first baking adventures

 Last night found me home alone as B went to attend a meeting, which went much longer than we thought it would. But it turned out okay because I caught the baking bug and distracted myself with whisking together my first baked good since living in our apartment. Along the way I realized that I had neither measuring cups or measuring spoons, or baking powder. Undaunted, I pressed on. Here is the aftermath, with the tools I used:

I don't have an electric mixer so I just used a fork and pure muscle power. The mug on the right is my "measuring cup," from which I just eyeballed. The spoon on the left is an odd hand-me-down from somewhere and is labeled "15 SPOON." I have no idea what that means but it looked like a tablespoon to me, so that's how I used it!

I am so thankful for this oven. It's SO Taiwanese but my aunt gave it to me so I'm just glad I didn't have to go buy one!

I made lemon blueberry bread. The product of my labors didn't turn out very pretty but it still tasted good! Although I will probably use baking powder next time (I used soda instead). I was also happy that I was able to find yellow lemons at the store. All last year I never saw a yellow lemon, only green limes (and they are called by the same name in Chinese), and I don't think lime zest would have been quite the same for this recipe.


Excited to try out the oven again (and also at trying recipes with ingredients and materials I can actually find in Taiwan), this morning I decided to make this quiche (with some modifications) for B's dinner since I will be out for a baby shower on Thursday. There's a lot more butter in this than I would like there to be, but I figured I would make him a treat since I wasn't going to be home til later in the evening. I am very happy with how it turned out!!

Anyhow, this is definitely not going to be a food blog ever, but I just wanted to share how happy I am to be baking again even with the scarcity of supplies and materials at the moment. Given the inefficiency of American baking customs when living in Taiwan, it IS a challenge, but one that I'll gladly take on when given the opportunity. :)