Cookies and Guavas

Here are a few things that have occurred recently:

1. Baking cookies!

I got a toaster oven. In general, most household kitchens in east Asia lack full-sized ovens. As an avid baker, I’ve really been missing my access to an oven. Holiday present from my father – a toaster oven! I used it made ginger-honey cookies for Christmas. I was actually surprised by how well they turned out, considering that I haven’t baked anything in months and I simply winged everything. (I think it is also a testament to the robustness of cookies. Sugar, flour, and fat are almost always delicious.)

The very precise recipe was to combine the following ingredients:

• blocks of brown sugar with ginger embedded in them (sold as ginger tea 薑母茶)
• cake flour
• vegetable and olive oil
• some baking soda
• two eggs
• cream
• whole milk
• some salt
• honey
• cinnamon. Lots. And then even more.

Then I rolled them in more brown sugar and put them in the toaster until they looked done. To be honest, they were actually quite good – soft and chewy with some crunch at the very edge due to the brown sugar. The chunks of ginger kept things exciting.

 

I’m looking forward to expanding my repertoire to chocolate chip / chocolate. Oh, maybe Mexican chocolate chip cookies as well…

Thanks, Dad!

 

2. Yellow Guava

I discovered a new fruit. Or more precisely, a variation on an old theme. I’ve been enjoying regular white guava, and then the more expensive, more flavorful and expensive red-hearted guava. But today my roommate and I happened upon a man selling a yellow guava as well. The sign said something like 黃樹上 or “on the tree yellow”. The guavas were quite yellow by comparison, so much so that we just had to give them a try. Our summary is that it looked, had the texture of, and smelled sort of like a papaya, but tasted like a guava. Which means it was pretty excellent.

Also, if you Google image search “yellow guava” but instead use the Chinese characters “黃芭樂” you don’t get any pictures of guavas, but instead mostly exercise mats.