[Stop #1: Baltimore, Maryland] Raspberry Buttermilk Scones & Gingerbread-White Chocolate Blondies

The next month of my life is going to be filled with more travel, food, friends, and family than I can possibly imagine. While it will be impossible to blog while I'm abroad, I'll do my best to keep things in order. After having finally moved out of my house in Philadelphia, I zoomed off on a train for Stop #1 to visit my other best friend, Madeline, in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. Madeline has an amazing history with baking and food photography. She was one of the Photography Editors for Penn Appetit which is the first university food magazine in the entire country. Last summer we lived together in New York where she held the coolest internship with a food photographer, and I'm so excited that we're both returning there full-time in July! Despite my pleas to make macarons (it's too humid apparently - pshh), we chose the next best thing and baked BOTH Raspberry Buttermilk Scones AND Gingerbread-White Chocolate Blondies. Food heaven right here. I was also so excited to finally add a post to my "Food" section since I only have is How to Cook a Traditional English Roast from my time abroad. We used recipes from queen bee, Martha Stewart, and I've included them at the bottom of this post!

The scones were amazingly fluffy, and the egg glaze on top perfected it. They weren't too sweet and the fresh raspberries added a perfect kick.

The Gingerbread-White Chocolate Blondies, on the other hand, were decadent to the max. The brown sugar, butter, molasses, white chocolate chips, oh lordd they're delicious.

Next up? Annapolis for Natalie & Huey's wedding! Couldn't be more excited!

Martha Stewart's Blueberry-Buttermilk Scones (substituted with raspberries)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cake flour, (not self-rising)
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 cup (1/2 pint) blueberries
• 1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 1 large egg, plus 1 large egg lightly beaten for egg wash
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Fine sanding sugar, for sprinkling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together flours, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter, or rub in with your fingers, until mixture has the texture of coarse meal. Stir in blueberries.
3. Whisk together buttermilk, 1 egg, and the vanilla. Drizzle over flour mixture, and stir lightly with a fork until dough comes together but a small amount of flour remains in bowl.
4. Turn out dough onto a work surface, and gently knead dough once or twice just to incorporate flour. Pat dough into a 1-inch-thick round. Cut into 12 wedges. Transfer to prepared baking sheet. Brush with egg wash, and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, about 22 minutes. Transfer scones to wire racks to cool.

[Link here]

Martha Stewart's Gingerbread-White Chocolate Blondies

Yield: Makes about 48 dozen 2-inch squares

Ingredients

• Vegetable-oil cooking spray
• 2 3/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 1/2 sticks (20 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, plus 1 large egg yolk
• 1 1/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup unsulfured molasses
• 10 ounces white chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 17-by-12-inch rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Line bottom with parchment cut to fit, and coat parchment. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.
2. Beat butter and brown and granulated sugars with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Add eggs and yolk, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla and molasses. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Stir in white chocolate.
3. Spread batter into prepared pan. Bake until edges are golden, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely in pan on a wire rack. Cut into 2-inch squares or desired shape.

[Link here]

It's way more fun when you can yell at your best friend

A few months back, all the seniors at Penn were required to take graduation photos. Unsurprisingly, nearly everybody's turned out hilariously horrible (shoutout to those of you who can actually rock the cap and gown pose!). After endless pestering from her mom, my best friend, Janet (or as I like to call her, JChowder), begrudgingly asked me if I'd be willing to take some senior portraits of her. I was ECSTATIC. Not just because she's my best friend, but because here was this prime opportunity to turn her (unwillingly) into the glorioussss model that I had envisioned! In other words, she was my puppet and had no choice in the matter.

You see, Janet and I are total opposites: I'm a hopeless romantic, way too Type A sometimes, and pride myself on being an early adopter. Janet's way more realistic when it comes to relationships, really chill about a lot of things, and always complains she doesn't know how to use her iPhone. We're so different that my friend Christy actually came up with a "Janet-Amanda Spectrum" for our group of friends. The theory goes that if the average of any two people on the spectrum comes out to somewhere in the middle, they'll be really good friends. Considering we're the ends of the spectrum, we average perfectly to the center: BOOM! Best Friends For Ever.

One of the things that I realized from this photoshoot was how important it is for there to be a comfortable relationship between the photographer and subject. Janet pretty much dreaded this entire photoshoot, but I was able to make her climb in bushes and try weird poses. Even better, I got to yell at her the entire time: "JANET. You're NOT SMILING. SMILE HARDER! No, I know how you smile, and that's FAKE. Do it again or else I'll make you stay here for hours!" I know she absolutely hated it, but in the end it was totally worth it! True, I had to delete about 50% of the photos because she was either making an unhappy face or fake smiling, but the rest are golden! So, I present to you, my wonderful and beautiful best friend:

As an English & History major, Janet also wanted some pictures with Bennett hall. It was really different shooting indoors without a tripod, but I still love a lot of these shots!

