Sometimes I love sitting on the cool kitchen floor, when the entire house is silent and the crickets outside make me feel like I live in the countryside, instead of Los Angeles, even for a few minutes. The ground is white marble and invitingly cool in this summer heat. I’ve been home for five hours, yet taking off my shoes hasn’t crossed my mind yet. If I let them stay on any longer, they might just permanently become molded to my feet. Henry the Maltese is of course, right beside me, chomping away on some iceberg lettuce. 

It’s the first time in a while I feel like my mind is almost crystal clear. It feels nice. The wind blowing in from the half-opened window over the sink is making things better. I hate and love being tired all at the same time. It makes me feel useful and accomplished, yet tonight, I feel its effects all over my body – not a good feeling in the least bit. 

In a few days, August will settle in. More than half a year gone. I have begun vividly remembering the last few years, moreso than I ever did when I was younger. This year, I remember Disneyland on New Year’s Eve, my sister’s Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party, London in March – moments that I wish were frozen in time. I remember the excitement I felt that I was going to have an article published in print. My name. In print. On actual paper. In a magazine. You can’t imagine how that feels for a writer. I remember the Sookie Stackhouse explosion that sort of took over my life, the films I wrote about, albeit self-consciously. I remember arguments and laugh out loud moments and more hours spent in traffic than I would ever like to admit. Perhaps my proudest moment this year, I remember all the time and energy I put in to produce this here ezine and the amazing response I’ve received so far. I remember contemplating about going back to school – a thought which crosses my mind every day, but not applying because of the fear of not being accepted – I’m still working on getting over this. 

Half the year is gone, and though there are hundreds of things I should have done, could have done and wished I would have done, I’ve come out pretty unscathed. Here’s to hoping the rest of the year is better.

I never imagined I would ever make a 3D cake. It just didn’t cross my mind, until it was requested for a co-worker’s birthday celebration. My task? Bake a cake in the shape of a bowling ball.  At first, I panicked. How in the world was I ever going to make this, with the limited time I had? After researching for quite a while, I discovered that Wilton made a sports ball pan set which ultimately made my life so much easier. Securing the mold was the easy part, now I had to think about the flavor and the part that made me want to cringe: the design.  I scoured the web looking for a good chocolate cake recipe (with the added request of no nuts) and somehow through my food voyeurism, came across a unique recipe for a Root Beer Float Cake from Honey & Jam. I was ecstatic. I gathered all my ingredients, went home and began the task, which couldn’t have been completed without help from my sister.

The ball pan set turned out great and the added work of assembling both halves with frosting made it that much better. My word of advice for using such a set would be to make sure that you grease both halves thoroughly either with vegetable shortening, or my favorite PAM with real flour.

Although I like to make everything when I bake from scratch, right down to the pie crust and custard, it was a work night and I was at the point where I was beginning to feel my eye balls in their sockets – never a good sign, so I settled with store bought vanilla buttercream frosting, but not before I added semi-sweet chocolate chips and root beer. That, I have to say, without being too cheeky, was the icing on the cake.

Next came the decoration. The pan set advised using a #3 Wilton tip, but I figured I’d just up the ante and use a #16 to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time. That turned out to be a slight mistake, as my bowling ball cake kinda sorta morphed into what one of my co-workers referred to as “an enemy from Super Mario Bros.”

My baking rarely requires the use of pastry bags and tips, and so, the entire process took a bit of getting used to. The actual finger holes for the bowling ball cake were the hardest part to fill in – the frosting turned out to be not very well suited to spherical shapes and kept running off. My solution? I quickly stuck in the fridge where it hardened up to the point where it was decipherable as a shape.

Despite the few mishaps I had, I knew it had turned out well when everyone loved it more than I had expected. A few requests for the recipe and a few second helpings solidified that I had gotten the job right. Needless to say, I think I’ll take quite the long breather before I attempt a bowling ball cake again. The root beer float cake recipe on the other hand, is one that can and should be used often – the root beer adds so much flavor to an ordinary chocolate cake that will have your guests wanting more.

The unbearable heat today rendered me almost completely incapable of doing anything productive. A bit of fact checking here, some reading there, accompanied by a delicious tray of bing cherries, one which burst while I bit into it and leaked all over my hand. It looked like I had cut myself, this rich, dark burgundy splattered over my fingers. After my hunger had worn off and night finally set it in, I felt like nothing could be asked of me – unless it involved lying still on the couch and watching a film. Tonight’s fine choice turned out to be “Miss Potter”.

Here is where I have a confession to make. My boyfriend sent this lovely film to me quite a while ago, one that I should have watched no more than a few weeks after getting the package. But life, as it so happens, always has other plans and so I sat down to watch this story of one of my favorite children’s authors late, late enough to feel guilty about, but I watched it, ok? And that’s really all that matters.

