Taipan Bakery, Chinatown, NY

FS recently discovered her love for cake. She happened to find this bakery, which has her taro bun and... mousse cake, many different kinds of mousse cake, where chocolate was the unpopular one. FS had chocolate and it was light and fluffy and delicious.

On Yelp, it's Tai Pan, but as you can see from the sign, it's Taipan Bakery so FS goes with then sign.

Taipan Bakery (links to Yelp page)

194 Canal St
(between Mott St & Mulberry St)
New York, NY 10013
Neighborhood: Chinatown

Inside the bakery:

FS's purchased goodies (the trifecta of tea, chocolate mousse cake, and taro bun): 

Chocolate Mousse Cake:

Close-up.

The mousse cake has a thin cake wrap-around (the spotted portion). Inside, the top half is chocolate mousse and the bottom half is chocolate cake.

The taro bun:

The top part is actually flecked with small pieces of the same dough as the bun, but since the pieces are small, when baked, they become crispy. So the top part is nicely crunchy, which is common in most of Taipan's buns.

The taro inside is lightly sweet and very obviously mashed taro instead of a sugary taro paste, which might have less taro.

FS can't wait to go back to New York and sample more food.

It's alive! (Or a short-cut on how to make a successful Baba Au Rhum cake)

Long ago, the Food Scavenger's mother requested that she make for her a Baba Au Rhum Cake. The Food Scavenger shrugged, nodded, and then consulted the internet. She found Ina Garten's Baba Au Rhum recipe and at the behest of her mother, withheld the raisins and simply made the cake as is. The problem was the dough failed to rise, until the fateful baking time, during which it rose lopsided and misshapen.
Looking at the cake with its tumor-like protusion, the Food Scavenger's mother turned to her and said, "It's just the first time."

But it wasn't.

It happened a second time.

And then a third time.

But the fourth time, months later after the Food Scavenger went through a phase of baking bread: it rose when it was supposed to. For the Food Scavenger, using her baking bread expertise founded a short-cut through a combination of Google and Youtube (Thank you Chef John and your foodwishes channel, the Food Scavenger hopes one day to also go on a sourdough starter adventure). The following short-cut was devised from three simple conclusions the Food Scavenger had made about yeast: it liked moisture, it liked heat, it liked closed places. And voila! A method was born.

Follow Ina Garten's recipe per usual, until you come to setting the dough to the side to rise.

First, boil a pot of water. Then, pour the boiling water into a pan. Place the pan in the oven a level below your mold (buttered, with the dough already poured in). Cover the top of your mold with saran wrap. Close the oven door. Wait 45 minutes. Marvel at how your dough has quadrupled in size, rising above your mold. Remove the pan with now lukewarm/hot water. Place the mold into the water. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit for baking. Meanwhile, the dough will actually rise a little more with the added heat of the water passing through the mold. When the oven is ready, remove the saran wrap, gently scraping the dough off with a spatula.

From here on out, resume following Ina Garten's recipe.

And then you will have a beautiful Baba Au Rhum Cake:



My brother, who was eating an orange nearby, decided to dress up the cake with a flower he'd carved from his orange peals.

He's pretty handy, eh? In the end, the cake was dressed up with canned peaches since we'd use their juices, a pear concentrate in the syrup.

The occasion for this Baba Au Rhum Cake was the Food Scavenger's Grandmother's birthday. You can see her hand in the background.