36 HOUR CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

I attended a baby shower this past weekend and wanted to bring some baked goods. The problem was that I didn't have time the morning of the shower to spend hours baking. I had recalled reading about a cookie recipe where you create the dough a day or two ahead of baking (reviews here and here). It was just what I needed! I whipped up the dough late Thursday night and quickly baked the cookies early Saturday morning. The end result was perfection!

I used the NY Time's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, adapted from Jacques Torres famous for his chocolate shops in NYC. What makes this recipe so unique?

• Instead of using all-purpose flour, the recipe calls for a mixture of cake and bread flour.
• Once the dough is completed, you store it in the fridge for 36 hours, the key to perfect flavor and texture.
• Finally, once the dough has rested and scooped out onto a baking sheet, you sprinkle each cookie with some sea salt (love the salty and sweet combination!) before baking.

Here are some pictures of my baking process...

I had forgotten to sift the flour in the first batch, so I asked M to taste the cookies to see if he could tell the difference. I also tested 2 different baking times. The results? They all tasted great, but I did prefer the texture of the cookies with the sifted flour.

 And voila! The cookies were ready for the baby shower.

LIFE LATELY

The calm after Typhoon Vicente

Dinner for 2

Egg tarts:)

A special 1st birthday cake

Squid fishing!

Amazing views of the harbour from our squid fishing boat

Morning view of Clear Water Bay

GIRLS WEEKEND IN SONOMA

After my week-long trip to NY, I flew to San Francisco to spend the weekend in Sonoma to celebrate my college girlfriend's bachelorette! Being new to Hong Kong, we are in the process of making all new friends. It will take time to develop relationships similar to the ones I have from grade school and college. Needless to say, I had been craving a girls weekend and this was the perfect way to end my trip back to the States.

We spent the weekend visiting wineries, drinking plenty of wine, eating great food, catching up on life, laughing and of course, celebrating our bachelorette! Here are a few snapshots from the weekend.

Necessary pit stop on our way to Sonoma

First time behind the wheel in 6 months! Here we are crossing the Golden Gate Bridge

Celebrating our bride!

Our first stop... What a shack

Preparing our glasses

Scribe Winery

It was hard to leave after such an unforgettable weekend. I am counting down the days when I will see them again in November for our bachelorette's wedding weekend!

OUR FIRST TYPHOON

As I write this post, M and I are experiencing our first typhoon. Typhoon Vicente has brought heavy rains and winds to Hong Kong beginning yesterday. By the middle of last night, the Hong Kong Observatory issued the number 10 hurricane signal at 12:45 a.m, the highest storm signal since 1999.

Here are some pictures of us commuting home last night. It was madness in the subway station as people rushed to get home.

Our rush home

Our Claire and Brad wedding umbrella could not withstand Vicente:(

 And not much had changed when we woke up this morning... Here is the view from our apartment.

Now I am waiting for news that it's safe to travel outside so I can get to work!

New to Hong Kong? We get all of our weather updates from Hong Kong Observatory. They have a great smart phone application where you can receive timely weather alerts. Click here for a link to all of the weather warnings issued in HK.

NYC REVISITED

We just got back from a week-long trip to NYC.

We arrived late Friday night and I was immediately overwhelmed with emotion. I hadn't realized how homesick I was until the customs agent said, "Welcome home." I burst into tears replying, "It's good to be home." The fact that I hadn't slept in 18 hours may have been playing with my emotions, but it felt so good to be back.

As we came across the Williamsburg bridge into the city, it was so great to see the streets filled with such a diverse crowd of people. Have I mentioned that Hong Kong is not a very diverse city, where Chinese make up 90% of the population?

We spent the weekend at our old apartment building at the corner of Chrystie and Houston Street, where our good friend still lives. After a 16 hour flight, it was so nice to stay in such a familiar place. As soon as I dropped off my bags, I rushed to Whole Foods to grab some dinner before crashing. Our old grocery store looked the same. Nothing had moved. I quickly found our favorite granola, yogurt, some organic fruit and freshly prepared sandwiches. It was so nice to be in a place where I knew what I was going to find around every corner.

The next morning I attended a Soul Cycle class by my favorite instructor, Jenny, in Union Square. It's the best workout ever and it totally kicked my butt after not having taken a spinning class in 6 months.

On the way home from spinning, I stopped by the Union Square farmers market to grab some apple cider donuts, an old favorite of mine. I also stopped by my favorite coffee shop in the LES, Bowery Coffee, where I ran into an old college friend that I hadn't seen since we graduated. What a small world.

We spent the majority of the weekend with M's wonderful sister, boyfriend and cousin in Brooklyn, where we ate ridiculously good food, played cornhole and jenga at at awesome bar and tested 30 flavors of ice cream at an ice cream making competition. It was my kind of competition and I was happy to be a judge!

I was in town for a work conference, so the weekdays were spent in meetings. However, my nights were free so we carefully planned each evening to maximize time with family and friends. We also picked cuisines that were more difficult to find in HK. We had BBQ at Blue Smoke in Gramercy with some NY friends, we met my college girlfriends for a classic American meal at Back Forty, we savored delicious steaks at Del Frisco's with M's college friends and I celebrated my girlfriend's recent engagement at Cafe Cluny, an old West Village neighborhood favorite.