The movie itself was wonderful, pretty well acted and had the most beautiful scenery ( the English countryside feels like heaven on Earth to me), but what it really did was bring back a slew of  emotions and thoughts I had about children’s books, and “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” most particularly.

You see, in addition to all my passion for journalism, all my dedication to print and radio and news and reporter’s notebooks, there is a big part of me who would one day like to become an author. I’ve often been completely taken aback when I’ve read my favorite books, not only because of the story, but because I’ve wondered how in the world did this person manage to pull this out of their imagination and then coherently string those thoughts into beautiful words? It amazes me – the gift an author has to be able to write 200 pages about the same thing and have it come off so wonderfully.

My dream has always been to write one or perhaps a series of children’s books. In my scribbling habbits, these dreams have always manifested into illustrations and ideas locked away in some journal and for quite a while, I had locked them out of my thoughts, until I saw “Miss Potter.”

I truly admire Beatrix Potter. Although in the film, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” is published by Frederick Warn & Co., it was Potter who self-published the book herself before attracting the publisher’s attention. I always feel like there’s a slight stigma attached to self-publishing (if someone else, i.e. a publishing house doesn’t approve, it’s probably just not good enough) but finding out that she did and became successful really just says that if you have a good idea, it will work no matter what.

All images are rights cleared and obtained from Project Gutenberg

“The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.”

Goodnight Walter Cronkite, you contributed more to journalism than you will know. Thank you. It is truly an end of an era

The Eastern Bakery in San Francisco’s Chinatown is a must-see. As the United States’ oldest Chinese bakery (it opened in 1924), Eastern Bakery touts their specialty of moon cakes, a rich, dense lotus-seed paste filled pastry that hungry residents and intrigued tourists stand in line for.

Make no mistake, there is nothing “light” or “healthy” in this bakery – if it isn’t deep fried, its stuffed to the brim with filling or encapsulated in mounds of dough, as evidenced by the Chinese Donut otherwise known as “Jin deui,” a pastry made from glutinous rice flour and filled with lotus paste, black bean paste or red bean paste.

There are many varieties of mooncakes at Eastern Bakery – some are chocolate covered, while others contain egg yolks from salted duck eggs, to which I say, no thank you.

In addition to all the pastries they offer, Eastern Bakery proudly displays then-President Bill Clinton’s visit to their establishment, where he sampled some delicacies himself. The text reads:  “President Bill Clinton came to visit Eastern Bakery on July 23, 1996 from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. He shook hands with everybody inside our bakery. All of us, our customers and employees were thrilled and it was just like a short, but big, exciting and memorable party!!!”

The service at Eastern Bakery is quicker than at any establishment I’ve ever seen, so if you’re standing in the line that wraps outside the building, fret not – it moves fast. The seating on the other hand is dismal, so plan to eat your snacks along the way.  Lastly, don’t plan on buying a lot, especially if you’re wanting to try the mooncakes, one is enough as I found out the hard way when I bought a mooncake wedge and could only take one bite before pretty much throwing it away. Despite this, Eastern Bakery makes for a great pit stop while you’re walking about the city by the bay.

• I have seen such ridiculous bumper stickers in the last few weeks, that I’ve taken to keeping track of them in the notes app of my iPhone. My favorites: “It’s the law…stick it in,” “Please say NO to circumcision” and wait for it – “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” I don’t know which to laugh about more, the fact that someone bought these stickers or the fact that someone made them. Oh dear.
• Every once in a while when things calm down and I have time to think, I think of Michael Jackson and I am utterly shocked all over again about his death. I still can’t believe it.
• I have been furiously working on  my side project, which I’m hoping will one day develop into a sort of full time project, my Armenian online magazine “ianyan.” Things are going quite well, better than I expected and the feedback has been immensely positive. It’s so hard as a one woman show, and I wish I had a list of contributors, but for now I’m a lone wolf.
• I have been making strides in my journalism/writing goals of this year – I’ve had pieces published in both print and online and have a few more that I’m working on, but I need and want more.
• It would be a dream to be able to write or blog for the Los Angeles Times, New York Mag or LA Weekly. I’m working on it!
• Henry the Maltese has a new obsession in the form of lettuce. He goes nuts for it. No, really. He even hides it and eats it in private. What a strange dog I have.
• I can’t wait for The Real Housewives of Atlanta because I’ve been going through Nene withdrawals. I need this fierce bitch in my life. I also need to take “keeping it real” lessons from Nene.
• I am getting antsy about my hair. I’m due a haircut and I have this idea in my head to go back to my natural color along with a lighter color for summer, but I’m dreading the hours upon hours I would have to spend at a salon. And let me remind you, there is really only one salon I can go to, since every other place has no idea how to deal with the thick ass mop on my head properly. Middle Eastern women can feel my pain.
• Despite all the stress, frustration, lack of sleep I’ve had, I am so looking forward to the near future. My life will change in more ways than one, in fact it wont be just “my” life, but our life. Thinking about this makes me want to put on Ferris Bueller and sing “Please, please, please let me get what I want” by The Smiths. Lord knows, it would be the first time.

