Sunnyside Up!

Best of 2011

2011-12-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd bring back the traditional of the Best of posts this year. I managed to accidentally skip last year, but here's the one from 2009.

2011 has really been a truly crazy year. I feel like I've turned life upside down and things are just starting to finally settle in a good place. The upside of this is that there are a lot of great things that have happened during this crazy year for me to reflect upon. Here's an assortment in no particular order.

1. Travel: Italy & Australia - I doubled the number of times that I've been out of the country in my whole life this year and added a new continent.
2. Graduating from Haas - How did the 2 years of b-school fly by already? I'm glad to be done, but do find myself missing the community, growing opportunities, and fun of Haas.
3. Starting my post-Haas career at eBay - So far so good on my re-entry into the real world. It has been a bit of an adjustment, but I'm getting to hang of it again.
4. Moving out of Berkeley - I have looked forward to moving out of Berkeley pretty much ever since I moved there. I loved my classmates, but am so glad to be done with all of the Berzerkeley crazies.
5. Surviving another Nike Half Marathon - ChuThis and I survived another Nike Half. Not our best race, but we made it and had a good time in the process. It's apparently becoming an annual tradition.
6. Winning the most team steps in a day prize in the office turkey challenge - this was both a great way to help me meet new people in the office as well as get off the couch and back into running shape. Hopefully, I can keep this up with my 2012 fitness goals.
7. Seeing the successes and life changes of my classmates and friends (weddings, babies, successful startups) - 8 weddings, at least as many babies, friends with newspaper articles, NPR interviews, successful startups (go Modify!), and so many others. It was great to share in all of your successes this year.
8. Making some really good life decisions for me - while never a fun thing to do, I'm really proud of how I have taken charge of my life this year and really worked to shape its direction instead of just riding with the tides. I'm on a much better course now and can't wait to see where I end up next.
9. Keeping in touch with old friends (no matter the distance) and making new ones - as we move and grow in life, it's really great to keep connecting with friends from the past in addition to meeting new people as you go.
10. More painting & creative pursuits- see my previous post...

All in all, it was definitely a very challenging year, but I have come out on the other side a better and stronger person. Here's to the new challenges and adventures that 2012 brings!

The Painting is finally complete!

2011-12-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, so in all reality, I finished this painting back in May/June, but clearly I've fallen off of the blogging bandwagon. I have to say that as I painted, I really liked certain parts of this painting, but really wasn't pleased with others. While I still like some areas better than others, overall I really like the whole effect of the painting. Part of the reason that sunsets are so fascinating for me to paint is because they are so vibrant in the sky and different each day. I generally paint from a badly taken iPhone photo of the actual sunset along with the impression that it left me with as I saw it.

I really like the reddish yellow fiery portion of the sunset at the bottom of the painting as I felt that I got the vibrancy of the colors right as well as was able to add some texture while playing with the consistency of the yellow paint. The clouds towards the top of the painting were really nice as well, but I still love painting with a mixture of colors and black and playing with the streaks that can be created as a result. This is perhaps only the second time that I've ever actually signed a painting that I've done. This time I'm actually pleased with it. The colors blended well with the work as I don't want my initials to stand out too much. I also wanted the style of signature to blend with the painting, so the streaks that make up the signature are similar to those that I use in the sunset.

All in all, I'm definitely pleased with this work and hope that my friend and her new husband are too.

Painting Progress

2011-04-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

I started this painting as a wedding present to a friend of mine quite a while ago. Almost a year to be precise. Now that the weather has been nicer recently, I'm finding more time to work on finishing it. I turned the painting upside down to make the blending process a bit easier so the red you see should be the bottom of the painting.

Honestly, I really have no technique that I use to do this blending. I mess around with adding water to paint to make it lighter and easier to mix with other paint on the canvas. This might be the right way to do this, but I really have no idea. It worked for my needs.

I finished this painting session with the light blue on the very bottom before the white. Next time I sit down, hopefully this weekend, I will be blending this light blue region with the darker blue region that will be the very top of this painting in the end. Finally, I will add a few gray clouds to create some depth in this seemingly flat picture.

My favorite parts of this painting, so far, are the yellow streaks through the red at the top of the photo as well as the brilliant green/yellow spot in the middle left of the painting. The blue colors that I have left at the very bottom of the photo to paint are some of my favorite colors. Hopefully, they will add some depth and bring this sunset to life a bit more.

I need at least one more sitting to finish this painting, so you'll see at least one more update about this before the finished product.

So, it's been a while....

2011-04-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

A while is definitely an understatement. SO many things have happened since I last posted. I'll try to keep this really brief, but still give you some insight into what has happened since July when I posted last.

A good friend of mine and I fall into terrible consulting speak used for corporate status reports when we quickly update each other on life, but it's a great way to share quickly so please forgive me as I borrow this method here.

School: Green

I'm definitely on track to graduate in a little over a month (I can't believe it!!) and looking forward to enjoying the last bit of my time here.

Internship: Green

My summer at Yahoo Groups ended really well. Unfortunately, I can never share the awesomeness of my projects with all of you since our project got canceled after I returned to school and none of my features launched, but it was a great learning experience.

Full-time Job Search: Yellow-y Green

This will definitely be green in the next few weeks as I finish finally figuring out where I'll be after graduation, but it's been quite the ride. The job market is definitely better, but employers seem to be looking for a bit more experience than most career switchers have when they graduate. At least, we're all getting interviews.

Life: Green

Especially as the job search slows down, I've started having a lot more time for life lately and I have to say that I like the new balance. I'm starting to work out more again, probably even going to be running more and perhaps signing up for another race. I will also have to share my recent progress with the painting I started way back last summer. Finally, I have time to hang out with friends and classmates and enjoy what little time we have left before we all return to the real world. It has lead to some great adventures.

Baking: Green

Since this did start out as a baking blog, I feel that I have to give a separate update in this category. I must say that I have been baking/cooking a lot more in the last few months with dinner parties and the like. Mostly, I've been making ice creams and gelatos in my new ice cream maker. Luckily, the banana bread I threw together today (too many overripe bananas...oops) turned out ok despite the fact that I added an additional banana over what the recipe called for. This spares you from a post with photos of horribly disfigured breads and lamenting over my poor choice.

All in all, things are going well. The last semester and a half have been very busy, but it's all slowing down a bit to allow me to do all of the things that I've always wanted to do. I look forward to enjoying every moment that I have left in my MBA.

I promise that I won't be nearly as MIA as I have been. You can thank one of the members of the Google Analytics team for re-inspiring my blogging through sharing a lot of the great features that are available in Google Analytics during my Designing Web-Based Products and Services class this morning. If you haven't installed it on your blog yet, I highly recommend it. Who knew that my most commonly searched for term would be "champagne buttercream."

Happy Friday and Good MBA Humor

2010-07-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

I was sent this great blog post by Palo Alto For A While that I thought some of you fellow MBA types might find amusing. I'll share the suggested business school essay topic for Haas:

UC Berkeley Haas: What makes a hippie like you think you can succeed in business? Use the words 'sustainable' and 'green' at least twice in your response.

Check out the rest of them here.

Happy Friday!

A Painting Adventure...

2010-07-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a VERY long time since I've blogged. I apologize for my radio silence. It's been a busy part of the semester. I finished school, had finals, started training for my half marathon in October, and started my internship. The commute has left me with little time for much else. However, I have started painting again.

I have a friend who recently got married and she requested that I paint something for her for her wedding present. I got into acrylic painting a few years ago in an attempt to put some nice art on the walls of my post-college apartment. I generally only paint abstract art because I am not great at drawing. This time, I branched into the slightly more realistic realm by trying to re-create an awesome sunset that I saw one night over the Puget Sound. Check out the cool clouds and sky hidden in the darkness.

For those of you out there who have never painted before, I thought I'd include photos as I make progress on the painting. Of course I thought of that brilliant (insert sarcasm here) idea after I started painting, so you're going to have to start by imagining a white canvas.

The dark bluish-black-gray at the top of the sunset was the easiest for me so I started there by mixing some almost royal blue paint with some black paint. One of my favorite things to do is not quite mix two paint colors together to give depth and artistic touch to the painting. You'll see some brighter streaks of blue along with some almost black streaks.

After starting with the top, I moved on to the bottom red portion of the sunset. I happen to already have a tube of the perfect fiery red color from my first ever painting endeavor so that's an easy one for me to add.

If you look really closely at the white portion of the canvas, you'll see that I've sketched a bit to help remind myself which colors need to go in which portions of the canvas. Of course all of this will change as I paint, but I thought I'd leave myself with a bit of direction.

At the moment, this is all of the progress I've made on the painting thus far, but I will continue to blog as I add colors and work more on it. For those of you readers who have been there for me when this started as a food blog and then became a business school blog and now continue to read as this becomes a bit of a painting blog, I appreciate your continued support and I hope you enjoy the temporary diversion from my other topics.

P.S. Perhaps blogging about my half marathon training will be coming soon as well.

Ah!!! Enjoying Second Semester!

2010-04-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

All along, I have heard so many people talk about how relaxing and fun second semester of b-school is. Until last week, this was definitely not my experience!! Part of that I did to myself by taking two experiential learning classes that required a lot of time outside of class, but part of it just happened.

I was in full-blown internship search mode from January through April when I finally got my first offer. Let's just say that this took about 5-20 hours of my week every week. From driving to interviews to writing tons of cover letters, it was a very time consuming process. I became extremely worried when I finished the on-campus recruiting season without having had any second round interviews. In reality, it was a great thing that I didn't get a job during this period as most of the really interesting jobs with technology companies were posted after Spring Break. I'm definitely glad that I waited. I got a great offer working with Yahoo! as a product manager which is exactly the role that I wanted.

I've definitely been reminded lately that we all need a break. Haas participated in Challenge4Charity weekend at Stanford with 8 other MBA programs a couple of weeks ago. Spending two days outside in the gorgeous CA sun, running around, and playing games with classmates while not talking at all about work was definitely what I needed. I'm making a point to do this more often and take one day a weekend off from doing a ton of work.

This week has just been blissful! Meetings have calmed down. I've had time to catch up on some of my favorite tv shows that I've been very behind on and go out and socialize with my classmates before everyone heads off to their internships this summer. I even had time to bake not one but two! chocolate decadences! Fabulous!!! I can only hope the last several weeks of school are as good as this one has been!!!

ClearAdmit Best of Blogging 2009-2010 Nominee!

2010-04-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

I was very excited to learn earlier this week that Sunnyside Up has been once again nominated by ClearAdmit for a Best of Blogging award!

While I know that I haven't been as good at posting regularly this year, I appreciate all of you who continue to visit my site and leave comments. I will work on catching up on some of the posts that I've thought of but haven't had time to write during the summer when at least the homework slows down.

Thanks again for this great honor, ClearAdmit!

Fitting In

2010-03-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

So you'd think after 3/4 of a year of business school, I would have felt like I fit in with the rest of my classmates before now. Honestly, aside from a little bit towards the end of Fall semester, I continued to feel like I was straddling two worlds and not really fitting into either one very well.

Spending some time with my classmates and other time on the other side of the Bay has made it difficult to feel like I really have a good idea of what is going on in Berkeley or SF. I think I say no to about twice as many events as I actually attend. I was really feeling frustrated that I'd spend a weekend in Berkeley and end up sitting at home because I didn't know what was going on or constantly trying to cram in as many SF events as possible into one trip to the city.

This week, however, I managed to spend a lot more time in Berkeley and also decided to go out and hang out with people even when that wasn't the best of ideas for me getting what I needed to done. I now feel like I have a group of people that keep me clued in on what's going on around Berkeley. Also, we've started going out only once a week, but the whole class goes so it's a blast.

I don't know I'm really any more connected with my classmates, or if I just feel that way because I spent so much time studying with them for my finals last week, but it's definitely nice to not feel like I'm constantly straddling two worlds, even if it is just temporary.

Remember To Do Things For You!

2010-02-21T18:08:00.000-08:00

It is very easy to get wrapped up in life. Class, homework, social events, group projects, papers, research easily dominate our life. We continue to focus on the things that we need to get done everyday to meet deadlines and quickly forget about the things that we need to do to take care of ourselves and ensure that we are motivated enough to continue doing all of the things that are due every day.

While this is definitely something that I think we will continue dealing with throughout life, business school makes it quickly apparently that you really do have to do something for yourself otherwise you will burn out. I was definitely approaching burnout last week. I had been sick for at least a week, behind in most of my classes, constantly forgetting to do the things that I needed to for school and definitely not motivated to do any of it. Despite not having the time, I made myself go and work out and decided to prioritize seeing a ballet that I had been wanting to see for years and just hadn't found time for.

It's amazing how these two small things really changed the shape of my entire week. No, technically I didn't have time for either of these activities. The mental and physical break that both made for me was crucial for me being so productive this weekend.

This just goes to show that when you're tired, worn out, and overwhelmed, you need to take time for YOU!

Haas Tech Club Blog Post

2010-02-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't had much time for blogging. I thought I'd share a post that I wrote for the Haas Tech Club blog about our trip to the most recent ChicMeetsGeek event.

Check it out here. Happy Reading!

Champagne Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream Frosting

2010-02-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

Girls applying to business school generally know that they're signing themselves up for a highly male dominated environment. However, the true impact of that statement is not something that will quite hit until you're well into your first semester and realize that you keep having conversations about South Park and video games. Sometimes all you need is just a few hours spent enjoying wine and the company of the other girls in your class to unwind and not have to attempt to understand the male dominated conversations that permeate campus.