And finally, only a fraction of the many annoyed/unhappy/sad Janet photos that I have:

In all reality, though, my friendship with Janet stems out of the deepest love for each other. There are few people in the world who understand me so well. Even though we're so different, we stretch and pull to meet each other whenever the other needs it. She's always excited and happy for me no matter how dumb of news I share with her, and she supports me in nearly everything I do. She's been my rock and my go-to person for what seems like forever. I can't imagine my life without her, but I'm glad that never needs to happen. I know for sure, we'll be balancing each other out until the days when we're retired and finally look like we're 30 (gotta love those youthful Asian genes!). I can just imagine myself trying to teach Janet how to drive a hovercraft, but she's only just figured out how to take a screen shot on her iPhone 4. She'll write the novel about the grand Notebook-level love story of my life, and I'll force her to adopt a small fluffy animal and admit it's kind of cute. In the end, though, no matter where we are, we'll be together. Love you, JChowder!

Capturing Some Latin Movement

A few weeks ago, my housemate, Amy, asked me if I could try photographing her at her senior dance show for Onda Latina. I was super nervous because I knew there would be a lot of low lighting, fast movement, and a no flash photography rule. I told her to not have too high of expectations, but I actually think the photos came out better than expected! A lot of the show had very bright color backlighting which made for some cool silhouettes. And of course, Amy was PHENOMENAL. Seriously, girl can moveee! I always knew she was talented, but over Fall Break we went to Boston together and she dragged me and my friend Maegan out to salsa dance. It was traumatic. While she was doing crazy spins back and forth with her partner, I had a guy ditch me after 10 seconds because I was so bad hahah. It was much more fun to watch HER move and sit in the stands this time around.

Some of my favorite images from the show:

The best part of it all was that this was Amy's last show at Penn! It was so great seeing her senior class dance together and four years of hard work culminating together. I know from living with Amy that Onda Latina has been her second family for a long time. It was so great to see that all come together!

And of course, we had to capture a little bit of Chi O representation while we were there!

And it all led up to this...

When I look back on my four years at Penn, what will I remember? I know the memories that stand out the most to me today, but I wonder what I'll remember six months from now, 20 years from now, and which stories I choose to highlight as more and more time passes on. There's obviously the phenomenal education that I received from The Wharton School, but my education has been so much more than just lectures and exams. There's the insanity of group projects and team dynamics like freshman year MGMT 100 where we routinely booked 8 GSRs back to back and then my Impact Investment team this year where our main thread had the subject line "Kevin Sucks!!!!" for over 40 emails. There have been bonds formed over the collective struggles of junior spring OCR, leaving core classes for senior year, and trying to write as tiny as possible for our formula sheets. There have been late night Wawa runs and Insomnia deliveries, and who can forget staying up until 5:30AM in the Struggle Booth? At the same time, there have been classes beyond Wharton that have defined my life in ways I never imagined. Adding Digital Photography as a 6th class my second semester senior year was a little aggressive, but it's fueled this blog and pushed the boundaries of my creativity more than any other class at Penn. Without my Asian American Communities class, I would probably still be uncomfortable with admitting that I am an Asian American, something that I've embraced more and more in the past year.

But above all else, it's the friendships that have shaped my life. I have found people that truly know me inside and out. People who understand my quirks and oddities, yet love me anyway. I'm still amazed that my insane freshman hall experience resulted in some of my best friends at Penn. I'll never forget the time we installed an elliptical in our balcony, or the time I unwittingly drank beer water for 2 weeks out of my Brita, or the time when the dining hall was unprepared for Snowpocalypse and we had to live off of bread rinds. I've lived with two amazing houses which has fostered relationships that are going to last a lifetime, and I've spent four years with the amazing women of Chi Omega and become a real family with my lineage. I delved so much deeper into my faith thanks to Greek IV and found relationships in the Greek community beyond what I could imagine my freshman year. And who can forget all the people beyond Penn as a physical place? There was that time I thought I was terrified of being separated from a Christian community for 9+ months, and God sent me the most beautiful small group at Redeemer in NYC and plopped me into the world of Martha's Vineyard FOCUS. And of course, there's London. I don't think enough blog posts will ever describe the love in my heart that I have for my group from London - these people helped me find myself, even though I was thousands of miles away from home.

So a huge thank you to everybody who has shaped my life and my experience at Penn. I couldn't have done any of it without you, and God knows I wouldn't be who I am today without you all either. I started this journey such a different person, and now, four years later, I finally feel like I am who I am meant to be. And yes, it's an amazing place to be.