Paul Hollywood's Chelsea Buns

So as some of you may know, and some of you may not, and some of you may not care, I've entered to the Great British Bake Off 2014. 

I even got through to the phone interview round! But I totally freaked out when they called me ("what?! You want to talk to me?! Yes I can talk about baking I love cakes I want to eat cakes all day I've been baking for 7 years my parents don't like cake but it's okay because people at work do did I mention I love cakes wowweeee!" "Erm, thanks Xinmei".) 

Paul and Mary, at the very least I hope you'd be proud of these chelsea buns. 

(You can find the recipe here, or below.)

Afternoon Tea at The Ritz, London

Let me tell you a little bit about the story behind how this afternoon tea came to be. 

Four years ago, I was accepted at Cambridge to study Economics. Of course, my parents were delighted. And as a reward, my dad was going to take me for afternoon tea! And at The Ritz! Somehow, we never really looked into making a booking. Actually, I think the word I'm looking for is that a certain someone had 'tactically forgotten'. And then I graduated and started working and that was that.

But aha! 3 months ago I was browsing the booking website at the Ritz (as you do) and it seemed someone had made a cancellation... so before any more forgetting could be done (because by the time we got round to it I have have retired... Who knows?) I made a booking for three.

Oh my, I do love afternoon tea. And thank you to my wonderful parents for taking me! :)

Summer Sunshine

Christophe Roussel macarons in Paris

I'm not dead! I was just very busy... (it's practically the same thing).

I've now finished my internship, and am now back home for a few weeks before I go back to uni for my very last year (sob). So, I have some exciting things to post in very soon, watch out for:

- I've got a new bento box! (i.e. a new bento post to come)

- My guest post for Jill Colona from Mad About Macarons! (Yes, the very one)

- A little giveaway and info about Le Cordon Bleu cookery school

- Um. Cakes. Lots of them.

And as to The Internship, unfortunately I didn't get the offer from the investment bank but I'll be doing grad applications until I physically cannot type anymore (or get RSI, whichever comes first). If... you know anyone from an investment bank in equities sales who may be able to get me an interview, I will bake you the most MASSIVE TASTY YUMMYLICIOUS cake you could ever want. Ever. And I'll teach you how to solve the Rubik's cube too...

It's really an offer you can't refuse.

But before I leave to go bake/cook for my next post, I'll leave with some photos from various places I've been/things I've done this summer.

Hello Kitty cakes in Chinatown (London)

From China With Love: Out and About

17/12/2010

As soon as I got used to the freezing temperatures and accepted the fact that I probably wouldn’t regain the feeling in my toes for the next two weeks, I finally left the house and went scouring the streets for food and photo opportunities. There are loads everywhere, literally about 2 minutes down the road from my grandparent’s house will be someone selling fruit and vegetables:


And two minutes down the road from that, will be street vendors selling ‘little eats’. I once found the best Chinese sweet onion pastry thing, and wanted a fresh one for breakfast the next day.


Except breakfast for everyone here is about 8am, which (ha!) isn’t going to happen, so when I woke up at 10.30am, I ran out in my pyjamas (it’s er…a fashion statement back in England), but to my dismay, they had gone :(

Most of the street vendors set up at night, usually on a busy road or next to the street markets.

Xiao Long Bao (‘Little Lion Buns’), are like steamed buns but with soup inside, which annoyingly always seems to dribble out when you bite into it. Tasty though!


Here, she’s making omelette with potato strips, egg, frankfurter sausage, and seaweed. Who would have thought, “I think it’s missing something… I know! Let’s add ALGAE!!”. And this wasn't the type that you normally put into soup, it was the crunchy, and slimy (does that have bad connotations? Is there a way of saying nice-slimy?). Just to Asian-fy what could have turned into a Western dish.


All the tea you could ever want – or think of – in your life. Also makes great pot pouri.


’Old Beijing’ toffee apples…and now they’ve also branched out to strawberries, pineapples, kiwis, oranges, even cherry tomatoes. Which is probably good, because I swear those apples were a bit rotten under that mountain of sugar crust.