Hence, girls night.

I offered to host the most recent girls night as it gives me an excuse to try out a new baking recipe every now and again since I also really miss having leftover cookies, cupcakes, etc in my freezer to pull out when the craving strikes. The girls unanimously wanted cupcakes and almost everyone voted for these champagne cupcakes as well.

While they weren't the easiest cupcake to make due to the whipped egg whites in the batter, they still were relatively quick. (For those of you who try this recipe on your own, note that the batter is going to seem very sticky (almost like a bread dough) until you try to add the egg whites and then it will seem very clumpy and not well mixed. Not to worry, you're on the right track.)

The frosting has a great buttercream flavor with just a hint of champagne at the very end of the bite. I recommend making it at least the night before as the flavor does change a bit.

All in all, one very tasty experience and great for any party. If you'd like to make your own Champagne Cupcakes, check out the recipe here.

Second Week Into Second Semester

2010-01-25T21:30:00.000-08:00

I have to say that everyone has lied that second semester is easier than first semester. Yes, I'm rested after 5 weeks off. Yes, I'm more into the whole swing of school with homework and classes. Yes, I feel like I know my way around Haas and enjoy my classmates. However, the sheer magnitude of commitments seems to have doubled from first semester.

Ok, it's possible that this is my fault after securing two elected positions in clubs, taking one class that centers around an outside consulting project and another that requires a business plan. But I think all of this would be manageable if I wasn't trying to also continue my career soul searching plan.

We get notifications multiple times a day about great jobs, internships and other side projects that we can work on if we feel that we have the time. All of them sound interesting and I'm back to my original challenge when I came to b-school: learning to say "no" swiftly and decisively. After all of these great opportunities are shared with me, I find myself thinking about potential careers that I had ruled out by the end of last semester and attracted to careers I didn't even know existed. I do feel like I have some focus, but yet, the sheer quantity of possibilities once again becomes a bit overwhelming.

I can't help but think of how difficult this semester will be if I hadn't already made progress learning to say "no" and just buckle down and get work done last semester.

It's Cover Letter Season!

2010-01-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

Luckily, we're not quite back into the full swing of the semester yet, but January is still bringing quite a lot of work for me being on break and all. We have already started applying for summer internships. Yup, that's right. We're applying for jobs that start in about 4.5 months already. Besides that, I'm not sure how broad to go in my internship search since I'm not sure how easy or difficult this whole process is going to be.

I hardly feel like I've had enough time to "explore" different career options and am finding myself heading towards an internship that I thought might be interesting prior to starting business school. Is this really the right career for me? Should I try something else? Unfortunately, it feels like I don't really have time to answer these questions as application deadlines are looming. I guess at this point, the best I can do is go with what I think I want. Hopefully, I don't end up kicking myself for not taking more time to figure out what I'd like to do in the future.

At any rate, I get to spend the last week of break making sure that I work on cover letters in addition to all of the other fun and relaxing things I have up my sleeve for the week.

Sunnyside Up's Best of 2009

2010-01-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

In hopes of this becoming a tradition, I wanted to share with you my best of 2009 in the same fashion as my Best of 2008 post. Lots of big things happened this year and I can only hope that 2010 brings even more great and new adventures for life. (Note: These are in no particular order, nor are they all of the great things that happened this past year.)

1. Starting my MBA at Haas.
2. The end of the b-school application rollercoaster.
3. Catching up with good friends in the PNW not once, but twice this year.
4. Going to Alaska and experiencing almost 24 hours of light, even though we saw no moose.
5. Feeding a Musk Ox.
6. One of my best friend's getting engaged.
7. My good friend from college's awesome wedding and amazing macadamia nut crusted halibut.
8. Giving in and joining the iPhone craze.
9. Crazy wine bus trips to Napa and hilarious Haas costume parties.
10. Fitting back into my skinny jeans thanks to Dailey Method and walking everywhere.
11. New friends.
12. Becoming a full time student and not having conference calls 24/7.

It is very interesting to look back on 2009 and see that I have been able to get to new and better places based on all of the work that I started many years ago. I guess it's always nice to know that you're not wasting your time with all of these grand ideas. My best of lists are reminding me as well that I'm getting to be more and more of an adult as friends get married, engaged, and people start buying houses and settling into their future lives. I know that it's a very lofty goal for 2010, but it would be nice if I had a bit of a better idea of what I want in the future.

As I look back on 2009, it almost feels like two years with just one date because my pre-Haas life seems so different than my Haas life. As I regress to being a crazy social, studious grad student, everyone else continues around me while I'm off on this separate adventure. I definitely need to be sure that I'm using this time wisely, otherwise it will be just one costly adventure.

Happy Holidays from Live Sunnyside Up!

2009-12-23T15:17:00.000-08:00

I really can't believe that tomorrow's Christmas Eve! I'm not done with my shopping yet and I feel like I barely had a breather after finals ended a little over a week ago!! I'm trying to do my best to enjoy my time off and not stress about grabbing last minute gifts because I know January's going to bring a load of internship applications.

I hope all of you out there are able to take some time off and relax this holiday season. I have a feeling that 2010 is going to be a very busy year for all of us and we need to rest up so we can take on whatever it may bring.

Happy Holidays!

Fall Semester is Done!

2009-12-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

I truly can't believe that fall semester is done and we now have 5 weeks off to recoop, work on our internship applications, and travel the world. I'm not sure I'm actually going to get to that last one, but there will definitely be some domestic traveling. At any rate, the semester ended with a bang!

Despite the stress caused by our finance final, we definitely got in a good bit of hanging out and insanity as well. Immediately following our finance final, over half of my cohort and I headed off on a wine bus to Napa for a relaxing afternoon of wine tasting and hanging out before we all move on to new cohorts for Spring Semester. It was a great afternoon of relaxing and getting to catch up with all of my classmates. The wine bus dropped us off at the last cohort competition of the semester, called Walk Off that involved each cohort pulling together skits that were scored on hilarity and ridiculousness, among other things. Let's just say that after a day of drinking already, my cohort didn't win, but we did at least make it through our skit. Blue came through and surprised everyone and blasted everyone away with their great performance. Go Blue!

After all of the work hard, play hard of the end of the semester, I'm very glad to have spent the last several days just relaxing and hanging out. I do need to step up my productivity though as internship resume drops are coming up, but at this point, I'm just enjoying being done for a while and getting ready for the holidays at home with my family.

Glazed Chocolate Pumpkin Bundt Cake

2009-11-24T21:38:00.000-08:00

My study group has been teasing me all semester that I haven't made any of my infamous desserts for them yet, so I decided to have everyone over for a post Fall A celebration. One of my classmates heard that I was baking and after reading my blog implored me to blog about this and make sure to share a photo. So, you can thank her for making sure that I took the time to blog about this one and remembered to take a picture of my creation.

Upon moving to business school, I sent some of my most prized cooking and baking tools to my parent's house because I figured that I would spend too much time studying and doing other things to have time for cooking. Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong. Dinner parties are totally in! But, alas, many of these essential baking gadgets are still at my parent's house which is why this bundt cake was made in an angel food cake pan.

If you're looking for a very easy recipe this holiday season, this one's for you. Total active time on this cake was about 30 mins. 30 MINS! Yes, you too can make beautiful baked goods to bring for your loved ones. You do have to make sure that you're home for the next hour or so, but you can be working away on other things.

The cake part of this recipe is phenomenal. It was very moist and the chocolate and pumpkin flavors blended together beautifully. I have to say that I was rather disappointed with the buttermilk glaze on the cake. It's really sweet in contrast to the well balanced cake and really didn't add anything for me. If you're a cake person, but not a frosting person, I'd recommend leaving the buttermilk glaze off.

All in all, for 30 mins of work, this was a highly delicious cake! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there! I can't wait to hear about the tasty treats that you enjoy this week!

If you'd like to make your own Glazed Chocolate Pumpkin Bundt Cake, please check out the recipe from Eating Well here.

The Internship Search Has Begun

2009-11-22T13:56:00.000-08:00

It seems amazing to me that we've just been in school for about 3 months now and it feels that we're already into the full-fledged internship search. We've started trying to fit company visits, job fairs, and on campus presentations into our already busy schedules.

My first visit was at Symantec a couple of weeks ago. Despite having worked at Symantec for a brief month during my previous life in management consulting, it was really great to get back on their campus and learn more about how their product management organization works. We also got a quick tour of their engineering labs which was very interesting for someone who's worked in tech for 4 years and never set foot in a data center.

The following week, I headed into the downtown SF office of Adobe to learn about their product management team. The office is gorgeous and I could totally see myself fitting into the culture there. The company is great about fostering creativity but also making products that really satisfy the user's needs. This is something that I am passionate about as well. I wished that we had more time to talk to each of the alumni presenters to learn more about their experiences with Adobe, but it was a great afternoon learning more about Adobe.

I'm sure in the next couple of weeks, I'll be at a bunch more presentations and trying to figure out what I really might like to do with my summer. At the moment, I'm thinking a product management internship with a tech company but we'll shall see where this crazy business school experience takes me.

Grades

2009-11-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

So I know that everyone tells you grad school isn't about grades. I mean just look at the grading distribution. At Haas, the lowest grade a professor ever has to give is a B-, with the majority of students getting B+s. While I intellectually knew that this was true, I can honestly say that after spending my entire prior educational career trying to get straight As, I have to say that it was difficult to let go of grades. I tested the waters by not doing assigned readings and waiting until the absolute last minute to complete assignments which are all things that I would have previously considered to be slacking.

Our last quarter ended almost a month ago and we have yet to hear how we did, so I have pretty much forgotten about grades as I've become heads down trying to make sure that this semester is successful. We started hearing about our grades from first quarter today and I have to say that seeing that my grades start to come in and not have my more laid back strategy blow up in my face. I will definitely have to remember this in the future as all of the end of first semester, thanksgiving, and holiday parties start! Relax and worry less about grades!

Oh No! Not My Computer

2009-11-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

On Friday, my worst fear was realized. I hopped on the bus and was surfing my phone when I felt a tap on my shoulder. A woman across the aisle was getting my attention to let me know that water was pouring out of my laptop bag. Oh no! I reached in to see what had happened. The lid to my waterbottle had opened and 12 oz of water was now floating around my bag with my laptop, notes, and portfolio for my company trek in a few hours.

Let's just say that Friday was not one of my best days. I got off the bus as quickly as possible and stopped at a local cafe to get paper towels and dry off my laptop. Luckily after much anguish and stressing, two days later when I took my beloved Mac to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store, it just decided to magically work. I'm not sure why, but at this point, I'm very excited to have my laptop back and in working order given that we have more midterms next week and a whole host of papers to write.

Please heed my advice and back up your laptop at least once a day!!! No one needs to deal with data loss!!! Let's just say from here on out, I'll be backing up my laptop every night as I fall asleep.

Career Management Conference

2009-10-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I was drawn to Haas is the fact that they provide incredible support for those of us who aren't sure what we want to do when we get out of b-school. Of course, we had to come up with some sort of a plausible plan in our application, but that doesn't mean that we will be sticking to that plan at all. Haas Career Services really encourages us to explore and learn about other possible opportunities that we may not know about yet. All of this culminates in the 2 day Career Management Conference between our Fall A and Fall B quarters.

Despite the fact that it was really difficult to wake up early to get to school on what is supposed to be our break, I've learned a ton of great things that will be very helpful in my summer internship search which kicksoff in full swing on Wednesday night with Multi-Firm Night. The first day of the conference was filled with a lot of great tips for getting your resume and Linked In profile up to snuff. We also talked a lot about how to go about informational interviewing and make the most of career fairs and conferences that we will attend. The best thing of the entire day was a small group interview where you and two other people interview for a pretend job with a second year Career Coach and then all give each other feedback. It was really great to learn what other people thought that I needed to work on and get to see my peers interview.

The second day of the conference was much more tactical than the first with more alumni panels and industry recruiting discussions. The best session of the day was the tech industry interview discussion. An alum from HP discussed precisely what he looks for when he goes through resumes and gave us valuable insight into the perspective of a recruiter. While it was frightening to learn that if your last name is after N that you get significantly less time than those earlier in the alphabet. We were all shocked at how little time we have to make a lasting impression on a recruiter, but better to know it now than figure it out when you don't get an interview invite.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile conference and it has reminded me exactly how much work I need to put in on my resume and cover letters in the next few weeks before recruiting open season starts full force.

Surviving Finals and >Play Conference

2009-10-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

I literally just hit submit on my last final paper of Fall A!!! I'm so excited to be done with 1/8 of my entire b-school experience! Just insane. It has been a great quarter. I think I've done a good job of settling into school again and getting to know all of the great people in my class and cohort. Go Axe!

