• 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…

  • 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…

  • 5-Spice Qiézi: Fun with Aubergines

    I should be trying to sleep right now. It’s nearly 10pm and I have an 8am train to catch tomorrow morning, whisking me off to the glittering metropolis of Hefei, the esteemed capital city of Anhui province which is about…

  • HangZhou Rearranged Chocolate Apple Cake

    I actually left the flat this past weekend. In fact, I even left Shanghai. For the past two months, I’ve been like the love child of an eccentric hermit and a domestic goddess, holed up in our cozy flat, dusted…

  • Chewy Oatmeal Cookies, to Stave Off the Ennui

    For those of you who notice such things, my other blog, the impractical one,  has been lying fallow for a while now. I have no excuses. It’s not as though I’m swamped with work these days either.  In fact, October…

  • Autumn’ish Roasted Garlic and Pumpkin Soup

    This one is technically a two-parter, as I made the soup at the same time as I threw together the Xinjiang Irish stew. The stew will come later. I don’t want to confuse everyone with too many different things under…

  • Hóng Pútáojiǔ Chocolate Birthday Cake

    This one had been sitting around in my drafts folder for ages, neatly cut and pasted but never attempted.  It just seemed so incredibly decadent that I knew a) I had to make it and b) it had to be…