Category / breakfast loaves

by colleen xie

Almond Mascarpone Loaf

IMG_0005-2
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
– Bruce Lee
I feel as though I’m overly aware of the (slow) pace and the mundane everyday-“going-ons” in my life, to the point where I scrutinize and analyze and think about where I want to be and where I should be (and why aren’t I there already?!). It may have to do with being in the social media age, and seeing people’s highlight reels flash in front of us daily. Actually, it probably has a lot to do with it– I scroll through, looking at snapshots of people’s lives and wonder how they got there, what steps they took, how they felt, and wonder if I have it in me to get to the same place. A double-edged sword. It’s motivating, but discouraging at the same time.
But also, I feel like I’m not really taking advantage of the gift that is “the present” (that was bad), carpe-ing those diems, doing hugely transformative things every day. And I think that’s also it– it’s like I expect myself to be able to reinvent and shape my life instantly into what I envision it to be, when it might be happening already (albeit slowly), or I might need to invest some more time in certain areas of my life.

Continue reading →

by colleen xie

Chocolate PB Raspberry Chia Loaf

Happy First-Week-into-New-Years, everyone! How’s everyone holding up? How’s that gym membership going for ya?

I’m very excited for 2015, but that’s only because I love odd numbers and I love the way 2015 looks, compared to 2014. I liked 2013 too, but 2015 looks nicer. Okay. My weirdness is showing.

Although I’m sort of wary of all the gimmicky things you’ll see around New Years– ads selling things with the promise of a better, new you; vitamins and supplements all shifted to the front of stores– I do appreciate this time of year, because it gives us a chance to breathe and reflect. New Years = a big stop sign in our lives. We stop, and realize another year has passed. We stop, and think about what we’d do differently. And yes, most of the time you may not carry through with your resolutions, but honestly, they don’t need to be impossible goals. Start simple, and go slow. Continue reading →

by colleen xie

Salted Chocolate Marzipan Babka

I hope everyone’s been having a lovely, wonderful, restful holiday season!

Processed with VSCOcam

After exams were over, my main preoccupations were working/volunteering, catching up with old friends, baking, and of course, revamping my blog. Besides updating posts that I had drafted since summer (and I’m still not finished), I switched platforms, from blogger to wordpress. It’s been a relatively smooth switch, but I didn’t know wordpress.com didn’t let you change the coding of a theme. Which is unnerving, but at least I can manually change the font of each post by the text editor option.

Processed with VSCOcam

And in other, more exciting news… I bought my first DSLR (Canon t5i) on Black Friday. I’m sort of technologically challenged/jinxed. Given my history of dropping/spilling things on my laptop, breaking things accidentally, and just being a klutz in general, I honestly was too afraid to even open the box until after exam season, when I would have more time to figure it out (ie. struggle with the instruction manual). Putting in the lens was an ordeal in itself, really.

Continue reading →

by colleen xie

Black Sesame Layered Banana Bread

I make an embarrassingly large amount of banana bread. Every time those bananas ripen, banana bread comes out of the oven that night. My body is probably 90% banana bread. To be fair, banana-anything is quite forgiving and it’s quite easy to make a healthy baked loaf from it. So that it’s breakfast-friendly.

Continue reading →