Unfortunately, we didn't get too much of a break between finals and classes starting again, especially because the Digital Media and Entertainment Club's student-led conference >Play was this past Saturday. I was very impressed with our abilities to get some really great speakers. We opened the morning with a quick intro from Dean Rich Lyons and then heard from John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla. He had some really great insights into how he sees the web-browser evolving and how that will transition into the mobile space. Then I headed off to a panel on creativity, which wasn't as captivating as I thought it was going to be. Next, I enjoyed a really interesting panel on the future of the mobile ecosystem. The panelists were a great mix of people who focused on applications and browsers. After a great lunch, I saw the founder of Guitar Hero and the President of EA Sports to discuss the future of video game distribution. They believe that distribution for video games will eventually become digital, but believe that this will take a while for people to become open to the lack of a physical game DVD. Finally, we closed out the day with playing in the expo and a talk from the VP of Product Management at Google. I have to say that I was kind of disappointed by his talk because he just reviewed Google's current products instead of discussing where he saw the future of Google's products. All in all, it was a great day!

>play Conference

2009-10-10T23:21:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited for the >play conference at Haas next weekend! It's going to be an exciting day of digital media and entertainment. We're having speakers from Mozilla and Google. Also, there will be great workshops on the latest trends in digital media and internet technology like cloud computing, brands that matter, games on the move, and mobile ecosystems in motion.

If you're in the Bay Area next weekend, I highly recommend attending! Check out the agenda for the conference here!!!!

Finals Time!

2009-10-10T23:09:00.001-07:00

It's less hard to believe that it's finals time already than it was when we hit midterms. I guess that means I'm settling into the crazy quarters schedule. I'm starting to realize more and more that it's really more important to hang out with classmates and be social than it is to really spend that extra couple of hours studying. Unfortunately, that plan kind of backfired on me last week when I ended up with a nasty cold. Oh well. It comes with the territory.

It has definitely taken the first couple of months for me to realize that I really am at school as my career. I guess I thought that I was just at a conference and would be back to the real world soon. Nope! Lucky for me, but I'm a student so I should truly take advantage of the lifestyle.

We definitely have a great 7/8ths of our B-school experience left, so I'll remember that and not spend too much time studying for finals next week, but be sure to socialize with classmates!

Fall A & Learning to Say No

2009-09-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

Our first semester at Haas is actually more like two mini quarters that put together makes up the usual 15 week semester. After all of the fun and excitement of orientation, we've been settling into school work, the internship search (yes, I know we just got to school, but it's already time for the internship), and of course playing much much much to hard. It's very different from undergrad in the sense that you don't want to be at the top of the class, but you just want to be in the middle of that curve so you end up with a decent grade at the end. This is a bit counter-intuitive for me to not constantly aim to get the best grade. Now, I just need to do enough to pass. Luckily, that means that I have enough time to work on my internship search and play hard with the rest of my class.

Our class has enjoyed lots of good times together so far. We've had toga parties, 60s parties, checked out bars in SF, bars in Berkeley, barbecued, made bets on who's going to win American's Next Top Model, and enjoyed countless lunches and coffees together. With all of these fun things going on, it's sometimes difficult to make it to all of them, let alone make sure that enough time is spent on revising your resume and doing micro homework.

Thus, I've been learning how to say no. For some reason, it's always been very difficult for me to not do things. Here there really is no choice though when there are 2 career related events, 3 fun events, and a GSI's (Graduate Student Instructor) office hours. Since I haven't perfected the art of being in 6 places at once, I have to decide which is the most important and cannot be done at another time. There's something freeing about deciding to say no that somehow leads to more saying no. It's definitely good because there are so many opportunities to do so on a daily basis.

With three more weeks left until the end of our mini quarter, we're definitely heads down on our group projects! More opportunities to say no coming up!

S'mores Cheesecake

2009-09-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

I happened to find a bit of time during my post-midterms weekend to bake this S'mores Cheesecake for a potluck. Sadly, my baking has become a by request only thing that happens once in a time. But, this recipe was great! It tasted just like a s'more!!

The recipe specifies that the cheesecake needs to be chilled for 8 hours before you put the marshmallow on top. You do really need to do that. I didn't and the marshmallow topping became a bit oozy and made a nice sticky mess. Also, you definitely HAVE to brown the marshmallow topping under the broiler or use a creme brule torch, if you have one. It was the best finishing touch and really added the essential s'mores flavor to the cheesecake. However, watch your cheesecake closely while it's under the broiler. I was amazing by just how quickly it started to smolder.

If you'd like to make your own S'mores Cheesecake, check out the recipe here.

Midterms Already?

2009-09-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it! We've been in school for 3 weeks and we are already to midterms! It's so crazy. This whole experience is going to go by so fast. I will have to try to find some time next weekend and share more with you guys, but in the meantime, it's back to the stats and econ problems for me! I'll resurface again next week!

Behind Already??

2009-08-31T16:12:00.001-07:00

Wow, we have definitely hit the ground running. It is the beginning of the second week of classes and I feel like every time I turn around I find something else that I needed to do. The last thing that has been on my mind lately has been my internship search. After resolving a pesky email forwarding error, I found that much of the 150 emails that I had neglected were related to the career search and the industry and job search workshops that are coming up starting this week! Luckily, I've been using the "just-in-time" method of getting through this stuff so I haven't missed anything yet.

Now, back to the reading that's due tomorrow that I completely forgot about!

O-Week!

2009-08-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

I know I kind of disappeared for a bit lately, but I've resurfaced to tell you all about my first couple of weeks at Haas.

My business school experience started with two weeks of a math review known as Math Camp. It was a nice review of everything that we'll need to know to start school. Also, it was great to get to know half of my fellow classmates as well as get used to getting to classes and doing homework while it was still optional. We started off with a review of basic math and statistics. Then we reviewed all of the essentials of Finance and closed the week out with a quick review of Financial Accounting. It was super helpful to remember a lot of the things that I learned as an undergraduate business major but haven't used in the last 4 years.

Orientation or O-week as we fondly call it followed Math Camp. Here we met all 239 of our classmates, found out which cohort we are in (go Axe!), and had a lot of fun while learning a lot about ourselves, our classmates, and Haas. The CEO of Intel shared with us his experiences and where he sees the business community going for him. There were scavenger hunts, Cohort Olympics (which we lost by just 5 points! Ugh!), cupcake eating contests, numerous bar nights, cases, and networking events. It was a very intense week with often 10-11 hour days mixed with fun, socializing, and drinking from a fire hose. I have to say that I'm very glad that we had a 4 day weekend before we started in on classes to recuperate and prepare for what was to come.

I'll have to tell you more about the beginning of classes in my next post, but I can't wait to see where this crazy adventure takes me. Go Bears!

A Comic For All Grad Students Out There

2009-08-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight's xkcd comic is just for all of you grad students out there... see it here. (As is common with most xkcd posts, mouse over for the best part of the comic strip!)

The Last Dessert Night (at least for a while)

2009-07-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Dessert Night is officially over. Well, at least for the next 2 years while I'm in school. I decided to celebrate the end of an era with one of my favorite desserts, Carrot Cake. I think I really just eat Carrot Cake because I LOVE cream cheese frosting, but nevertheless it was tasty.

I turned again to one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, for the recipe for this week's dessert. However, I opted for a traditional cream cheese frosting instead of the maple cream cheese frosting that SK used because I had leftover cream cheese frosting from the red velvet cupcakes that we had earlier this month.

The cake was super easy to make. I opted to use currants instead of raisins because I happened to have those on hand and substituted allspice for the nutmeg. I didn't include nuts because I'm always conscious of possible nut allergies. Another great idea for this carrot cake would be substituting crushed pineapple for the raisins. My mom used to do this when I was younger and it makes the cake a little sweeter and adds a bit of a tangy flavor to it. I highly recommend it. If you'd like to make your own Carrot Cake, check out the cake recipe here and the frosting recipe here.

Sadly, this will be the end of recipes that I share regularly on this blog. I will still be cooking and hopefully baking as I have time, but you cannot count on a weekly recipe. While I'm sad to end this fun Tuesday tradition, I know that Dessert Night will be resurrected at some point in the future when I'm no longer a student. From now on, you'll be hearing all about my life as a first year at Haas.

Way Too Many Cookies and Ice Creams

2009-07-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

With the end of Dessert Nights getting closer and closer, I keep trying to out do myself with each new dessert. This week I went a bit overboard, but July is National Ice Cream Month so we had to have ice cream. And what goes better with ice cream than cookies! On a different note, I accidentally selected 3 of the 4 recipes for the week from either David Lebowitz's blog or his ice cream cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, but since they are so delectable it didn't matter.

Peanut butter and chocolate has long been a favorite flavor combination of dessert night goers, so it was only fitting to make sure that at least one of this week's cookies had this flavor combo. Baking Bites just happened to suggest a recipe that combines everyone's favorite, the brownie, with a peanut butter cookie. This recipe calls for chopped brownies in the batter. Instead of making my own brownies, I went to Whole Foods and picked up some of their brownies in their bakery. Very tasty! This recipe is super easy and requires no special mixers or anything to make and was delicious. If you'd like to make your own Peanut Butter Brownie cookies, check out the recipe here.

Madelines quickly became the other cookie of choice because my cousin just bought me a madeline pan. Unfortunately, you do have to have a madeline pan for these tasty cakey cookies. They are generally rather inexpensive for a decent one, but this may be a barrier for some of you out there. Contrary to popular thought, these cookies are super easy to make, but I will warn you that they take forever! Each step is rather time consuming particularly if you're modifying your kitchen gadgets to act as other things like a strainer as a sifter and such. Definitely liberally butter and flour the madeline pan otherwise you're going to have a tough time getting these little guys out of the pan. I opted to use the baking powder to make sure my cookies were a bit fluffy, but honestly they ended up not flattening out well so were a bit rounded. I'd probably try without the baking powder next to see what happens. All in all, they were super tasty. If you'd like to make your own Madelines, check out the recipe here. (Note: the recipe calls for a lemon glaze which sounded super tasty, but I opted to leave that out.)

Finally for the ice creams, I opted for a simple Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream because it was very easy to make and I love the flavor of all summer berries. Unfortunately, I can't share the recipe for this with you at this time because I've already packed my copy of The Perfect Scoop. The recipe is in there and I highly recommend that cookbook if you like ice creams or even if you have an ice cream maker and don't know what to do with it. When I finish moving, I'll try to remember to post the recipe.

The Absinthe Ice Cream was the most anticipated ice cream of the evening. Absinthe has such a unique flavor that I imagined it would make a very delicious ice cream after seeing David Lebowitz's blog about it. I also happened to have a small bottle of Absinthe lying around which was perfect for this recipe. As far as ice cream recipes go, the ones that are more involved are the custard based ice creams, like this one. Those aren't that bad either, but between the Madelines and the Absinthe Ice Cream, I think I used about 70% of my kitchen utensels. For the chocolate chips in this recipe, I finally found that you can buy dark chocolate chunks (like you see in professional ice creams) at Whole Foods! It was a great discovery and these added a great counter-flavor to the licorice in the absinthe. This was definitely my favorite ice cream of the evening. To make your own Absinthe Ice Cream, check out the recipe here.

Sadly, next Tuesday marks the end of an era with the last Dessert Night. I still don't know what I'm going to be making yet, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way.

The Packing Has Begun!!

2009-07-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

Yup! It's official! I'm moving to Berkeley in a week and a half! Apartment...check. Roommates...check. Loans....mostly check. Official employment status: student...check. It's insane! Now that I've officially stopped working and my apartment is starting to live in boxes, it's becoming very real that I'm starting school shortly.

I'm definitely excited about the fun, learning, networking, and general insanity that will ensue in the next two years, but I'm also a little nervous about the balancing act that it will require. Back as far as high school, I haven't been able to do all of the activities that I've wanted to do. It has only gotten more challenging since then as more and more awesome opportunities have come my way. Business school is known for this time crunch. You're not going to have time for classes, job searching, treks, all of the clubs you want, and any other cool projects that you might have the opportunity to participate in. Choosing is the name of the game. Additionally, I have a network of friends outside of Haas that will want me to come and play in the city and do other fun things. So I think the biggest lesson that Haas will help me learn, other than the great business sense that I'm going to develop while there, will be the ability to choose what's most important and balance all of the things that I need and want to do in life.

At the moment, just going with the flow and getting excited to move to campus and meet my 238 classmates! Happy last weeks of summer guys!

Apple Cake

2009-07-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

The count down to the end of dessert night has begun, sadly. This week was our 3rd to last dessert night ever. As such, I'm trying to pull out some of the most unique and more challenging recipes to go out with a bang. Over the past year and a half, we've had several varieties of apple pie, apple crumble bars, and German Apple Cake, but this recipe was more of the traditional East Coast Apple Cakes.

The recipe was super easy to make. Don't be concerned if your cake doesn't start puffing up until an hour into your baking. Mine didn't and still puffed up nicely in the end. Also, the recipe says that the cake bakes for 1.5 hours. Mine took closer to 2 hours. It is a dense and filling cake that really brings out the flavors of the apples. Definitely make sure to use good apples for this recipe because they make the flavor of the cake. If you'd like to make your own Apple Cake, check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned for a variety of cookies and ice creams next week!

Black Forest Ice Cream Cake

2009-07-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Summer always means ice cream. I had my first ice cream cake of my adult life for ChuThis's birthday month ago and I really liked the combination of cake/cookies and ice cream. My mom found this recipe in a magazine and contributed it to dessert night.

I didn't have time to make the ice cream for this cake, so I used Dryer's Chocolate chip ice cream. It was tasty, but the ice cream was a lot softer than I had anticipated it being so it melted really quickly. I also decided to use Chips Ahoy cookies for the crust instead of just a chocolate wafer cookie. This turned out to be really tasty but the frozen chocolate parts of the cookie made the crust a lot tougher to cut than I had anticipated. Perhaps a Nilla Wafer or cookie with fewer chocolate chips would have made the crust less tough.