We ended our trip to NY just as we had shared our last meal back in January... at Mary's Fish Camp with M's sister and boyfriend. We are pretty much obsessed with their lobster rolls and we couldn't think of 2 better people to share our last meal with!

And if our week in NYC wasn't busy enough, M and I found a few moments to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary!

And just like that, we were packing our bags and leaving New York again. M was off to Philadelphia and Baltimore to visit some great friends. And I was off to California for a weekend in Sonoma with my college girlfriends... More to come on that trip this week!

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

M and I are traveling back to NY today. I have to be there for meetings next week, so we decided to go early to spend the weekend with family.  Our social calendars are jammed pack next week with drinks and dinners with friends and family and we couldn't be more excited!

Before traveling back to Hong Kong, I will be heading to Napa with my college girlfriends for what will be an amazing bachelorette party weekend!

I don't think I will be posting much over the next 10 days or so. Check back in mid-July for updates on our travels.

TAIPEI WEEKEND TRIP

My mom was just in town for 10 days. While she was here we decided to take her to Taipei, which has plenty of historic temples to visit and an incredible national museum (right up her alley!). M's aunt, uncle and cousin also joined us, making it a fun family vacation.

When we arrived in Taipei, we checked into our amazing hotel Les Suites Taipei Chingcheng. I could write a whole post just on how great our stay was at this place. Instead, I will share some highlights below.

• The location is very convenient. It's located just a block from a MRT stop (Nanjing E Rd). So you don't have to rely on taxis to get around the city.

• The concierge provides each room a cell phone which allows you to call other rooms, the reception desk and local numbers for free while you are out and about exploring the city. For example, we split up from my mom one morning. She went to a museum and we went out for dumplings. If we needed to get a hold of her, we could just call her room number from our cell phone and her phone would ring in the museum. Genius, especially when traveling internationally!

• The hotel offers a tasty mix of western and eastern breakfast options and late night snacks (which were all included in our room rate).

• The hotel goes above and beyond to ensure your stay is a pleasant one - from the basket of fruit in our hotel on our arrival to offering many cozy places to sit back and enjoy your time with family and friends.

My mom declared that she would fly back to Taipei just to stay in this hotel again!

After we checked into our hotel, we headed to Longshan Temple, a beautiful Buddhist temple built in 1738. According to our Lonely Planet guide, if you arrive at the temple at certain times during the day (6am, 8am and 5pm), you can hear the worshippers gather in chanting. Unfortunately, we arrived around 6pm.

For dinner, we headed to Shinlin Night Market. We were expecting the night market to be similar to Singapore's hawker stalls, but it was completely different. While the variety and quality of food did not compare to Singapore, Shinlin's market had much more than just food to offer, including clothing and carnival game stalls. It was quite the cultural experience. The energy of the people swarming around us was incredible.

By 10pm we were stuffed with food and feeling sleepy, so we headed home.

Day 2 took us to the Dr. San Yat-sen Memorial Hall (which was just okay - most of the information in the memorial hall is written in Chinese characters, so we didn't get as much out of the visit) and Din Tai Fung for lunch (which was the best meal of the trip - amazing dumplings)!. They have branches all over Asia and in the US.

Dr. San Yat-sen Memorial

Dumpling making at Din Tai Fung

With our stomachs stuffed with dumplings, we were ready to tackle the National Palace Museum, which has the worlds top collection of ancient Chinese art.

While we were at the museum, we were able to see their national treasure, the jadeite cabbage, which is a piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a cabbage head. We also made it to the Royal Style Cartier/ Qing Dynasty exhibit, which included jewelry and objects from ancient China and European royalty.

After the museum, we headed to Taipei 101, the 3rd tallest building in the world (for now). Taipei does not have an impressive skyline like Hong Kong, because it lacks really tall buildings except Taipei 101.

We had dinner at Shinyeh 101, a Taiwanese restaurant on the 85th floor. The impressive views made up for the lackluster food and minimum charge per table.

During our last day in Taipei, we traveled up to Maokung Mountain via a gondola to visit a local tea house for lunch. The gondola ride was very scenic and quite the steal (around US$1.70/each way).

Once at the top, we walked about a half mile (in 95F weather - it was hot!) to a temple.

And past some tea houses along the way...

A map of all the tea houses in the area - so many to choose from!

Until we eventually settled on a quiet tea house away from the crowds.

The tea shop is owned by a small family. The mother performed the tea ceremony, while the daughter translated the ceremony process in English so that we could understand what was going on.

 

She taught us how how to determine when tea is finished brewing (if you make it in clay pot) and how to not only enjoy the taste of tea, but the smell as well. We really enjoyed the wonderful tea, food and the views of the rolling hills and mountains.

After our trip to the tea house, we traveled back to our hotel to pick-up our luggage. We had about an hour to kill so we headed to a local mall for some savory and sweet snacks and one last bubble tea! In Taipei, drinking at least one bubble tea a day is a must. Bubble tea originated in Taiwan and for some reason it just tastes better there.

Taipei has something to offer everyone, from a bustling city center to scenic mountain villages on the city outskirts. Better yet, the flight from Hong Kong is less than 1.5 hours. We will be back again soon.