Author Archives: Johan Ho

I made cream puffs! It wasn’t as hard as I thought, although somehow I managed to fail in whipping the cream, which started turning into butter, I think. So I threw it away and made some vanilla sauce from another recipe.

The recipe I followed was from Krem.no, a website with recipes for different desserts. I halved the recipe though, so my recipe was:

• 250g (2,5dl) water
• 125g margarine
• 250g flour
• 4 small eggs

1. Put the margarine and water in a pot and bring it to a boil. When it boils, remove from heat. Don’t let it boil on the heat, or the water will vaporize, making the dough too dry!
2. Add the flour to the water/margarine mixture.
3. Put the pot back on the heat, and keep stirring untill the dough doesn’t stick (much) to the pot. Don’t let it get burned!
4. Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool down a bit. Then mix the eggs in one by one. Make sure each egg is fully mixed into the dough before you add another one! Also, if the dough seems to be sticky enough, don’t add more eggs, the dough (or batter, which is should resemble by now) must not be too wet.
5. Put the batter on a baking plate about 5 cm apart, since they’ll expand quite a bit. Use a spoon or, hum, a spraying bag if you have something like that. With the recipe given here I got a plateful (9 pieces), but you can also make smaller ones to get more pieces, or just multiply each ingredient to get more batter.



6. Cook in oven for at least 40 minutes, 200 degrees C. Center of oven, I believe.

When done, you can put them in the refrigerator untill they are to be served, or you can eat them warm! Fill them with stuff, sweet or salt. Cream is what is usually put in, in any case.

My cream puffs were slightly doughy inside after baking, but I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be that way. I tried baking a bit longer, but then they just got slightly burned, so I guess maybe they should be doughy.

Either way, they tasted so good I ate half of them right after baking, and the rest of them for breakfast the next day! I didn’t really feel so well after that, which I later realised must’ve been because of the margarine used in the dough. I practically just ate 125g of margarine! And I probably should’ve used less sugar in the vanilla sauce. Blargh. Yeah, so if you feel it’s too much margarine, you can probably try reducing the amount a bit when baking it.

Late (again) Happy Chinese New Year! Starting from January 29th 2006, it is now my year, the year of the dog! Which should mean that it’s the perfect year for me to finish my studies and find a job and a girlfriend. Woohoo!

Apparently, you don’t eat mooncakes on Chinese New Years. Annie kindly reminded me about this, before laughing wildly at me for making that mistake. Incidentally, I think I made her mad at me today because I was joking with her a bit. She stopped replying to my messages, in any case. Oh well… In any case, mooncakes are for the Mid-Autumn festival. I kind of knew that, just didn’t think too much about it. Yup.

Ah, I thought I might update people on the status of the new years resolutions I wrote about:

• Practice conversing: In the cell group meeting on Monday I kept falling asleep. Failure (To my defense the room was a bit too hot, since the host had lighted the fireplace.)
• More workout: I do some basic workout and some dance mat dancing once in a while (Roughly every three days, sometimes two days.) Success
• Learn Chinese: I’ve been trying to play through Gyakuten Saiban 2 in Chinese. It’s Simplified Chinese, unfortunately, but I’m sure it’s better than nothing. I’m using NJStar Chinese Pen to write the words from the game so I can translate them. I’ve spent roughly 5 hours and haven’t gotten past the initial conversation yet though. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to read a few more sentences without having to translate it. Oh, I’ve also listened a bit to ChinesePod, although I’m having trouble paying enough attention to the courses to learn much. Since I tend to do it while doing other stuff. But now I’m trying to listen while doing exercise, which kind of works out. Success
• Get a job: I haven’t really been looking for a job yet, because, uh, I’ve been busy. With school work. Right. Failure
• Read “On Being a Christian”: I’ve read one more chapter since… last year. I think that was even before making this resolution. Failure
• Get girlfriend: I haven’t really looked for a girlfriend yet, because I’ve been busy. With, uh, school work. Right. Failure

Two out of six isn’t that bad… I guess. Oh, and some more things about Gyakuten Saiban (or Phoenix Wright, which is the English title for the game): Have a look at the japanese release promotion video (with subtitles)! It’s quite fun. The American commercial is okay too I guess… Also, check out the Gyakuten Saiban 3 Fan Translation project! I almost wish I could help with translation, but then again, if I knew Japanese I would hardly need a translation.

Before ending this post, I’d like to present to you Chinese-styled flash games. I don’t really know the person (Maggie Lau), but the games are kind of cool.