Baked Chicken in Salt 鹽焗雞

Don't be misled by the name of this dish. This is not a salty chicken. The coarse salt used in this dish is used to provide flavor but not to add the amount of salt to marinate the chicken. Only 1 teaspoon of salt is used for the marinate. The rest of the salt is put in between the parchment paper and the aluminum foil.

Soft Pretzels with Whole Wheat

After shopping at a mall during the President's Day's long weekend, there were requests to make soft pretzels at home today thanks to the aroma that filled the whole mall by three or more pretzel stalls. These pretzels are so easy to make that I bet you'll never want to pay a hefty price at the mall to get one again.

Rugelach

These Jewish cookies remind me of the time I had them in Boston, where a large community of Jews resided (more precisely in Brookline, Massachusetts). I still remember on my way to the subway station, there were a few Jewish bakeries that had these little cookies on display. Many times I would wander into one of the shops and buy a few to nibble on my walk and on the train. They are flaky, tender and filled with walnuts and cinnamon sugar.

Black Forest Cake 黑森林

Chocolate chocolate chocolate, everywhere you turn is chocolate. February is National Chocolate Month. How can we have a Valentine's Day without it?
This cake is one of my family's favorites. The chocolate cake has a very intense cocoa flavor and the creams have just the right amount of sweetness. Just delicious!

Chinese Pineapple Cake/Pastry 鳳梨酥

This is a famous pastry from Taiwan. These little square cookie-like pastry is filled with real pineapple (not like pineapple bun or bo law bao which does not have any pineapple) . I read somewhere that most of these in stores are not made with pineapple anymore. Instead, it is filled with some kind of melon and flavored with pineapple extract.

They are usually wrapped very nicely and packed in boxes as gifts. I suspect that the packaging costs more than the pastry :)

The recipe I used here is made with 100% pineapple filling (besides the sugar : )).

Wife Cake 老婆餅

Kung Hey Fat Choi ! Good Wishes to all of You in the Year of Rabbit !!

Traditional food to celebrate Chinese New Year involves a lot of deep frying. Since I seldom do any deep frying at home, I'll stick to baking for the new year.
There are many stories about the origin of this pastry. But whatever it was, the inventor was very creative. Like other kinds of traditional pastries, it is loaded with lard. I'm so glad that there are many versions nowadays that use other forms of oil/fat which produces comparable results.
Sweetened winter melon is the original filling for wife cakes. They are widely available now during Chinese New Year.