And last but definitely definitely not least, cakes! Surely they can’t beat my ‘baked with love’ cakes? We shall see (I bought two of each, came to about 80p)….damn, these things are nice.

Lesson learned today: it’s not just sugar that you can put onto anything to make it taste nicer, it seems seaweed does the trick too!

Foodie goes North

Angel of the North, Lake District, Hadrian's Wall, Yorkshire moors....Yorkshire pudding...Yorkshire tea...

I think you know where I'm going with this. The five hour something train journey up to visit my boyfriend bought a whole new culinary experience; though not all of it traditionally Northern, might I add. There was a good bit of Chinese food and Polish food (I think?) thrown in there too.

Now let's see... first experience of Northern food was Pret, much of the same, really. Crayfish sandwich and Jalapeño chicken wrap for him, butternut squash and spinach soup for me (no pictures unfortunately - would look rather touristy taking photos in Pret, I feared). However, it was still REALLY YUMMY. Maybe it was the Northern weather, maybe it was the company, maybe it was the E numbers and MSG; it was goood. But, as I was inspecting my napkin (thought I should pay it some respect before viscously crumpling to wipe my hands with), the message of "Pret creates handmade natural food avoiding the obscure chemical, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today." let me conclude that it was definitely the first two reasons as to why it was REALLY YUMMY.

Getting on to photo-worthy food, Thursday involved a trip to Betty's and Taylor's of Harrogate (pictures taken stealthily - don't really think paparazzi would be Betty's cup of tea), for a Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down.

It being the home and producer of Yorkshire Tea; I immediately went for that, and my boyfriend opted for the Yu Luo white tea - sharing the name last name as him, which is fate. Obviously. We shared a Yorkshire Fat Rascal scone, still hot from the oven, served with creamy white butter. I have to say, never has tea serving been more confusing. The tea come in a teapot (fine), with hot water to top up and a jar of milk (all fine), but there were these strainers that looked like standard headgear of the The Saucepan Man from the Faraway Tree. I figured it was to pour the tea through. And that is what we did. And boy, was the tea good; there must be something about Betty's water supply.

Now, the scone was one a different scale. All crumbly and buttery and rasiny, perfect.

I've just realised the next bit's not in chronological order, but I just HAD to share the Betty's bit first. Before filling ourselves with tea and cake (what a combination), we went to watch the much anticipated Toy Story 3. I won't get into the details, but this is definitely a Pixar triumph and worth the 10 year wait between the movies.

So in terms of movie snacks, we stumbled across a strange Polish shop selling all kinds of things that I couldn't read. It looked colourful, it looked cheap, it looked interesting, so we went in. Well, definitely cheap, as a 1.5l bottle of ice tea came in at 59p. Taste, on the other hand, was yet to be questioned.

So, in the strange new shop, I saw something that caught me eye. Banana? Chocolate? Banana chocolate? Yes please! Banana is the only fruit I really like with chocolate; it's just the right amount of creamy to fit the texture of chocolate. Anyone agree?

But, like I said, taste was yet to be questioned. When I tasted this, it was...slightly strange. The banana was a layer of jelly like substance that tasted more mint-beer than banana, and I'm not sure what the chocolate on the outside was (my Polish in unfortunately still in it's early learning stages, I can just about manage 'vodka' ^^). It was Nestle though, so I'm guessing some kind of dark chocolate Kit Kat like exterior would be best to describe it. Anyway, I ended up chewing round the edge and just eating the chocolate, leaving a gooey yellow...thing in the wrapper. Rating out of 10 would probably be a 3; nothing compared to the Elderflower cake my boyfriend bought me in Betty's!

This pretty much concludes the culinary side of my trip Up North. I haven't included much of the Chinese food, but it included a visit to Red Chilli (possibly the best Chinese restaurant I've been to) They had xiao long bao dumplings, nuff said. On top of this, boyf's household were lovely, and I took back zhong ze (glutinous rice in reed leaves) to stuff my face with at home =)

Lesson learned today: Don't buy banana chocolate. It's weird.