This was a very tasty and super easy summer dessert. Just make sure you keep it close to the freezer and use ice cream that's not as soft as Dryers. Here's the recipe for your enjoyment.

Black Forest Ice Cream Cake: (recipe from California Country)
2 cups ground chocolate cookie crumbs, such as Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers (I used Chips Ahoy instead)
3 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 quarts chocolate chip ice cream (I don't recommend Dreyers because it's too soft)
1 1/2 lbs. cherries, stemmed and pitted
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch

In a bowl, stir together cookie crumbs and melted butter. Press firmly into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Freeze for 30 mins.

Let ice cream sit at room temperature for about 2o mins to soften slightly (less time if it's hot out). Put ice cream in springform pan. Firmly press ice cream on top of crust. Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze cake for several hours until firm. (Can be made several days ahead.)

While cake is freezing, combine cherries, water, sugar, and cornstarch in a medium pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until cherries have given off juice and have thickened. Refrigerate until cold. Just before serving, unmold cake. Place cherries on top of cake. Slice and serve. Serves 8 to 10.

The FAFSA

2009-07-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

For those of you, non-international students, who've embarked on this adventure you totally know what I'm talking about. For those of you who look forward to a FAFSA in your future, here are a few tips to get you through this process that has the potential to be plainless with just a bit of pre-work:

-do your taxes before trying to fill out the FAFSA and have them on hand when you sit down to complete it
-know your school's code for the FAFSA
-set aside a good hour of uninterrupted time to complete the FAFSA

Really, the FAFSA wasn't a painful experience for me once I lined up the my taxes and an uninterrupted hour. Hopefully, these tips will help you fill out your FAFSA when the time comes.

Good luck!

4th of July Celebration: Red Velvet Cupcakes

2009-07-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Everyone has been all gaga over red velvet cupcakes ever since Sprinkles came out with red velvet as their signature cupcake. I had my first Sprinkles red velvet cupcake about a month ago and it was good, but not necessarily $4 a cupcake good. Since I didn't even know what made up a red velvet cupcake, I decided that I'd make some for 4th of July.

I have to say that the ingredients of a red velvet cake are rather disgusting: 2 huge bottles of red food coloring, chocolate, flour, sugar, and some buttermilk. The red food coloring is particularly gross to me, so I'm considering making them again without the red food coloring and seeing what happens. All in all, this recipe turned out a very moist red velvet cupcake.

The frosting recipe that is also on Pinch My Salt's website was very flavorful, but turned out a bit softer than I would have preferred. Next time, I will add more powdered sugar to stiffen it up.

If you'd like to make your own red velvet cupcakes, check out the recipe here. These cupcakes also work great for a Valentine's Day surprise, but with the blue sprinkles, they were great for 4th of July.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th!!

Apartment in Berkeley!!

2009-07-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

After visiting over a dozen apartments, calling even more landlords to try to see apartments, and constantly surfing Craigslist, I managed to find a wonderful home in walking distance of campus and in a cute neighborhood called Elmwood.

Haas students generally live in one of three neighborhoods: North Berkeley, Gourmet Ghetto, and Elmwood. After visiting all of these neighborhoods, Elmwood became my clear favorite because it's not on a huge hill and while not close to some of the most favorite restaurants in Berkeley, it's still close to a very nice area of shops and restaurants. Also, it's conveniently located on the south end of campus so it's closer to the Bay Area and Peninsula, but not so close to south campus that it's in the middle of the undergrads and sorority houses.

I will be living in a nicely remodeled 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment with two other girls starting at Haas in the fall. We are on the top floor of a small 3 unit building and have a garage, dishwasher and laundry with our apartment. Our landlord is an awesome very responsible guy who did a fabulous job redoing all of the apartments in the building. We are also very excited that another Haas '11 and his wife will be moving in downstairs.

I think it's going to be a great spot and I'm very excited to be moving away from my very heavy-footed upstairs neighbor. I'm also just glad that the housing search is officially over and now I can focus on the other key things that I need to start school like financial aid, health care and all of the other self assessments that I need to do prior to the first day of class.

Blueberry Crumb Cake

2009-06-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Blueberries are my all time favorite fruit. I can eat them by the handfulls and not get bored of them. They are very good for you since they're full of antioxidants. The only downside is that this blueberry consumption rate can be rather expensive.

I decided that since I love blueberries so much, what better way to eat them is in a tasty dessert. I came across a recipe for Blueberry Upside Down Cakes which got me thinking about blueberries in cake. I eventually came across this recipe from Fresh From the Oven that is a take on a Barefoot Contessa recipe. I've been hearing about Barefoot Contessa and her wonderful recipes for years from various foodie friends but I hadn't tried one yet. This was a great and very easy recipe and yielded a very tasty result. Given that I love blueberries so much, I added almost 2 cups of blueberries to this recipe instead of just the 1.5 cups required. It was very tasty. The sour cream made the cake so moist that it was a nice contrast to the crunchy crumbles of the crumble topping.

If you'd like to make your own Blueberry Crumb Cake, check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned next week for Red Velvet Cupcakes in celebration of the 4th of July!!!

The Quest for a New Home

2009-06-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

With just over 6 weeks left until I need to be in Berkeley, the housing search is in full swing. I made a trek across the Bay to check out places earlier this week.

It's been a challenging search thus far because I'm still trying to figure out my living situation. Will I be living alone? Will I have 1 roommate? 2? At this point, all of this is still up in the air. I've been talking with a couple of girls that I might live with, but the whole apartment search is made more challenging by the fact that I have allergies and that means I have to rule out most of the more affordable places.

I'm working hard to not get too discouraged over the process since I've only looked for the first time. I plan on heading over again this weekend to take a look at more places. I'll keep you posted on the search.

Haas Class of 2011

2009-06-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

It's been such a busy couple of weeks that I almost forgot to share with my readership that I've finally decided to become a member of the Haas Class of 2011. It was a difficult decision because unlike so many business school applicants out there, I'm not unhappy with my current job, out of a current job, or feeling like I need immediate change in my life. I'm definitely happy with where I'm at and my current lifestyle, but I know that in 8-10 years I'm going to be kicking myself for not going to Haas when I had the chance. So....I'm going to Haas!!!

Honestly, it's been such a blur that it's still slowly sinking in as I start working through all of the paperwork that we need to have completed prior to starting school in August and the thoughts of moving to Berkeley and getting loans start to go through my head more and more often. It's going to be an intense month or so to get ready to start Haas in August, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Haas Class of 2011, here I come!!! I can't wait to meet my fellow classmates and start on this crazy adventure that is b-school.

Strawberry Tart with Oatmeal Shortbread Crust and Chocolate Ganache

2009-06-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

It was another Mystery Box week and summer brings some of the most tasty fruit add ons. ChuThis and I decided to share a flat of the most tasty strawberries ever. Of course half a flat of strawberries was much too much for me to eat before they started to go bad, so I decided to share them with Dessert Night.

ChuThis sent me a host of strawberry tart recipes - one with port sauce, one with balsalmic sauce, and the one that I chose for this week's dessert. Chocolate and strawberries is always a good combination. That's just what you find in this tart. It starts with an oatmeal shortbread crust that is like the best oatmeal cookie you've ever tasted. Then comes a layer of chocolate ganache to keep the crust from getting soggy and adding that rich chocolate taste that meshes so well with the strawberries. The marscapone cream comes next mixed with chocolate shavings. The final topping on the tart is nothing more than those tasty strawberries. They were ripe to the point of being so naturally sweet that they were just the perfect top to the creamy marscapone and the chocolate.

All in all, it was a very tasty dessert. If you'd like to make your own, check out Apartment Therapy's blog post here. The recipes are all over the place for this one so you'll have to kind of piece them together, but I promise that the result is worth it.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

2009-06-12T22:48:00.001-07:00

This week I had a bit more time for dessert making because I took Monday off to recuperate from my Alaskan adventure. While I was catching up on my food blogs in the hotel, I spotted this recipe for Chocolate Whoopie Pies.

The fact that this recipe included Crisco did turn me off from eating the finished product. I will admit that dessert night is not usually about making nutritious desserts that aren't high in fat as most of my recipes do use real butter and whipping cream, but I have thus far never used Crisco. Other than that, this recipe was very tasty. The marshmallow fluff in the middle added a very light and sweet frosting flavor similar to that of the inside of an oreo. The cookies were a bit more dense than I was anticipating and didn't spread out very much as they baked. They had the consistency of the chocolate cookies that make an ice cream sandwich.

Whoopie pies come in all different flavors and fillings. I would definitely make these again, but I'd work on a different filling so I didn't have to use Crisco. If you'd like to make your own Chocolate Whoopie Pies, go here.

Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes

2009-06-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

As you noticed in last week's post, this week's dessert was a runner up for last week's. Everyone strongly voted the Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes as their second favorite dessert.

The recipe for these was very easy to follow and the use of a muffin pan means that no special equipment is required since I'm assuming that most of you have made cupcakes before. I must say that even though I wasn't entirely paying attention when I made these so there was an additional egg white in the recipe and I forgot to add the vanilla. This is just one of the hazards of baking while on conference calls and doing 5 other things. Despite these errors, these cupcakes still tasted great. I used dark chocolate chunks for the chocolate chips and they added a great flavor to the light angel food cake. I am a huge fan of angel food cake so I really liked these cupcakes a lot. If you'd like to make your own, go here for the recipe.

Apologies for the very terrible picture of this week's dessert. At least there is a picture, but I'll try to make sure that it's actually decipherable next week.

Silly B-School Schwag!

2009-06-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

I got home today to the most random package ever from the University of Wisconsin School of Business! I have to say that I'm not going to ever consider moving to Wisconsin, but the random contents of the package did give me a good laugh.

Crumb Cake

2009-05-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you who voted for this week's dessert! I really appreciated your input and it was great to start to learn more about your likes and dislikes. Chocolate souffle was the unanimous winner, but it is a picky dish that requires special dishes, total silence, and an accurate oven. None of which I seem to have at the moment, so that will have to be a future dessert.

Crumb cake was the second most popular first choice dessert so I went ahead with that. Luckily, I didn't vacuum prior to dessert night because this dessert is really every bit as messy as you think it's going to be. The recipe was very easy. One thing of note was that the cake batter is much thinner than usual. Don't worry, it's supposed to be that way. While the cake is baking, you will be making the crumbly topping. This topping can be made and stuck on top of a variety of other pastries like muffins and scones and adds a nice crunchy crumbliness to them. If you'd like to make your own crumb cake, please check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned for the second favorite dessert, Chocolate Angel Food Cupcakes, next week!

Accepted to Haas!!!

2009-05-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! After having my application for almost 7 months, Haas finally called and accepted me to the Class of 2011!!! I'm so so so excited!!! What a great way to start a long Memorial Day weekend!!!

Ghiradelli Brownies and a Low Fat Vanilla Ice Cream Incident

2009-05-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Ghiradelli has been my favorite chocolate company pretty much since I realized that you can get as many of their free samples as you want by going back in again and again. They just keep giving you those delicious caramel squares. They also used to have a soda fountain attached to their store on Cannery Row in Monterey that had the best mint chip ice cream. I recently discovered that they are venturing into other chocolate based mixes like brownie mix. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the traditional Betty Crocker or Pillsbury mixes because they have this bit of artificial sweetness that allows me to instantly tell that they're not a true homemade brownie. Given that Ghiradelli makes superior chocolate, I had to give their brownie mix a shot. This was a perfect week for a quick and easy dessert too with my Haas interview before dessert night.

I must say that the brownies were intense and delightfully moist. I made them in an 8x8 pan, per the directions, but I think next time I might make them in a 9x13 pan to spread out the chocolatey goodness. As Amy astutely commented though, the low fat vanilla ice cream was a good pairing with the intensity of the brownie because it sufficiently diluted it.

Let's talk about this ice cream for a second. I attempted to make ice cream with 2% milk instead of cream and whole milk. For all of you out there who are thinking right now that this is a good idea, let me asure you that it is NOT a good idea. The resulting ice cream had a great flavor, but was very very icey. I even added a teaspoon of rum in an attempt to make it less icy. I'm sure it helped but not nearly enough. If you're trying to enjoy ice cream, but also trying to keep with your diet, I highly recommend just having a little bit of the homemade full fat stuff or buying some of the lowfat ice creams from Safeway.

So while the ice cream was a bust, I can officially highly recommend the Ghiradelli brownie mix. It's really worth the extra dollar over the Betty Crocker mixes.

Haas Interview

2009-05-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I headed over to Berkeley for my interview at the Haas Admission's Office. I always mis-estimate the amount of time that it will take me to get to Berkeley because I don't know my way around that well yet and it seems that parking is always incredibly challenging and requires a long walk to Haas. I left myself plenty of time and ended up with about an hour to kill.

I wandered around Berkeley and chuckled at the many hilarious sights that you see wandering around along with the most intelligent comments from the homeless bums. (One bum was arguing that you owed him your spare change because you had not suffered as he had for years sleeping on cement and that it would be cheaper than paying his medicare.) After spending a few minutes relaxing in the sunshine and reviewing my interview notes, I headed to Haas.

