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If I can’t eat them, I can just wear them.

Have a lovely long weekend, all!

I’ve always wanted to braid bread! And this took all of half an hour, from start to baked—only because of a secret shortcut.

I know, I know, I could have made my own dough. Except I…didn’t. Haha! I was making this the night before I would give it to a friend for her birthday, and it had been a long, hard day at work. I wanted to give my friend something homemade, but I didn’t have the energy to make dough, have it rise and roll it out. So I decided to compromise, something I rarely do. This one was a Pillsbury Bake-off finalist (1992), after all!

Along with the Pillsbury Pizza Crust, here are the other ingredients: Boursin cheese (one of my favorite things to eat!), Canadian bacon, pepperoni and eggs. You’ll also need some mozzarella and parmesan.

And really, this couldn’t be any easier! First, unroll the crust and press to size. Spread Boursin down the middle third of your dough rectangle, then top with the Canadian bacon and pepperoni.

Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over the cured meats, then the parmesan. Bacon+pepperoni+cheese=how can you go wrong?

With a sharp knife, make cuts down both sides of your dough about an inch long, to about a half inch from your fillings. Start “braiding” the dough by overlapping alternating strips, making sure to cover the yummy goodness inside.

What to do with the ends? Pinch them shut the way I did here, and tuck them underneath the dough to seal.

Step back and say, “Wowza!” (It’s so simple to do yet looks so impressive!)

Mix an eggyolk with some water, brush on top of your braided wonder and sprinkle some poppy seeds on top.

Bake for 11 to 14 minutes, and this is what you get.

Slice and dip in pizza sauce to enjoy. So good and so embarrassingly easy!

Here’s the RECIPE for this quick, savory treat. I hope you try your hand at it, too!

It was good practice for me, and now I want to try my hand at making my own dough and playing  with different fillings. I’m already thinking of a mediterranean-inspired one with feta cheese, artichoke hearts, black olives and roasted red peppers. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Sometimes, a girl just wants to stitch some neat little x’s on cloth, you know?

And sometimes, the timing’s perfect: Her friends Ross and Sara are getting married in June, and she wants to give them a handmade wedding gift.

And even more, she just happens to find the cutest Etsy cross-stitch pattern maker, who has a pattern for a bride and groom who look just like her friends! (This is one time I hope Ross and Sara don’t actually read my blog, haha.)

I’m reacquainting myself with cross stitching again. In all honesty, I haven’t stitched an X since God knows when. It was one of the very first needlepoint techniques taught to us in school, but I was taught way before that by my mom (thank you, Mama!).

I’m having a blast putting this together, because it’s bringing me back to my childhood. Just like riding a bike, I tell you! Some things I remembered from when Mama first taught me:

1) Organize your thread.

In the old days, we would take a piece of cardboard, punch holes in them with a hole punch, mark thread colors in each hole and thread the corresponding embroidery floss color through each. I found out that there are premade plastic bobbins that you can fill up with thread, mark and arrange by number to loop through a giant ring. Maybe these have been around for a while, but I certainly had no neat little plastic bobbins like these growing up! I love the obsessive-compulsiveness of it all, haha. I even made E. wind some thread for me.

2) X marks the spot.

Mama told me to always start with a stitched cross that intersects right through the middle of your Aida cloth, and right through the middle of your design. This is a handy reference point for when you’re first starting to count your stitches and place them where you want on your fabric.

3) Be mindful of your thread length.

Too short, and you’ll need to change threads more often (which is a pain in the patootie), but too long and you run into the risk of tangles. The perfect length is that from your fingers to the inside of your elbow. I usually work with two skeins, so I double up this length to work on one set of two skeins at a time.

4) Stitch in the same direction.

The first “leg” of your x’s should go in one direction, and the second leg that completes the x should all go the other. I know it seems like that shouldn’t matter, because they’re all x’s and when they’re all grouped together you can’t really tell which is going where. But when you step back, you’ll notice the difference in how the thread catches the light. Mama and I had arguments to high heavens about this—I didn’t believe her at first, but trust me, she’s right!

I’ll be sure to post the finished project—especially when I get the chance to frame it. So excited!

I think your next crafty project should be a cross stitched one, don’t you? Even if you’ve never done it before, I’ll tell you a line from a print ad I remember seeing in a magazine when I was little: If you’ve sewn a button, you can cross stitch! (I don’t know why I’ll never forget that, haha!)

Via here.

Xoxo! 

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Further Reading Into The Art Of X-Stitching (Because nerds are awesome!)

* ANDWABISABI has the cutest cross-stitch patterns for sale on Etsy. I’m not even kidding about this cuteness. Here is solid evidence proving I do not lie about this cuteness!

…ok, seriously now. Cross-stitched punctuation marks? I’m all over THAT! Get your x-in on HERE.

* Here’s an A to Z Of Cross Stitching. Because I love A’s and Z’s and all the letters in between.

* Whaaaattt?!?! A cross-stitch pattern generator for captions? These people are geniuses!

* Subversive cross-stitch patterns. Because deep down inside, you’re a rebel. With a needle.

Amy Butler for Kalencom

Because I need another purse like I need more fabric.

Have a lovely weekend, all!

The first baking experiment I ever had as a kid was when I made a Mango Cake with a Mango Buttercream Frosting when I was 14. My nanny helped me bring all the ingredients together, but for the most part, I did all the creaming and mixing and baking by myself. It was somewhat of a major undertaking, because making buttercream in the tropical heat isn’t exactly a walk in the park. The cake wasn’t perfect, but it was my first, and for that it will always be special. After I decorated it, I stepped back with eyes wide as saucers, and said, “Wow, I made that!” And my nanny piped up and said something I will always remember, “You always could, you just didn’t know it!”

