Hong Kong Bakery Shop

Yet again, I yearned for Chinese bakery food.

This time, I found three items of intense interest at the Hong Kong Bakery Shop. These were the pandan Swiss roll, the taro bun, and the pineapple lemon bun. Unfortunately for me, the pandan cake was sold by the roll, which was $5.50. I asked whether they sold slices of cake, and she said no, even though they DID sell slices of green tea cake along with the roll of green tea cake! Ah well. I guess next semester I'll just have to buy a whole pandan cake.

I got a taro bun because I felt like biting into big, starchy cubes of freshly cooked taro. I was severely disappointed; the taro was pink and mashed! PINK! and not textured like taro at all! It was cold and lacked the sought-after flavour! The bread was poofy though, but that still didn't make me feel good about spending 80c on a mediocre, unsatisfying bun. Especially when Mayflower Bakery sells taro buns for 70c.

I also got the pineapple lemon bun, this time careful to ask whether there was actually lemon inside the bun after the fiasco at Mong Kok Station Bakery last time. Of course, the "pineapple" part refers to the pastry top.

This bun was amazing! The pastry was like all other pastry (although there were a few sesame seeds on top), the bread was like all other bread... but the lemon curd filling simply rocked! It was also a pretty generous ratio of lemon curd:bread. I now have to learn how to make lemon curd. I am definitely coming back to get more of this bun. It's squished in the picture because it had been in my bag for 4 hours, but it was still scrumptious!

In retrospect, however, I'm thinking that maybe Mong Kok bakery just gave me the wrong bun when I asked for a lemon bun. Maybe they put the pork floss buns in the lemon bun shelf by accident. Either way, I wouldn't want to risk it again, and since Hong Kong Bakery sells lemon buns, why would I go to Mong Kok Station again? Plus, the buns cost the same.

I guess this is how businesses win over customers. Serve the correct food item.

Next time I'll try the taro bun at Mayflower Cafe. It's probably better than the one at Hong Kong Bakery.

Hong Kong Bakery Shop

917 Race St.

MS's Grad Party - Desserts!

Okay I lied. I WILL talk about MS's grad party, because it was truly the one with the most ethnically diverse foods [well. Apart from mine :P, but mine doesn't count]. This month, June, has been the most prodigal month of my life. No kidding. All that EXCESS food ["XS" as my chem teacher used to write, while we balanced out equations]... all that variety...

This is LEGIT Americana. Eat and party. Oh, and run away from exercise.

This is the stuff I've been missin' out since 2006, though I don't really know if I would've wanted partying to interfere with schoolwork. Maybe it was just better that I used to be antisocial, because by being antisocial, I would get all my work done.

But now that HS is over, I can party all I want!! This morning, JM came over for breakfast, I went for a super-long walk with MZ, JM and my bro and I went to the weight room... and it was all real chill, just hanging out and letting time slide by, without a sense of anxiety and procrastination.

Okay, so the dessert at MS's party was really sweet! She is Philippino, so there was a ton of ethnic food, which I love. Oh, there was a whole roasted pig... as a side note. MP commented on the irony that I found it enticing, but I basically blog about anything that interests me, food-wise... so here it is!

Glutinous rice pudding, with some brown sugar topping that was the reason the pudding tasted good. [I like corner and side pieces].

Mango trifle. It. Was. The. Best. Thing. There. Layers of mango and cream, patched up with sponge cake and crushed sweet biscuit pieces, and a crunchy top...

Pieces of trifle, with watermelon and the rice pudding.

I think that this was sweet grass jelly drink, with colourful tapioca balls inside. I am not sure, though.

Plantain wrapped in sweet pastry. It actually tasted like sweet potato pastry, for a second, but then I saw the seeds and the yellow filling. Oh, and the texture was not sweet potatoey. Plantains are awesome!

Eggplant parm; glutinous rice flour sweet bun, with a piece of processed cheese [It was sticky and nice until I got to the cheese]; soft taro pudding, coconut rice pudding - second favourite dessert there; some mini rice cake [see below] that I didn't like as much; upside down flan spongecake.

Another rice pudding, above which is the mini rice cake that I didn't really fancy.

Sponge cake! With flan on top! I love flan, in general, and the fact that this cake is absolutely beautifully shaped truly helped me to more helpings of it...

Plate of everything. The one in the bottom left is the coconut rice pudding, and I took the corner piece, with the crusty top and sides. I think that I love corner pieces because it has the widest range of textures.

Veggie Crunchers.

I really would rather call them "Veggie Chips", but there's probably some copyright issue with FritoLay or something, or someone did a [as typical] bad translation from Chinese to English. Anyway, these... chips are extremely crunchy!!! There is a weird sweet and salty taste, because, as you can probably tell, SWEET potato is sweet. Thus, sweet potato chips covered in [ostensibly,] "sea salt" just tastes kinda weird. Not "bad", exactly [as in, not like mint chocolate + fat free plain yoghurt, which is the WORST COMBINATION OF FOOD IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE!!], but just not satisfying. Also, though they aren't fried, they still contain 6g fat per 28 g serving. Sure, it's better than Doritos [8g per 28g serving], but I think I'd rather eat the vegetables raw.

In order: Sweet potato [brown skin], carrot, taro, green bean [THE BEST PART!], purple thing... I don't think that it's taro, but it probably is, but it's too dark..., squash - a.k.a. pumpkin [green skin]. Now, a 3D view!:

Sittin' on my chair. I'll definitely buy a pack of green bean chips in the future, but I probably won't be buying these again. They're not super. [Well, my mum bought them.]

On another note, today in Calc we had an M&M lab, in which we had a graph of f(x)=xx+1, and we found its integral by putting M&Ms in the area between [0,3] and between f(x) and the x-axis. I put them in order of colour... turns out I had a lot of green, a lot of blue, barely any red.. some orange and yellow and brown. I didn't take a picture because I'm not allowed to use my phone [though if I had brought it, I'm sure I would've been allowed to...]. It was pretty chill.
SMILE GUYS!