Four hundred miles north of  Los Angeles sits the city by the bay known as San Francisco -  the city that steals your heart, makes it impossible for you to leave and is everything that L.A should strive to be. Lovely weather, culturally diverse residents and breathtaking houses and architecture make me now firmly believe that the high cost of living is worth it. There is so much character to this place; the buildings, the quaintness of it all, the idea of an orderly and efficient public transportation system ( who would’ve thought?)

How can I forget the cable cars, the world’s last permanently operational manually-operated cable car system. I had never been in one before and it was clear by the slow service and $5 one-way ride fare that it’s of no use to residents of San Francisco.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how much I love picking out salt water taffy for a custom made bag. It’s such a relaxing, yet exciting activity. Now more than ever, there are so many flavors, that choosing them is so difficult. Caramel apple, cherry cola, gingerbread, tangerine, the list just goes on and on.

San Francisco has the oldest and largest Chinatown in North America. Indeed, it’s brilliant. L.A’s chinatown completely pales in comparison. New York’s Chinatown gives it a run for its money, but still this is an amazing place where you can find all the knick knacks you never knew you wanted, have dim sum at a nearby restaurant  and listen to the sounds of an erhu while you walk through the streets.

Of course, like any city, San Francisco isn’t without its problems, with homelessness and property crime rates higher than the national average, but when you’re in a place called The Palace of the Fine Arts, which looks like it was taken out of Rome and placed in a metropolitan American city and you look across the water and see that there are houses and apartments who wake up to this view every day, and couples walking their dogs along the path and families enjoying a quiet afternoon out, nothing else really matters.

I like San Francisco more than I thought I could. In the short two days I was there, I felt a wave of inspiration that I hadn’t felt in Los Angeles for a long time. I saw myself living and writing there, the only other city besides London that I’ve had that thought about it, and what a nice though it was. I saw that I could actually “get on” with San Francisco, as the British would say. It seems like the perfect blend of the goodness of Los Angeles and London put into one. It was actually pretty depressing to come back to L.A and realize that I had to face freeways and such a sprawling city landscape after a weekend in such a compact city. San Francisco felt like a city of great endeavors, a city where ideas were born and plans came to fruition. On a hilly street in the afternoon, overlooking a crowded Fisherman’s Wharf, where hundreds of thousands had come to watch fireworks,  I looked around and felt like I belonged.

More photos here.

Let me preface this by saying that this Boston Cream Pie was perhaps the most demanding yet gratifying thing I’ve ever baked. Demanding in the sense that it took two people meticulously reading directions (how anyone could make this without help is a mystery)  to finish it and gratifying because when I was finished, when I had put my blood, sweat and tears into it – ok maybe not blood and tears, but there might have been some sweat mixed in with the batter, when I put this magnificent piece of baked good on display, it looked like it had come out of the kitchen of Julia Child, or Nigella Lawson or Paula Deen, except with not nearly enough butter as she would have liked. In short, it was without a doubt amazing.

You see those two sponge cakes above? They have enough spring in them to send you to the moon and back. Getting them that way was the most difficult task in the entire process. It wasn’t just a matter of mixing dry and wet ingredients together, oh no, it was a whole other ball game. Egg yolk and whites were separated, both beaten with sugar, until the whites became more or less like meringue and the yolks turned into a yellow gooey paste. Then, the whites were folded in the yolk mixture ever so gently, while the cake flour and other dry ingredients followed. But that’s not all. Milk and butter, heated and kept warm were poured down the side of the batter and folded in as well. A few daunting tasks later, and I had the most fluffy, light and airy pieces of cake I had ever seen.

Once I had crossed the sponge cake hurdle, I was ready to call it a night. My feet were aching, my hair was frazzled and frankly, I was afraid of making custard, the delicious filling that accompanies a Boston cream pie. But I decided to keep on keeping on. It’s a good thing I did, because I could have missed potentially the most amazing moment in all the years I’ve been baking: having  a simple combination of egg yolks and heavy whipping cream turn from liquid to semi-solid right in front of your eyes.

Assembling was easy. The custard went on smoothly, but the next hurdle I had to cross was making the chocolate ganache. This particular recipe had an interesting way of melting chocolate, one which I loved. The trick was to heat up the heavy whipping cream first and then pour  on the chocolate in a separate container. Boiling cream melting chocolate – what a genius idea. It made the glaze very smooth. After the ganache had cooled down, I realized the cake looked a bit empty, so I looked around the kitchen for a bit until I discovered some sliced almonds. What a life saver they were, because they instantly transformed this Boston Cream Pie from ordinary to extraordinary.

Despite the hard work, I had an amazing time and there are quite a few details I’m missing from this post, but making this dessert, in between a full-time job and freelance work just about knocked me out of my socks.

Recipe from JoyofBaking