.

Pappardelle with ragout

Pappardelle with Alfredo

Oh! And the best thing was that we didn't have to clean up after ourselves! Haha!
Overall, a great, great experience.


3) New Years

We had a Chinese New Year's party recently. (Actually, last Saturday...)
Chinese New Year was on the 3rd of February.

I love Chinese New Year's because it's the one time of the year that people come to our house to party. :)
There was a big crowd and really fun.

I baked beforehand, though I had made some super cookie dough, thinking that I would bake it during the party.

I didn't.

(But it's okay. My mom used it this week to hand out to her co-workers.)

Hehe. I was too busy watching Cowboy Bebop, talking, playing Wii and card games, and eating!

I did, however bake chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, peanut butter cookies (as a special request from Andrew), and some bread.

My bread. Oh dear.

There is this recipe for a sweet dough in the guidebook for our Kitchen Aid mixer. I only make it on special, rare occasions because it is SO bad for you (so much butter!) and it makes quite a lot.

It was pretty funny because my mom thought I was making my go-to bread: a cinnamon swirl loaf with raisins. It makes one 9x5" loaf. She said, "you should make a double batch because it won't be enough."

Little did she know, I was making the sweet dough.

However, I listened to her because I am a good daughter and made a double batch.
It was huge! (Though, I think I did that last year, too... I can't remember...) It used like, nine cups of flour! After the dough proofed, it was spilling out of the bowl!

Last year was the year of the tiger. I made the dough into the shape of a tiger. I coated the stripes in poppy seeds. I though it looked a bit silly, but it was devoured.
(I'll have to make a post about bread. This one had some problems with it...)

See? Silly, right?

This year was the year of the rabbit, so I made the dough into the shape of a rabbit. (kind of). People though it was cute. I thought it looked dumb. Haha. Whatever; it was also devoured.

Fat bunny :D

I think it's probably because of all the butter that goes into it that makes it so good.

Off with your head!
(We had to test if it was done; there was so much dough...)

You're... you're going to eat me? :(

My family also had a celebration at our family restaurant. Apparently, it was also someone's birthday, too.
We had a lot of desserts. A mousse cake, a "Chinese style" sponge cake (really light sponge with whipped cream and fruit), and Georgetown cupcakes!

I love how there are (lucky) red bunnies.

Anyway, I should sleep soon, though I really want to watch some White Collar but I should probably sleep even though tomorrow is my day off...

Matt Bomer is so pretty and Tim Dekay's character is sooo cool and sweet with his wife. <3

I will debate it while I insert pictures in this post!


ETA: Okay, maybe I should go to bed. It is 1 AM...