The interview was an hour. We started talking about me (resume, why b-school, why Haas - those kinds of questions) and then we moved onto her background as an alum and then role in the Admissions office. Finally, we wrapped up with questions. She asked some very interesting questions about my resume that really required that I link common themes throughout my work experience. Most of these questions stemmed from my research paper about nonverbal communication. She also asked about challenging situations that I had encountered and how I had handled them. We talked about why I felt particularly drawn to Haas and why getting my MBA now. This conversation evolved into her asking me about which activities I was looking forward to participating in at Haas. Next, I got to ask her about her experience at Haas and the types of things that she wish that she could have done while a student. Also, she covered the remainder of the admissions process for me since I was interviewing on the decision notification deadline for the 4th round and the timeline over the summer before school starts.

All in all, I felt that the interview went really well. We had a great conversation and I got to show my knowledge of Haas and passion for business school. I can't wait to hear from them in the next couple of weeks so I can start feeling more settled about what my next direction will be.

Vote for Next Week's Dessert!!

2009-05-20T13:30:00.001-07:00

I'm stuck in that weekly dilemma again of which of the hundreds of tasty recipes that I have on file I should make for dessert night next week. So, this week, I'm asking for your help! Please check out my survey and rank the things that I'm considering for next week. Check out the survey here: http://bit.ly/i6wqG

I will be making the winning dessert for dessert night next week!

Blackberry Clafoutis

2009-05-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to make more desserts with fruit lately since we're getting to summer when all of my favorite fruits are available. I really enjoyed the last clafoutis that I had made because it smelled so good and was so fluffy. I decided that I would add blackberries this time instead of cherries because they are relatively tough fruits. I also saw recipes for apricot and peach clafoutis, but decided that a thicker fruit would be better. Also, blackberries are in season.

I used the same recipe that I used for the cherry clafoutis, just substituting blackberries for the cherries. This time though I used my mixer instead of doing it by hand. While this made my arm much less tired, I don't think that it mixed the batter quite as well as I did by hand. Next time, I think I'll try the handmixer, either that or do it by hand again. Last time's clafoutis was a lot better because it was better mixed. However, it was just as tasty with blackberries as it did with cherries. I'd like to try it again with a handmixer and perhaps some apricots.

If you'd like to make your own clafoutis, go here. Feel free to substitute two cups of any fruit for the cherries.

Cinco de Mayo Celebration: Margarita Cookies

2009-05-12T00:49:00.000-07:00

Margaritas are pretty much my favorite way to drink tequila. These are an essential part of any Cinco de Mayo celebration along with Coronas and lime. Why not have margarita cookies instead of the liquid version?

Smitten Kitchen had a recipe posted on her blog and so I decided to give it a shot because she always has such great, tasty things. The recipe had lime and orange flavorings to create the taste of a margarita, with some tequila in the batter, and a sugar/salt rim on the outside. You definitely have to make the added effort to get the crystal clear granulated sugar to roll the cookies in. The crunchiness that it adds to the outsides is not like any other and, if you use Sugar in the Raw or a brown sugar, it will change the color of the cookie.

Because these cookies are rolled and then sliced, you save a lot of time and energy trying to use two spoons to make nice dollops of cookie dough if you don't own a cookie scoop.

All in all, these cookies were a very tasty bite-sized margarita. Eat them quickly after you make them because they taste the most like margaritas just after you make them and the flavor separates more over time. If you'd like your own margarita cookies, check out the recipe here.

I decided to get a bit artsy this week since I remembered to take pictures before everyone came over.

Haas Interview Invite!!

2009-05-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this post by saying that I turned in my application to Haas WAY back in December and after deciding on Fuqua, I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that I was going to reapply next year. I had almost forgotten about Haas.

Today, I got an email from them inviting me to a campus interview. I am so excited because Haas is one of my top choice programs and I have learned a ton more about the school since applying that makes me want to go there even more.

Now, I have the next week to prep for my interview to knock their socks off.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream & Strawberry Sherbert

2009-05-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of you who participated in my ice cream survey. The results were not what I was expecting. Most people wanted ice cream with fruit in the first question, followed by something with nuts. The second question though showed that Ben & Jerry's is the preferred ice cream brand by far. This question had the most responses for an ice cream with stuff in it, like Phish food, cookie dough, or cookies and cream. The other most mentioned desired flavor was vanilla with some kind of fruit in it.

Knowing that, I set out to pick one fruit flavored ice cream and one intensely flavored chocolate based ice cream. The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz is definitely my go to book for all ice creams. That's where I found the most amazing Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream recipe with peanut butter patties mixed in. It had the qualities of cookie dough with the peanut butter chunks, but also the intensity of the chocolate that you'd find in a Phish food. As with all ice creams, the recipe is exceedingly easy. Just throw everything in a pot, boil for a bit, chill, and throw in the ice cream maker. If you want to make your own chocolate peanut butter ice cream, check out this link for the online recipe or pick up your own copy of The Perfect Scoop.

For my fruity ice cream, Candace had been flipping through my latest Eating Well magazine and come across a great recipe for Strawberry Sherbert. What I liked about this recipe was that it used buttermilk instead of half and half so added a bit of a sour flavor to the sweetness of the strawberries. Honestly, I would have probably added more strawberries in comparison to the volume of buttermilk because I wanted a bit more of a strawberry flavor, but it was still great as is. The recipe is below for those of you who'd like to make your own.

Strawberry Sherbert (from Eating Well):
2 cups chopped fresh or frozen (not thawed) strawberries, divided
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups nonfat or low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup half and half
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

1. Combine 1 cup of berries and sugar in a small bowl and let sit, stirring occaisonally until the sugar has begun to dissolve, about 10 minutes. Transfer the berry mixture to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.
2. Meanwhile, combine buttermilk, half and half, lemon juice, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl. Press the strawberry mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into the bowl. Stir, cover and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 1 day.
3. Whisk the sherbert mixture and pour into the canister of an ice cream maker. Freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. During the last 5 minutes of freezing, add the remaining 1 cup chopped berries. If necessary, place the sherbert in the freezer to firm up before serving. (If the sherbert becomes very hard in the freezer, soften it in the refridgerator for about 30 mins before scooping.) Makes 8 servings.

Salted Caramel and Pecan Cheesecake

2009-04-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

Recently, it seems like I've been making a ton of cupcakes for Dessert Nights. I'm not sure if it was just a coincidence or if I was inspired by how tasty the Irish Carbomb Cupcakes were for St Patrick's Day. I've consciously tried to deviate from cupcakes in the last couple of weeks. I realized that it has been over a year since my first ever cheesecake attempt and decided to try another one.

Salted Caramel has been all of the rage lately. It's in everything from ice cream flavors to Starbucks drinks. It's also a great topping for cheesecake since that's usually rich and the sweetness of the caramel would be a nice complement. I happened upon this great recipe from Bake or Break. The recipe is super easy. For those of you who want a great easy dessert, this is it. Honestly, the toughest thing was the caramel and that's the easiest thing to cheat on by just using a jar. If you don't have a mixer, it will take more elbow grease to make sure that the cream cheese is light enough, but nothing that you can't handle. You will definitely be rewarded with a tasty cheesecake that's sure to excite your taste buds.

I did learn that nuts are more popular with the dessert night crew than I previously thought. I only put the pecans on half of the cheesecake to cater to those who don't like nuts, and that side was gone before anyone had barely gotten into the nut-free side.

Stay tuned to hear about next week's ice cream experiment and survey results.

Fuqua Decision

2009-04-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

After my experiences at Blue Devil Weekend (see both of these posts), I knew I had some tough thinking to do. I needed to revisit my answer to the question "Is this the right year for me to go to business school?" in light of the economic changes that have occurred since I initially decided to apply back in September and I needed to really think hard about "Is Fuqua the right school for me?".

BDW helped me learn a lot about the program and Durham. I feel like I would receive a fine education from Duke and the people were nice. I really didn't like the town of Durham. It's very isolated and I learned that I really value friendships with people who work in different industries and projects and that's something that would be very difficult in Durham because all of the Fuqua students live, study, and hang out together. After this weekend, I knew I could be happy going to Fuqua even though, honestly, it has never been one of my top choices.

Next, I had to determine how I felt about my need to go to grad school this year. I have a great job that is challenging for me and two great managers that will let me take on as much responsibility as I can handle. I didn't apply to business school because I didn't like my job or I was out of work. Since applying to school, my responsibilities at work have grown significantly.

In the end, not being very excited about Fuqua and having significant growth opportunities at work led me to decide to decline Fuqua's offer of admission. I wish the rest of the Duke MBA Class of 2011 the best in their two short years at Fuqua. Now it's either up to Haas or reapplying in September.

Vote for Your Favorite Ice Cream Flavor!!

2009-04-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

I decided to make Dessert Night a bit more interactive this week and am looking for your input into which ice cream flavor (or flavors if there is enough time) for me to have for dessert next week. Given that it's been 90+ degrees for a couple of days now, I'm feeling in the mood for ice cream and have decided that's what we're having next week. I'm looking for everyone and anyone's input even if you are unable to attend dessert night next week.

Please check out the survey here: http://tinyurl.com/d5j8h5

Blue Devil Weekend Day 2

2009-04-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

I started sharing my Blue Devil Weekend experience with you in last week's post, but that only began to describe the first half of my experience.

The second day of the weekend was where the bulk of the material was covered. We started bright an early with a welcome from the Dean and started in on the curriculum and academic portions of Fuqua. We heard about the Research Advantage as Fuqua terms their faculty that specializes in both teaching and research excellence. They are cited among the most productive research faculty in terms of papers published in academic journals.

Next, we headed off for our classroom simulations. We spent 45 mins in one of about 10 "classes." These are much shorter than the usual 2 hour class, but gave us a taste of what our classroom experiences would be in a variety of different subject areas. I attended the Entrepreneurship and Strategy courses. Both were action packed and the profs were calling on us already. There was a nice balance of discussion and case method in my strategy course and the entrepreneurship course had an interesting focus for researching how entrepreneurial behavior can be fostered.

After classes, we met up with our student hosts for the weekend and chatted with them over lunch to get any of our questions answered. An accounting prof named Shawn worked to convince me and several others who were undecided about Fuqua to the good points of the school. He was really passionate about the program and about the local area. That conversation reminded me of the personal nature of the program because he asked us to come by his office in the fall and say hi so he knew that we decided to come.

The afternoon was filled with a variety of optional activities ranging from soccer games, runs, Wii games, and others. I decided to go on the Duke campus tour from one of the Double Dukies at Fuqua because I had briefly driven past campus but I hadn't been able to see too much. It was a beautiful day! Definitely in the mid-70s and I must admit that I thought it was getting a little "sticky" even though I'm told that's nothing compared to their summers. A group of us took an hour long walk around campus seeing the famous Chapel, Cameron Gymnasium, and undergraduate living and academic areas. The campus was beautiful and it was so nice getting outside after having spent most of the day in classrooms.

The weekend closed with a wonderful dinner and some FuquaVision. FuquaVision is something very unique to Fuqua. It is a SNL style improv sketch comedy group that makes and distributes videos on a regular basis. This one was one of my favorites. After that, it was back in the busses and out to Parizade, a lovely restaurant hangout near one of the most popular living option, Station 9. They had closed the restaurant for us and made it into a happening dance club. All in all, it was a great evening. I headed back to the Washington Duke on the earlier side since I had to get up a mere 2.5 hours later to start the journey home.

I have to say that I'm really glad that I made the trip out to Durham regardless of what I decide about Duke. I needed the first hand experiences of the weekend and conversations with students to make my choices more clear to me and also get a much deeper understanding of some of the things that were mentioned in the info session that got me to apply in the first place. For those of you who have been accepted to schools or find yourself in the spot in the future, I highly recommend that you make the time and find the money to make it to whatever Admitted Students events that your potential program has. The information and experiences you get on campus are something that you will get from no other source and are definitely worth the $500-800 that it will cost to get there for the weekend.

Girl Scout Cookies!

2009-04-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

As you've read about in my other posts by now, it has been a very busy last few weeks for me. I decided that I'd take it easy this week and serve Girl Scout cookies for Dessert Night. I placed my original order for cookies from J's little cousin, but then needed more to make this enough for a Dessert Night. I found some Girl Scouts on Chestnut in SF a couple of months ago so I picked up some additional boxes.

It was a fun night. People made ice cream sandwiches with the Thin Mints. J tried a Thin Mint sandwich with peanut butter in the middle which he claimed to be good but not as good as Tagalongs. I even removed the lemon frosting from the middle of one of the Lemon Chalets and put ice cream in the middle. That was very tasty as it had some of the lemony flavor of the frosting still on the cookies.

All in all, it was a great and tasty evening. Next week, we'll be back to the usual tasty desserts. I will be making Salted Caramel Pecan Cheesecake. Stay tuned.

Charoset and the Next Web 2.0 Cake

2009-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

This week, Tara helped us celebrate the upcoming Passover holiday by bringing in some homemade Charoset and Matzah for us to share. The Charoset is a nice apple dish that you spread on the matzah and sometimes even enjoy with horseradish. It was a nice light change compared to our other dessert for the evening.

Rick brought the third cake in his Web 2.0 cake series. This cake was sporting the Digg logo and was a fabulous counter part to the Flickr and Blogger cakes that we've previously enjoyed. It was a very light and tasty cake. Unfortunately, Rick had some difficulty keeping the cake together as it was very light and moist. Luckily, it tasted fabulous!

