Tea break

I finally used my new hand mixer! I found out it is too strong to mix some powdery stuff even if I set it as 1, which is the lowest. It blew away some sugar and butter at the beginning. Except for that part, I am liking my new cooking device;). It is definitely saving some preparation time for me. Wait for me to come up with my own baking recipes!

Well, I started off with earl grey cake. My mom gave me her recipe through her blog. I imagine we will be good competitors in the food blog world. Anyhow, I mixed sugar and butter, added flour and tea leaves, and shoved it in the oven! I think it took longer for me to measure ingredients than mix everything. Actually, I could not whip the butter and egg until it turned whitish because the hand mixer was just so strong that I was afraid to lose too much of the mixture all over the kitchen counter. I learned something from it so I stirred the mixture before I turn on the hand mixer in the later steps.

The best thing about it is the cake was delicious! It was sweet and addicting. What was even better is to share good food with people. I shared it with my roommates like how my old roommate used to do--I miss her baking, lol. Everyone liked the cake and we took some ramdon pictures. Two of them brought their sweets to share and it turned into a late night food party. I'm so glad I didn't live by myself. The other roommate suggested me to have a baking basket in the kitchen. She said I could wrap individual pieces and leave price tags on them. For a second, I thought of it but then I remembered how my roommates used to share their bread, cakes and cookies at M-Castle. If there is any left, I will probably just leave it on a kitchen counter and let people take it. If I really need to fundraise for something, I might temporarily open a little bakery. For instance, I really want a certain cooking tool or something. I believe sharing what I bake with people is part of the joy. My next challenge is cake with soy milk or soya drink according to the label. I will welcome any crazy ideas for it:D. I am thinking of soy milk cheesecake but I haven't decided on the details yet.

Here is a picture of my tea cake on top and some delicious brown rice balls wrapped in shiso leaves. Shiso is apparently called beefsteak leaf in English but I have never seen beefsteak in a regular grocery store so I will call it shiso here. It has a strong herbish flavor in it. We use it when we wanna make things take kinda refreshing. My roommate is really good at decorating things. He made those little rice balls into wonderful artworks. I was full but still had to try one of them:). It's a food critic's destiny. Taste it or leave it... Just so you know my cake does not go well with those rice balls. They were two separate things.