We were invited to Christine's house to bake cupcakes! Christine runs a very adorable tumblr of her cupcake creations. 

So, with Christine's cupcake baking expertise, we began to brainstorm cupcake fusions we could experiment with. Here is the list of possibilities we came up with:

1) Lychee cupcakes with rose water frosting (or lychee frosting)
2) Matcha cupcakes with matcha cream cheese frostin
3) Mango cupcake with sticky rice infused cream cheese frosting
4) Papaya Surprise
5) Vietnamese Coffee Cupcake with Condensed Milk ButterCream Frosting
6) Mandarin Orange with Candied Ginger Frosting
7) Gingerbread cupcake with Yuzu Cream Cheese Frosting
8) Almond cupcake with Tangerine Frosting

From this list, we all voted and decided to bake Lychee cupcakes, Matcha cupcakes, and Vietnamese Coffee cupcakes. While there weren't any  formal recipes for baking these cupcakes, with the help of Christine, we experimemted with ratios and ended up with incredibly scrumptious asian fusion cupcakes!

Until a few years ago the controversy surrounding the origin of pasta had confounded many. Was the noodle originally Chinese or Italian? 

Although Italian pasta and Asian noodles may differ in their shape and method of preparation etc., the two also share many similarities. Putting differences aside we decided to utilize the similarities and create a fusion twist on classical pasta dishes by swapping the pasta with Asian rice noodles. For our HKP noodle fusion event we decided to create well known Western dishes such as pasta marinara, alfredo pasta, noodle kugel, and a tuna casserole, except we simply substituted rice noodles for pasta. 

To see how to cook the rice noodles see our previous blog entry: Vietnamese Brown Rice Noodles

We made sushi rice in a traditional rice cooker.  Then we prepared fillings with a twist.  

• Tuna fish salad (American style: a can of tuna, mayonnaise, celery, lemon)
• Za'atar spices
  
• Mango and coconut milk rice
• Quinoa rice balls

The Hapa-Hafu Kitchen Project takes on holiday cookies!

We used a dutch spice - speculaas and a dutch cookie recipe- from our friend in the Netherlands, Elleke Landeweer. 

Keeping with our traditional approach to *mix* things up, we added chocolate to decorate the cookies with Chinese characters & holiday pictures. 

Cookies were a hit!

P.S. This is our first video project.