I remembered this story as I learned to make macarons last night. I attended a two-and-a-half hour baking class with Clémence Gossett of Gourmandise Desserts (at Platine Bakery in Culver City), where I learned to make these legendary little gems. They’re legendary because there’s so much myth surrounding how they’re made. And culinary myths are the worst kind. They’re spun and re-spun in kitchens, on blogs and in bakeries that they take on a life of their own. They’re shrouded in mystery and scare away the most well-intentioned home bakers; they scared this home baker for a long time.

Clémence is the kind of generous teacher who doesn’t just disseminate information. Her class wasn’t simply, “This is a pot, you put these things in it, cook it for this long and serve it this way.” We also learned about ingredients and where they come from, and being a rabid food history fan, I appreciated the lessons very much. She told us about the interesting origins of chocolate, how vanilla beans are cultivated, all the little back stories of the materials we would use to cook. And once she started telling the class about how sugar is made, I felt right at home. I grew up around sugar all my life (read this post about my childhood on a sugar mill in the Philippines). I loved hearing the story of my favorite ingredient told by someone who understood it well. Clémence was all about debunking the Great Macaron Myth, and it was refreshing to hear that my fear of these tiny things was actually quite irrational.

I’d like to think that the class was like smelling salts to the slumbering baker in me. It made me recall the pure, unadulterated joy I feel when I bake. I honestly don’t know why I forget sometimes. I guess life has a sneaky way of distracting you. For me, there’s a day job to do, things to sew, dance classes to try and get back to, blog posts to write, trips to take and people to love. But more and more, I’ve come to realize that among all my creative pursuits, I’m most confident with my baking. In my other lives, I’m still very much the hesitant quilter/crafter, the shy dancer, the tentative writer, though I try to learn as much as I can every day to become more competent in these arts. But in the kitchen, with a whisk in my hand, I’m at my most courageous. I’m most myself when I’m lost among the sounds of a busy kitchen: the steady whirring of my mixer, the cracking of eggs against the lip of a ceramic bowl, the pinging of pistachios as they’re poured into a steel bowl for shelling. These make up the soundtrack of my bravest days.

And so, if you ask: “Are macarons difficult to make?” The answer is: they are and they aren’t. They’re challenging because of the techniques you DO have to learn: how to gauge the stiffness of your meringue, how to fold your almond flour into the mixture without deflating the eggwhites, how to tell when you’ve folded enough. But at the same time, they’re easy…because I was able to make them. And I didn’t undergo training through a rigorous pastry program in culinary school. I’m just someone who loves to bake, who went to a baking class that happened to be close to my house, who watched, and listened, and learned. And I’m willing to practice.

The first thing that popped into my head when I tasted the Vanilla Macarons with Salted Caramel that we made was this: “Kanamit!” This is the word for “delicious” in Ilonggo, the dialect I grew up with. It had this crunchy shell that gave way to a delicately sweet, chewy center, that led you by your tastebuds to a rich, toe-curling caramel.

It was heavenly. And how interesting, I thought to myself, that the language of flavor in my head isn’t in English! It’s in the words of my childhood. Maybe this goes back to that very first cake, in that hot kitchen in the province, and the realization that I even as a little girl, I was capable of making delicious things with my own hands if I only set my mind to it. That memory echoes to the big girl I am today, and tells me that I CAN make macarons no matter how mysterious they may be. I could make these mouthwatering, divine treats all this time—I just hadn’t known it.

I sometimes forget how much I love baking, and then I take a class like last night and feel like going home, baking all night and not minding one bit if I fell asleep in my apron with flour on my nose and powdered sugar in my hair.

Here’s to more adventures in flour, sugar and egg whites!

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If you’re interested in exploring the world of dessert-making through a delicious class with Clémence, her website HERE, lists all her upcoming classes. If you sign up for her newsletter, she sends you recipes, too.

It’s been a while since my last post, and here’s where I’ve been.

Behind my new toy

I saved up for this MacBook for a while. A long while. Too long, if you ask me. Now that I have it, I don’t know how I survived all those years without my own laptop. I’ve spent the past two weeks organizing my digital life, which meant transferring files, contacts, music, pictures; syncing all to my phone; downloading applications and trying not to be too crazy organizing all the digital “furniture” in it. It’s kind of felt like I moved homes.

On page 132 of this book

Vickie Howell’s new book on the different personalities that make up the crafting movement across the world, Craft Corps, hit bookshelves today. I had responded to a call for entries about a year ago to submit my profile as a crafter for this project. I thought nothing of it until I got an e-mail later in the year saying the publishers were including my profile. I found out at lunch today that the book was available at Barnes & Noble and I half-skipped to the store the minute I got off work. I was nervous because I know text gets cut in final manuscripts, but E. and I leafed through the pages, and there I was, on page 132! (I wanted to twirl across the book aisles in sheer elation, but I didn’t want to be kicked out of there!)

What’s even more awesome is that my profile comes right after the feature on Denyse Schmidt, who’s my modern quilting heroine. I know she doesn’t know who I am, but following her in a book on crafting feels like we’re sitting next to each other on a park bench.

This book couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been in the crafting doldrums lately, but reading it has reminded me of something: All I’ve ever really wanted to do is make the most of this chance to live a creative life, be it through something I make in the kitchen or something I put together on my craft table. I’m looking forward to slowly reacquainting myself with my sewing machine, my crochet needles, my jewelry pliers and my yarn and threads. And while I’m at it, my rolling pin, my piping bag, my electric mixer, my cookie cutters! There’s just too much awesome creative energy out there to ignore. I have to celebrate it by joining this big, creative, cool club.

And how have you been, World?