Thank you again to both Rick and Tara for providing Dessert Night with tasty treats!!

Fuqua's Blue Devil Weekend Day 1

2009-04-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's already been a week since I got back from Blue Devil Weekend. It seems both like it was forever ago and just yesterday at the same time. It was a really fun and extremely tiring weekend at the same time.

To save money, I decided to take the red-eye out of San Francisco on Thursday night which put me into Durham, NC at 8:30am on Friday morning. It was a very early arrival and I didn't sleep much on the plane, but that's what you do to make it to a noon meeting on Friday. Luckily, the Washington-Duke Inn, where we stayed all weekend, let me check in very early on Friday morning so I caught a bit of a nap and a shower before wandering down to the Association of Women in Business luncheon. It was great to meet all of the women and minorities who were there from my class. I also got to talk to Cynthia from the admissions office who helped me get my admissions packet which I had never received in the mail.

Right before lunch, I also met my roommate for the weekend, Lisa from Boston. She was on the opposite end of the spectrum from me in terms of how decided we were on going to Fuqua. She had already sent in her deposit for the Class of 2011 and I was merely checking out the school for the first time. That seemed to be pretty common over the course of the weekend among other students. They were either almost totally decided or were completely undecided, but then I guess that's why you make it a point to come to an admitted students weekend.

After the diversity activities care of AWIB, we wandered over to the Fuqua building for happy hour. Let me just say that the Fuqua building at Duke was the thing that most impressed me all weekend. It's a gorgeous facility!! The building was designed both for form and function. The classrooms are well laid out, but there are also a lot of larger spaces with lots of light and trees inside the building. A great asset for the students of Fuqua since they basically live in that building. Next, the first years welcomed us with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm, reminding us that we had joined Team Fuqua and were now responsible for shaping our own business school experience. From the welcome from the first years, we moved over to the Activities and Housing Fair that gave us good insights into the variety of organizations and clubs that we could be involved in for both fun and professional development as well as the housing options available to Fuqua students.

I will spend just another moment on housing. First, I was unable to go to the housing tour on Sunday which took students around to the most popular housing options and allowed them to see model apartments. In spite of missing the formal tour, I was able to get an informal tour of the area from a girl that I had started talking with on the Fuqua Class of 2011 Facebook group where I also met my roommate for the weekend. All of the apartment complexes looked wonderful! The mosquito nets on the windows were a poignant reminder of the quanity of bugs that I'd encounter during my first summer at Duke. What was even more shocking was that these really nice apartments ranged from $700-1200 a month!?! What a bargain!

After all of the formal activities were done for the day, we headed out to downtown Durham in busloads. I have to say that I really didn't fall in love with Durham as a town in spite of what others had said before I visited. It's a really small, older town that's very spread out. You definitely need a car to get around and a lot of the restaurants and stores are older and a bit weathered. On the flip side, drinks are ridiculously cheap! $7 got both a beer and a cocktail for the evening.

With a light buzz, my already exhausted self headed back to the Waah-Doo as the Washington Duke is referred for a couple of hours sleep before a very busy Saturday!

Stay tuned for the next post of Saturday's academic experiences as well as my first look at Duke's undergraduate campus.

Hamburgers for Dessert!

2009-04-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Unlike last year, Dessert Night wasn't precisely on April Fool's day. I decided that we should have a joke dessert anyway. Last year, I served a nice big flour pot of dirt! It was both really tasty and hilarious because people walked into the room and were confused by the flower pot on the table.

A couple of months ago, J had sent me a link to some very cute cupcakes that were decorated to look like a set of hamburgers. I decided that this would be the perfect desserts for April Fools Day as they look like little sliders.

To make these "hamburgers," you take a vanilla cupcake, cut it in half and then place half of a chocolate cupcake in the middle and cement it together with some red and yellow frosting to look like ketchup and mustard. I even happened to find some green sour airhead strips that looked like lettuce when you cut them into small pieces. The finishing touch on these master pieces is the sesame seeds on top. They really pull together the look and help these look like their real slider counterparts.

Not only were these a tasty treat, but they also were a great April Fools prank on your diners!!!

(P.S. Thanks for the comments about my terrible photography skills and often blurred photos. I'm working on improving this and possibly considering purchasing a better digital camera. In the meantime, my apologies.)

Cherry Cobbler

2009-04-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, I just realized today exactly how behind on dessert night blog posts I am. My apologies to my readership! I have been all over the map literally and figuratively lately, but more on that in another post. Here we focus on desserts...

A couple of weeks ago now, I finally got around to trying a cobbler mix that my mom had given to me around the holidays. J loves cherries so my mom had found a cherry cobbler mix that she thought he might like. I liked that this mix was just the cobbler topping and used a can of cherry pie filling for the cherry part.

Unfortunately, something in the mix made it smell like it had coconut in it. It was the weirdest thing. My apartment started smelling like a coconut when the cobbler was baking and the smell stayed with it once it had cooled. It didn't have the flavor of coconut when you ate it, but it still smelled like it. I guess personally I prefer more crumbly toppings on my cobblers, so this didn't quite hit the spot for me. It did have a great cherry flavor though.

Thanks to my mom for sharing something tasty and I'm glad that J liked it!

Sunnyside Up Nominated for a Clear Admit Best of Blogging Award!

2009-04-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

I found out this morning that Sunnyside Up has been nominated by Clear Admit, an admissions consulting firm that helps prospective students navigate the challenging admissions process for top MBA programs, for their Best of Blogging 2008-2009 Applicant Blogger Award. They offer a variety of excellent free resources for students in addition to their paid counseling services and school guides. Each year, they nominate 25 applicants and 25 business school students for their blogs discussing their application and school experiences. See their original post with information on their criteria and prizes.

I'm very excited about the nomination and will be letting all of you know soon how you can vote for my blog!!! Congrats to my fellow nominees!!!

Upcoming Blue Devil Weekend

2009-03-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

With my departure to Durham North Carolina a little over 4 days away, I'm starting to get excited to check out Fuqua. The agenda for the weekend is super packed! We start on Friday with a luncheon with the Women in Business organization and then launch into the full program. The weekend involves class simulations, discussions of how we're going to finance our education, the clubs that we can get involved in, as well as lots of getting to know our fellow classmates and seeing Durham and Duke. I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about Fuqua as I applied after experiencing just an info session.

I'm looking forward to meeting my fellow accepted students to the Fuqua Class of 2011!! Check back next week for a recap of my visit.

St. Patrick's Day Celebration & Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

2009-03-21T13:12:00.001-07:00

Yup, you read that right. Irish Car Bomb CUPCAKES!! Irish car bombs are one way that we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but for dessert night of course I had to come up with an Irish related dessert. For weeks prior to St. Patrick's Day, I had been reading about chocolate Guinness cakes and other recipes that involved either Guinness or Irish or were somehow capable of being made green (that's the color, not environmentally friendly).

This recipe just sounded too totally awesome to pass up. As a lover of Baileys, the frosting sounded so amazing. It was a little sweet in the end, but given that the rest of the cupcake was so sweet it blended in nicely. The Irish ganache was so awesome! The flavor of the Irish really came through the chocolate well. Next time, I wouldn't have made such large holes in the cupcakes so there was a smaller amount of ganache in each cupcake.

All in all, it was a very tasty dessert night and a great way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day along with some real car bombs. After dessert, the crew wandered out to the Swinging Door for some great drinks. If you'd like to make your own car bombs, check out the tasty recipe from Smitten Kitchen here.

Accepted to Fuqua!!!!

2009-03-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

This post is a bit belated as I did actually hear this news last week, but I got accepted to Fuqua's class of 2011! It's very exciting, but it does make the prospect of going to grad school more real so all of the questions like should I really move across the country, how am I going to afford tuition, and the like come to mind. I've decided to not decide what I'm going to do until after attending Fuqua's Blue Devil Weekend for admitted students the first weekend in April.

On the same day that I was accepted to Fuqua, I was zapped by Kellogg and I had also been zapped by MIT earlier in the week. Now, it's just waiting to hear from Haas. I'll keep you posted on that front, but don't hold your breath because I may not hear from them until the end of May.

Good luck to the rest of the R2 applications out there as I know many of you are still waiting to hear back from your schools!

Happy Birthday Sunnyside Up!!!

2009-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's hard to believe that Sunnyside Up! has been around for an entire year!!! We've covered a variety of great recipes and the grad school application process as well as other happenings of life.

Here's to a great year that this has been and hoping for many more!

Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate

2009-03-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for slightly lighter desserts recently hence the recent panna cotta and this week's ice cream. I know recipes with cream aren't usually considered lighter, but at least both had a significant amount of fruit in them. Berries of all kinds are my favorite fruits and J loves cherries, so I usually look for recipes with any of those fruits. I happened to come across a tasty recipe for Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate Chunks care of Technicolor Kitchen. This brought on the great debate about whether to use white chocolate or dark chocolate in this recipe.

This seems to be a rather contentious food topic where people dig in their heals and remain entrenched in their opinions of which is better. Personally, I like both, but understand that people who don't like white chocolate often site the fact that it doesn't taste like real chocolate as their reasoning. Ideally, the food inventors probably should have named white chocolate something else and we would have avoided the majority of this argument today, but I digress. Back to which chocolate to use in this recipe. I decided that I would use a combination of white and dark chocolate because I really like the extreme sweetness of the white chocolate and the intense chocolate flavor of dark chocolate. In the end, I threw in a bit of milk chocolate as well because I had just less than 2oz of dark chocolate and no time for another trip to the grocery store.

I think it turned out really well! The flavors complemented each other nicely and the sweetness of the chocolate didn't overpower the cherry flavor in the ice cream. Stay tuned for Irish Carbomb Cupcakes and Dessert Night's celebration of St. Patrick's Day next week!!!

Grad School Application Update

2009-03-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a month since I updated you all on the status of my grad school apps, so I thought it would only be fitting to do one to complement my recent GMAT update. After retaking the GMATs, I thought it would be relatively easy to have the schools that I applied to consider my new score with my application. Sadly, it's been MUCH more challenging than I had previously noticed.

Fuqua has been the only school that has made this process easy and guaranteed that my score will make it into my file and be considered with my application. Kellogg will do their best to make sure that my new score gets considered with my application, but they cannot guarantee it. MIT apparently didn't consider my score because they rejected me just 4 days after supposedly receiving my updated score. Oh well, MIT wasn't my top choice.

Haas, however, has been much more challenging. It took me several emails to get through to the admissions office and when I did they told me that I'd have to move my application from Round 2 to Round 4 to have my new score considered. That seemed odd. So I consulted Clear Admit and they agreed that I should attempt to get my score to them and not move it to R4. Sadly, I learned today that after all of that, my scores didn't make it into my file and may have contributed to the reason that I didn't receive an interview invitation for Super Saturday at Haas this past weekend. At this point, it's looking like I pretty much have to move my application so I can avoid being denied from Haas in R2. All of this is particularly sad since Haas is my top choice and I know that my chances of being accepted are much less in R4 than they would have been if Haas had just considered my new GMAT score in R2.

So, now I'm down to just 3 schools. I'll hear from Fuqua in the next week or so, then Kellogg by the end of March, but I will have to wait until the end of May to hear from Haas now that I'm moving to R4. Oh well, I'll just have to find some patience. Good luck to the rest of you waiting for them to decide your fate for next year!

Vanilla Buttermilk Panna Cotta

2009-03-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have always enjoyed panna cotta more than I've enjoyed flan or creme brule combined. I don't know if it's because the gelatin in the panna cotta makes it less creamy or if it's just the lack of the eggs that make it less than custardy. Nonetheless, panna cotta is one of my favorites. Chocolate Panna Cotta was the dessert that lauched dessert night over a year ago and we haven't had one since so I thought it was about time for another one.

Now that I'm done with grad school stuff for the moment, well more that it's just slowed down considerably, I've been embarking on some new baking projects for things I've never tried to make before like marshmellows and this weekend's project of brioche. Joe Pastry is a great blog for those of you trying a new slightly complex recipe because Joe Pastry takes photos of each step so you know what it is supposed to look like. Not only that, but he's very prompt in emailing back if you contact him with a question. Joe Pastry recently did a panna cotta series and one of the recipes that he shared was this Vanilla Buttermilk Panna Cotta.

This recipe was super easy as all panna cotta recipes are. There is not a lot of gelatin in the recipe so it is not one where you would serve the panna cotta turned out on a plate, but it's very tasty! It was a bit sweet, so I decided to put pureed blackberries on the top to add a little bit of tartness to the overall experience. The result was great! These were really tasty and the blackberry added a great flavor.

If you'd like to make your own Vanilla Buttermilk Panna Cotta, check out the recipe here.

Finally Done with the GMAT!!!!

2009-03-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

Yay yay!! I'm finally done with the GMATs. I took the GMAT for the second time on 2/23 and I have to say that I've learned a lot from this experience. My key lesson was around JUST BEING RELAXED! I do so much better when I just relax and let my brain work. All of the information is in there, I just need to let it out.

