Spinach Egg Drop Soup with Fresh Tofu

Because outside looked like this today (see below), Andy demanded that we have a big pot of soup on the stove to survive this historic day. The news reported that this storm system is the worse in decades, and being in Windsor, i.e. the southernmost part of Canada, it is not typical for us to get over a foot of snow in a day.

Soup was easy to make. We simply boil a pot of water (or broth) and added fresh spinach into the pot when the water starts to boil. We then turned the heat way down to avoid overcooking the vegetables, and tossed in sliced fresh white mushrooms. After letting the mushroom soften in the pot, we added seasoned the pot of soup with vegetable seasoning, salt, and white pepper. Just before turning off the heat, we added in beaten eggs and cubed fresh tofu. We added a dash of soy sauce and a few cracks of the black pepper grinder and that was it!

Baking Adventure

I had just begun my Wilton Cake Decorating classes and I’m extremely excited to learn about all there is about cake decorating. It’s a huge learning curve for me since I’m not at all a baker. The first cake I’ve ever baked was 12 years ago and it was a complete failure. That really put me off baking for a looonnggg time… Nonetheless, I’m forced to bake and frost a cake every cake now so that I can decorate it in class. Andy and my co-workers are extremely happy since I’ll be feeding them a lot of cakes.

My first cake was simply a yellow cake made from a boxed cake mix, but boy oh boy…. there’s much to be learned about baking, even if one chooses to use a ready-made cake mix. I had a battle with my hand-cracked double sifter the first time and ended up throwing that out after baking my first cake. I’ve learned that if one is not ready for a messy kitchen, then one should not venture into baking, or perhaps garner one’s self with a lot of patience towards having flour, crumbs, icing and plenty of bowls and kitchen utensils lying around during this task. Such a person is me. I cannot stand to have a messy or disorganized kitchen. I found myself constantly rearranging my tools while working on my cupcakes.

Nonetheless, here are a few results from my much immature experience as a cake baker and decorator.

The first cake deco class assignment was stars, and here is a picture of it. The rest of the cake is just mediocre. Nonetheless, my colleagues ate up the whole cake, no complains . Then I made some cupcakes for my hb’s colleague’s Christmas party, along with some Chipotle Cream Cheese wontons, but they were all eaten up before I took a picture. Making cupcakes and frosting them is a lot of work!! I had a major headache and was extremely tired by the time I was done with them. The decorations were inspired by Cuppacakes.blogpsot [dot] com Christmas cupcakes. There is still much for me to improve on, from baking to frosting to handling the piping bag. A strong wrist is required along with unending attention to detail and patience.

My cupcakes were too full, they grew “muffin tops” and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried shaving the top off, but the cake was too crumbly (Devil’s Food cake), hence the frosting was “contaminated”. That’s why I stuck with the dome shaped cupcakes and my Christmas trees were out of shape. I’ll really have to work on the right amount of batter for the cupcakes to avoid this in the future.