Sweet Things

  • Itsy Bitsy Adorable Brownies for Taipeiren (and Me) from KP Kitchen

    Chúc mừng năm mới, y’all! Today is the blissfully silent, empty first day of Tet and Saigon has emptied out and shut down almost completely, with the ever-banging construction sites falling silent and the manic roads looking pleasingly post-Apocalyptic. Pollution…

  • You Need More Chocolate Zucchini Bread in Your Life (and Tummy)

    This post has been open in my tabs for nearly half a year. Seriously. It’s that bad. This little sleepy southern corner of Saigon is the new land of the lotus eaters, with watermelon juice and pho replacing the druggy lôtos.…

  • Pumpkin Spice Toaster Oven Scones and Wok Parathas

      Given that it’s already, oh, mid April and the skies are light and fluffy and sometimes blue, and temperatures have already soared into the high 20s and it’s definitely shirtsleeve weather, I fear that the title of this one…

  • Awesome Nanjing Klepto-Banana Bread (and Pudding)

    I’m a bad food blogger. While I’ve been blathering away over yonder about mops and Chinese demolition sites, I’ve been neglecting to talk with y’all about food. Because I have been cooking, believe it or not. And baking. And blowing…

  • The Infamous Hangzhou Hotel Apple Crisp

    Things are afoot. Now that spring has suddenly sprung here in Shanghai, many of the winter worries that had been taxing my brain are starting to resolve themselves. I won’t go into them in great detail here- that’s what my…

  • Icebox Haw Cookies Saved for a Rainy/Crappy Day

    I’m not, as Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes once insisted, having the time of my life.  Aside from the absence of Patrick Swayze, things here are a bit topsy turvy. We just got word that our landlord will be selling…

  • Brown Sugar Toaster Oven Christmas Cookies

    It’s Christmas Eve and I am sick again. This time I have a cold and managed to set a world record for most consecutive sneezes in a single morning. We attempted to remedy this at lunch by going out for…

  • The Infamous Mega-Carrot Cake

    As you may have noticed, I haven’t exactly written anything here for, um, a while. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t been cooking- oh no. No. I’ve been Little Miss Cooks-A-Lot this month as my parental units are in…

  • Semi-Lucid Rice Cooker Apple Cake

    So I am sick again. This time it’s with a bronchial bark that frightens the neighbours and a fever that has made the past few days rather interesting, perception-wise.  Mind you, sometimes when living in Shanghai it is difficult to…

  • Decadent Bourgeois Coconut Macaroons

    These ones were impromptu. I’d already had a plan for the day and it didn’t involve dipping things in chocolate ganache- though I am never averse to dipping anything in ganache if the opportunity presents itself. I was on a…