I purposely waited a month after my last business school application was completed to take my GMAT again, so I'd have plenty of time to do thousands of practice problems and as many practice tests as I can possibly get my hands on. Of course I relaxed a bit after I finished my applications and before I knew it I had lost a week, then I had family stuff that I had to deal with for another week or so. All of this meant that I didn't get through nearly as many practice tests or problems as I wanted to. I realized to that I was doing great on timed problem sets both in terms of finishing them in the time limit and answering the vast majority of them correctly. Then, I'd get to a practice test and not be able to finish it in time and score in the very low 600s. It was rather frustrating, but I worked to get my game face on for test day.

On test day, I told myself that my score didn't matter at all. My schools that I had already applied to would never see my score from this test unless I sent it to them. I just got to spend the morning of my day off answering a bunch of questions before I got to spend my afternoon doing fun things. This totally took the pressure off. I knew I was going to be ok when I finished the math section barely in time. Yes, the last 5 problems or so were a bit rushed and the last couple I did have to rule out 1 or 2 options and then guess, but I finished all of them which I hadn't during my previous test.

I have to say to all of those of you still studying for the GMAT out there, you should practice being relaxed just as much as you should practice the problems and study the material that is on the test. Honestly, I think that's the reason that I did so much better this time around despite not much additional studying. Good luck!!

Lemon Bars

2009-03-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

Dessert Night this week was a very casual affair. I had spent all weekend studying for the GMATs which I retook on Monday of this past week. (I promise there will be another post coming on this topic soon. JulyDream, you don't have to worry! I'll cover the topic.) My parents worked the AT&T National Pro-Am golf tournament earlier in February and got to take home a variety of tasty foods prepared by Pebble Beach Company. Dessert Night also benefited through some very tasty Lemon Bars, Poundcake Squares, and a Brownie.

The lemon bars were just what you expected from a lemon bar - a light lemony flavor, a crunchy crust, and a crispy sugary top. They were a little sweet if one were to eat the entire bar (they were quite generous with their portions.). All in all, a great job from the pastry chefs at Pebble Beach!

(My apologies for no photos this week. I will do better next week. Speaking of next week, we will be enjoying a very tasty vanilla buttermilk panna cotta with blackberry puree. Come by to enjoy it!!)

Fuqua Interview!!

2009-02-15T14:10:00.001-08:00

I heard late last week that I got an interview for Fuqua! Very exciting. Luckily with all of the other insanity that's happening in the next couple of weeks at work, not at work and with GMAT stuff, I'm very glad that I got a phone interview with an Admissions Officer and do not have to travel to Durham, NC. I do want to travel to Durham at some point, hopefully for an Admitted Student weekend or something.

Now back to the remaining GMAT studying and interview prep for the weekend...

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-02-13T20:57:00.001-08:00

I've been saving this recipe for these Cherry Chocolate Chip cookies for quite a while now. I found it on Technicolor Kitchen, a great blog if you don't already read it. These are definitely very tasty cookies, though I do have to say that you really need to have TART cherries in the cookies otherwise they're difficult to taste among all of the chocolate chips. I think I'd like to try putting cherries instead of raisins in a good batch of oatmeal cookies because they'd be a really tasty twist.

The only other warning that needs to go with this recipe is that these cookies are very tasty and the recipe makes a lot so you'll be tempted to eat a ton of the cookies that you make. Not a bad thing, just definitely something to know up front so you make them after you've had dinner if you don't intend to eat the entire batch.

All in all, these cookies made for another tasty dessert night. If you'd like to make your own cherry chocolate chip cookies, check out the recipe here.

Grad School Update

2009-02-08T18:56:00.001-08:00

I know I've been posting about all sorts of things lately from the etchings that my grandparents gave me to Dessert Night's first birthday, but I haven't let you know what's been going on in my life on the grad school front. Honestly, it's been a bit quieter lately which is refreshing after all of those nights being up super late working on essays. That aside, there have been 3 major things that have happened lately:

1. Stanford rejected me. Honestly, I wasn't super surprised about this one, just rather disappointed as I had been hoping that Stanford would be my new home as of next year. They seem to be one of those schools where everyone who would consider applying has a chance of getting in, but really no one has a GREAT chance. So, it was worth the shot to apply. I think I liked their application the best of all of them too.

2. I had my Kellogg interview! Before any of you go getting too excited, getting an interview for Kellogg doesn't mean what it does for other schools. Kellogg interviews everyone who applies (assuming you don't live in a remote village in the middle of Sudan or something). Luckily, there are a lot of alumni scattered about so not everyone has to make the pilgrimage to Chicago in the middle of winter. I met with my alumni interviewer at a local Starbucks and we chatted for about an hour. All of the questions that he asked me were questions that I had prepped for care of the ClearAdmit interview wiki. I felt really prepared and we had a great discussion. All in all, a good contrast to my Stanford rejection.

3. I'm retaking the GMAT. Did you let out a groan too? I can't say that I'm excited about this fact, but I could use the opportunity to bump up my score a few points. Historically, I've been a bad test taker, but it's all mental so I want to use this opportunity to change that for myself. (Though it's not going great so far, as I'm writing this post to procrastinate taking a practice test.)

That's all of the recent happenings on the grad school side of things. I will be sure to keep you updated as I hear back from my other 4 schools. Good luck to all of you fellow applicants!! The end is in sight!

Happy Birthday Dessert Night!!!!!

2009-02-04T18:46:00.001-08:00

Wow, it's really hard to believe that it's been a whole year since the very first Dessert Night. I had no idea what to expect at the beginning. Would people even come over? Would there be so many people that they wouldn't fit in my living room? Would I really be able to keep this up? Well, it's been an entire year and we've made it all work. I have really appreciated other Dessert Night Goers really stepping up and helping out when I had grad school apps and GMAT prep that kept me from having time to bake. You have helped me keep Dessert Night alive despite everyone's busy schedules.

To make Dessert Night's birthday special, we had several desserts. I had made Peppermint Marshmallows just for fun and we enjoyed those and some hot chocolate. Also, ChuThis gave me some cookie dough for her fabulous Chocolate Toffee cookies which were amazing. Finally, I wanted to make a dessert with the rest of the awesome apples from Mariquita Farms. I found a recipe for Caramel Apple Pie (since we couldn't have plain apple pie because we had that back in April 2008). Williams-Sonoma has tried and true always tasty recipes, including the one for the pie.

All in all, it's been a great year for Dessert Night. Many thanks to NG for Dessert Night's birthday candle! That's a tradition that we'll have to keep up.

Here's to another great year for Dessert Night!!!!

Apple Crumble Bars

2009-01-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

Mariquita Farms had a special add-on of 10 lbs of apples to the mystery box this past week. I decided that I should try these apples because everything that I've had from Mariquita has been amazing. Also, I had been holding onto a recipe for Apple Crumble Bars that just sounded basic and tasty, so I thought it would be the perfect excuse to try this recipe with these apples that had to be fantastic.

It was absolutely fantastic!! I really like a good light apple pie, but I also like a bit of a shorter crust. This recipe was the best of both worlds!! The bottom crust was short like a really good shortbread cookie. The middle is the apple pie filling which tasted absolutely great. I substituted the nutmeg in the recipe for additional cinnamon. The crumbly top was really tasty as well, a bit like the top of a dutch apple pie without the cinnamon. The next time, I make this recipe, I think I'll add some additional cinnamon to the crumbly top part and see if that makes it a bit more like a dutch apple pie.

All in all, this is one of my favorite desserts lately. It was so tasty and really brought out all of the flavors that one would find in a mini apple pie. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of these tasty treats before the Dessert Night crew gobbled them up. If you'd like to make your own Apple Crumble Bars, go here for the recipe.

A Piece of Italy

2009-01-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

My grandparents spent a good deal of time traveling once my grandfather retired. The traveled to Europe, Australia, and Alaska taking cruises and tours or just going on their own. My grandfather is Scottish, so they traveled to Scotland and toured the countryside often tasting Scotch and checking out castles. My grandmother was Italian, so they also visited a variety of cities in Italy.

On their first trip to Italy, they went to Venice and commissioned several etchings from a local artist. They had one done of a famous bridge in San Marcos square and another of the view from their room on the waterways of Venice. They hung for years in the downstairs hallway of their house along with a similar set of etchings from London. When the moved out of their house and into an apartment, my grandma gave them to me for my new apartment as I had just recently moved as well. It has taken me years to get them reframed so they just made it on my wall last week.

I've included a pic of one of the two etchings. My apologies for the flash in the picture. It was the best that I could do. This etching is the the view from my grandparent's hotel room in Venice. Seeing it on my wall is a nice reminder of all of the happy memories of the times that I had with my grandmother.

Amaretto Cheesecake Bars. Really?

2009-01-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

Dessert night has been in existence for almost a year now. Sometimes the recipes result in particularly amazing dessert and sometimes they're just ok. Never before have I actually not wanted to serve what was made because it was so unflavorful. I guess there had to be a first for this. It was this week's Amaretto Cheesecake Bars.

Last September, I made a very tasty Chocolate Amaretto Cake so I thought I'd give another amaretto flavored dessert a try. I found this recipe on Cookie Madness who has had great recipes in the past (remember that awesome Pumpkin Bread?). Sadly, I was thoroughly disappointed. These cookie bars were slightly labor intensive which led me to have slightly higher expectations for the outcome than I would if the recipe was very easy. Nonetheless, these bars were relatively flavorless which was slightly disappointing. They were definitely dessert-like because they were sweet, but the crust didn't really have any sort of a flavor to it. The lack of flavor in the crust would have been fine if they amaretto cheesecake filling was really flavorful. It wasn't. The amaretto flavor slowly accumulated as you ate the bar, but even at the end it didn't taste strongly of anything.

If you're considering making an amaretto flavored dessert, I'd recommend sticking to the Chocolate Amaretto Cake and skipping the cheesecake bars. Btw, the cake will be making an appearance at ChuThis's famous annual superbowl party!!!

Should you really want to make these Amaretto Cheesecake Bars, the recipe is here. Let me know if you have any questions for how to make it more flavorful.

Maple Pecan Pie

2009-01-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

Pie is one of my fallback desserts for Dessert Night because it's always tasty, comes in a variety of flavors, and is very easy to make. My mom had given me some pre-made pie crusts and I had very little time to make this dessert because of applications, so pie it was. Mostly, I do berry pies because it's nice to get some fruit into the dessert, but I had recently come across this recipe for Maple Pecan Pie and I just had to try it. Nut pies have been my favorite for almost as long as I could remember. I like the nutty taste along with the sweetness of the sugary filling. My grandma used to make an amazing walnut pie that I really really like, but also thoroughly enjoy pecan pie.

The recipe was really easy because I started with a premade crust and literally within 15 mins the pie was already in the oven. Generally, pecan pies are usually made with another liquid sugary syrup, most likely corn syrup. The maple flavor added a different flavor to it.

All in all, it was a very tasty, quick, and easy dessert night dessert. If you'd like to make your own, please check out the recipe.

Red Wine Poached Apples, Vanilla Ice Cream and Chocolate Sauce with Chocolate Liqueur

2009-01-17T16:28:00.000-08:00

I know it's very poor blogging form to blog about the most recent dessert night before blogging about the previous dessert night, but I blame the craziness of the last couple of weeks and the fact that ChuThis and NG took about 15 photos of last week's dessert so it's too hard for me to choose.

Nonetheless, I will be first talking about the Red Wine Poached Apples that Tara brought over this past week. First of all, I want to sincerely thank Tara for volunteering to help out with dessert on Tuesday. Despite being done with my apps, I was in no state to have planned and baked a dessert on only 2 hours of sleep.

The apples were a really nice treat to the usually non-fruit-based desserts that we enjoy at dessert night. The warmth of the apples was a great complement to the vanilla ice cream and the chocolate sauce on top was a fabulous touch. I really enjoyed that the dessert was light as well. All in all, a fabulous way to celebrate the completion of all of my applications. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take any photos. I promise I will get my act together on the photos for next week.

APPS ARE DONE!!!

2009-01-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

I was thinking that I should start this post by apologizing for my recent silence lately, but then I realized that there was absolutely nothing to apologize for. I've been working like crazy to get my last application in!!! Luckily, I just made it and so did some awesome last minute essay feedback from J.

I know, I know, you're saying that you were done at noon on Tuesday and you waited until Saturday morning to blog about it?? Yes, I know. I'm sorry. Not only have I been celebrating the completion of all of these applications, but I've also been catching up on sleep and all of the other things that I've put off to get these essays done.

To those of you still working on your applications, good luck!! I hope they go well. To those of you who are anxiously awaiting to hear back from your Round 1 apps, I totally feel ya and I hope that you can just celebrate the accomplishments that you've made thus far and continue to realize that each of us is going to get into the schools that we're meant to go to regardless of what we want.

In the mean time, I'm just enjoying being done and having time for fun things, like making marshmallows (I will post pics of that too)!!

Sunnyside Up's Best of 2008

2009-01-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

Since everyone else has been doing a best of 2008 blog post, I thought I should join in and pull one together as well. I'm borrowing the format that JulyDream used in her best of 2008 post to use in mine. I aimed to come up with the best 25 things of 2008 because I turned a quarter century in 2008, but I was only able to get to 17, so here goes the best 17 of 2008! (Note: these are in no particular order)

1. the beginning of dessert night
2. starting the business school application process
3. taking the GMAT finally
4. the Valentine's Day pillow fight (well the whole valentine's day experience)
5. the beginning of Sunnyside Up!
6. switching to a new job that didn't require traveling
7. leaving that new job and moving to one that required my brain
8. Spinsters' Annual Ball
9. J's Hanukkah adventure
10. MixMatch's trip to Baltimore
11. discovering Lululemon & Bar Method
12. Elizabeth's wedding trip to Longmont, CO
13. getting my dream Kitchen Aid mixer
14. the puppy cam
15. the Fois Gras appetizer at Ecco (technically discovered in 2007, but so tasty that it carried over)
16. finally getting decent knives
17. learning to wakeboard and ski

All in all, 2008 was a great year. I can't wait to see what 2009 has in store.

