Honestly, this is a great breakfast thing. And I learned it from Xiaogaojie. For most people the annoying part is needing an oven and a skillet, and ideally a whisk. If you’ve ever done any baking, none of that is a problem.

I got tired of pan-frying chicken cutlets every morning, so I decided to try baking them in the oven. The tricky part with oven-baked chicken cutlets is keeping them from turning dry and stringy. We want them juicy. After a few attempts, it turned out pretty well.

This time I made fragrant roasted chicken legs — the kind that can hold their own against what you buy on the street. Not much work to it. The main thing is the marinade: scallion sections and ginger, light and dark soy sauce, a little salt and chili powder, two chicken legs, and let them sit. Overnight is what I’d recommend.

You’re not a cute anime girl, and you can’t hug one like a bottle of cola, but you can still make yourself the same baked sweet potato she’d eat.

I’ve always made sweet cookies, so this time I figured I’d try a savory one. Finished product first:

I meant to make cookies. What I ended up with was fake cookies. Why fake? Because they don’t look like cookies at all…

For Mid-Autumn Festival I made a few cookie gift boxes and gave them to friends, including the ones I met up with in Beijing.

While everyone else was eating chicken, I went with shrimp. This isn’t my first time baking shrimp in the oven, but this time I went with something more direct: fresh shrimp, marinated straight up, then straight into the oven, with a sauce on the side. Tastes pretty fresh.

Made this on a whim because I had leftover ingredients to use up.

I based this on a recipe from Xiachufang. This was only my second time baking bread, so I don’t have much experience. The first loaf I baked wasn’t this one — it turned out badly, more like a flatbread…