Oh yeah! Another One Down!

2009-01-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a total of 30 mins to celebrate the completion of my latest application. Another 5 essays down! I can't tell you how excited I am.

That said, I still have 10 more essays and 2 more applications to go before I'm totally done, but a week from today, it will all be behind me!!! I definitely can't wait. I will keep this short, so I can spend my remaining 15 mins of celebration out tonight celebrating with friends.

The Home Stretch!!!

2009-01-05T19:10:00.001-08:00

I have to say that I'm very excited to be in the home stretch of the application process!!! Wow, I really never thought that I'd see this day. I'm still only exactly half of the way done with my applications thanks to Kellogg's 2 part application which I know others of you are wading through at the moment. I can't wait until next week when I get to celebrate being done. Until then, I'll be pondering influential life experiences, challenges and what I will bring to my peers at b school.

Good luck to all of the rest of you Round 2 applicants out there! Get through this final push on apps and we can spend the rest of our time awaiting the decision of our fate!

Crazy Day!!

2008-12-22T23:34:00.001-08:00

Apparently, just before holidays or long weekends, work gets totally out of control as clients are worried about having a couple of days off and who's covering for who. We're cramming last minute code changes into production and getting everything ready to go for the end of the fiscal year for many companies. Also, HR decided that we didn't quite have enough to do so piled on annual reviews on top of everything else. It's kind of weird for me because this is the first time that I have to do reviews for people who report to me. Now, they don't formally report to me as in I really have a serious input into their career, but they do report to me on projects that we're working on which makes me much more involved in their career than I have been in past positions. It's just a weird spot to be to realize that I actually manage people and have that kind of input into their career progression.

On that note, I must get back to commenting on their performance....oh and writing my own self-review as well.

Another App Down!

2008-12-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

Well, really just a piece of an app. I finally submitted Part I of my Kellogg application. I had been almost done with it for a week now, but needed to confirm my recommenders and work just completely got away from me! I'm getting ready to start in on the rest of this application as well as the two others that I'm working on so we don't hit too much crunch time come 2009!

Good luck to all of the other MBA applicants out there! I hope you get some time to enjoy the holidays in between figuring out what you want to do with your future careers and writing about leadership experiences and failures and why X school.

Chocolate Bourbon Cake and Gingerbread House Making!

2008-12-20T10:28:00.000-08:00

Dessert Night got into the holiday spirit last week with lots of Gingerbread house making. People decided that they wanted to make their own gingerbread house so we had 8 of them being made at once! Luckily I have a small island in my kitchen otherwise my small apartment couldn't have handled all of this madness. Here are a few of the photos from the gingerbread house making.

ChuThis also was able to join us this week since she got a nice break from all of her traveling for work! She found a recipe for Chocolate Bourbon cake earlier in the week and decided to make it for dessert night. Check out the beautiful cake. I'll let her share the recipe and her baking experience with you on her blog. Stay tuned for that one!

This week we also enjoyed the second cake in Rick's Web 2.0 cake series, the Blogger Cake. It was a very tasty funfetti cake that actually had a pint of ice cream mixed into the batter so it had a different consistency than the funfetti cakes I usually make. It was very delicious. Check out the nice frosting work on the Blogger logo.

Happy Holidays from everyone at Dessert Night to you and your family! We're taking a couple of weeks off and will come back with a bang in 2009! Wishing you a save and enjoyable holiday season with lots of yummy sweet treats because you deserve the best!

Panettone

2008-12-14T16:04:00.000-08:00

Panettone is one of my favorite things about holidays. I'd say Christmas, but it always seems like we eat Panettone for Easter too. But honestly, it's so yummy that I'd be ok eating it all of the time. Panettone is a light brioche bread that has raisins, citron, and other sweetened dried fruits in it. I know that it sounds a lot like fruitcake, but I can promise you that it's nothing like fruit cake. While fruitcake is extremely dense, dry, and often could be used as bricks, panettone is a large version of a fruit studded brioche. Toasted panettone is one of my favorite things ever. Now you definitely have to be careful and make sure that it doesn't catch on fire, but after a nice even toasting, the crispy outsides are just to die for.

Unfortunately, this isn't a quick and easy tasty treat to make. Here's one example of a great homemade panettone recipe. I didn't have time for this crazy recipe this week, so I went to Il Fornaio who makes fabulous Italian pastries. All in all, a very tasty dessert night.

2 Down! Now Onto the Next One

2008-12-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

This week I managed to get my Haas Round 2 application in a whole 5 hours prior to the deadline!! Wooo! It was fabulous! This extra time allowed me to take a brief nap and actually get to enjoy dessert night. I'm very excited to have 2 applications already turned in. Now, if only I could start hearing back from these schools...but that's another story.

Compared to my Stanford application, the one for Haas seemed a bit more generic. There were only a few questions that I got really excited about answering because the rest of them seemed pretty bland. Given that there were a ton more essays for Haas than Stanford, I didn't get to really reuse many of my Stanford essays. 2 of them fit the questions that Haas asked, but definitely required major tweaking to get them to match Haas's word limit.

All in all, I'm definitely happy with myself for getting these applications in and now I think I'm pretty good to go on getting through the rest of them a bit more easily. Thank you so much to C & J who helped me read all of the drafts for these essays and let me know when they were lost, what was good, and when I forgot that darn Oxford comma! I really appreciate it.

Now, if only I had a better GMAT score... that will be another thing to work on.

Blackberry Poundcake

2008-12-07T12:51:00.000-08:00

Given my crazy week this week, I was again looking for a fast and easy dessert that would be very tasty. I should probably clarify my definition of fast. I'm not necessarily looking for something that takes only 20 minutes from start to finish. I'm ok with recipes that require all various lengths of baking time, as that's time I can use to work and do stuff around my apartment. However, recipes like sandwich cookies or layer cakes generally require so much active time that I have been avoiding them lately. This week I decided to try a recipe from Baking Bites for Blackberry Pound Cake. I love pound cake, particularly as the basis for strawberry shortcake in the summer months. Adding the blackberries to the batter made it like shortcake but with no assembly required. Originally, I wanted to substitute the blackberries with cherries because J loves cherries so, but unfortunately Safeway was out of frozen cherries. The blackberries were really amazing though. The seeds were not too prevalent in the fruit once baked and the sweetness of the fruit added a great natural sweetness to the cake without needing too much sugar. Definitely toss the frozen fruit in a bit of flour before adding it to the batter to avoid contaminating the color of the dough. I'd really like to try this cake again with a different fruit and see if it's as sweet and flavorful. It would also be a really great holiday gift for people as I think that the recipe will probably make at least 4 mini loaves. If I had more time this holiday season, I'd be making these as gifts.

Honestly, this is one of the most satisfying breads that I've made in a long while that has just enough sweetness to satisfy my need for a dessert, but not enough sweetness to give me a massive sugar high. I highly recommend it. To make your own Blackberry Pound Cake, here's the recipe.

Also, thanks to Rick for the first in his series of Web 2.0 cakes. The flickr cake was not only tasty but it was a fabulous example of a good frosting job! I can't wait to get to enjoy the rest of them.

GMAT Attempt 1 and Another Week Another Grad School App

2008-12-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

This week has already been a busy one. Luckily, last week was a short week because of Thanksgiving. I actually strategically planned my GMAT test date for the Monday after Thanksgiving because I wanted to be able to relax at home and I knew that I'd be getting more sleep and not have work on the brain because I would have a few days off.

I definitely think that this strategy helped me be more relaxed when I took the test, but it was not enough to really let me relax and not psych myself out, particularly on the math. The Quantitative section is not the type of math that's interesting to me, so it's hard to make yourself really care if Sally contributed twice as much as Joe and 2/3 as much as Sam how much they all contributed. Give me a mathematical model and I'll happily spend the next 3 days constructing it and improving my assumptions. Also, I tend to just finish all of the questions in this section in the nick of time, so I don't really have time to take a breather and re-center myself in the middle of the math section because those precious minutes are needed to answer each question. I think that's why I did so much better on the verbal. I took the time to breathe and relax in the middle of the exam because I knew that I would still finish early and that the additional relaxation would help me do better. I am still waiting to hear how I did on the writing portion, but I'm not too concerned because I generally write pretty well and schools don't put as much emphasis on the writing for me since English is my first language. All in all, it was an alright first shot at the GMAT. I'm not satisfied with my score, so I will be taking it again, but that's something that I'm doing for me.

Now that the GMAT's over with, well at least for this week, it's on to another grad school app! It seems like almost each week in December I need to switch my focus to a new app. Another week, another app is the motto for December!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Marshmallow Cloud Cookies

2008-11-27T22:31:00.001-08:00

This week, Ryan and Tara baked since I've been so busy doing multiple choice problems in preparation for my GMAT test on Monday.

Ryan tracked down his mom's award winning, according to him, oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe. I must say I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered that he said oatmeal chocolate chip cookies instead of oatmeal raisin cookies. Several dessert night regulars, including J and ChuThis, don't like raisins. Here's a pic of the tasty cookies:

Tara brought over these very tasty chocolate cookies with marshmallows stirred into the batter. They were really really tasty, especially after dipping them in a glass of milk! I totally misunderstood that Tara was bringing cookies, so I went in search of milk for hot chocolate that I thought we'd stick these marshmallow clouds in, but I was mistaken. Good thing I had the milk to dunk the cookies. Mmm, marshmallow clouds!

Also, this week, we bid temporary farewell to our good friend Neena. She's returning home to Texas for a month or so and we all will miss her terribly while she's gone.

Farewell Miss Neena!!! We're going to miss you!

One More Week!!

2008-11-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

Yup, that's right folks!! I have one week of doing hundreds of multiple choice problems left! I can't wait to be done and back onto essays for my next grad school app.

While I'm incredibly stoked to be almost done with the GMAT, I'm quite nervous because I haven't been scoring as well as I would like to be on my practice tests. I have at least 4 more to take between now and next Monday so hopefully that changes soon!

Ben's Tasty Banana Cake

2008-11-20T23:07:00.001-08:00

This week, Ben brought a very tasty and moist banana cake to Dessert Night. It was much more moist than traditional banana bread and tasted great with a small layer of powdered sugar on top. Ben was worried that he didn't cook it long enough, but I felt that the almost gooey texture of the cake made it's texture more cake-like and avoided the dryness that can come with over baking.

Unfortunately, I've been VERY bad about remembering to take pictures of the dessert prior to eating it, so once again there are no photos from this week. Sorry Ben! I promise I'll get better at this next time.

Up next week: Ryan M's Mom's famous Oatmeal Raisin Cookies!!

Happy Birthday J!!!!!

2008-11-17T14:30:00.000-08:00

Happy 26th Birthday J!!!! You can officially round up to 30 now. Ok, enough giving him a bad time for being old and on to describing his very tasty cake.

A month or so ago when I asked him if he wanted to keep Dessert Night on his birthday, he decided that he did and that he either wanted Chocolate Zucchini Cake, which is mom always makes for him, or something chocolatey and peanut buttery. I decided it was best to leave the Chocolate Zucchini cakes to his mom and instead find a tasty chocolate peanut butter dessert. After much searching for possible tasty recipes, I settled on this Chocolate Peanut Butter cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

The recipe posed several challenges for me as this is probably the nicest cake I've attempted to make in a long time. First of all, it's always challenging to bake a 3 layer cake in only 2 cake pans, but I managed to quickly swap one of them out in time to bake the other one before anything bad happened to the remaining dough. The cake part turned out really tasty and fluffy. I will definitely be making it again. Second, the recipe was rather long as there were 3 pieces to it and somehow I managed to not read the entire recipe the first, second or even third time around which resulted in 4 trips to the grocery store to acquire all of the ingredients for this recipe.

All in all, it turned out really well and was surprisingly not too sweet after all of the sugar that went into it. I highly recommend that you follow Deb's notes with the recipe about chilling the cake at certain points in the assembly process as they really make it much easier to put together. The only thing I'd add in addition to her notes is that the recipe for the glaze seems to make a lot more than you actually need for this cake so you might try putting only about 2/3 of the glaze on the cake at first and then adding more later if you need it.

Today a Dream Comes True

2008-11-14T14:36:00.000-08:00

Since I moved out of my parent's house and had to furnish my own kitchen, I've dreamed of owning my own Kitchen Aid mixer. I say dream because furnishing an apartment let alone a kitchen is an expensive endeavor for a 21 year old with college loans to repay.

I grew up using my Mom's Kitchen Aid mixer which was handed down to her by her Grandmother. It was one of the old ones that doesn't have the 3rd prong on the outlet and has 2 beaters instead of the one that's found on the current models. The bowls are ceramic and very flat instead of the more rounded bottomed metal bowls of today. Also, because of it's age, it's almost impossible to get additional attachments for it. Nonetheless, it was the mixer that I used when I first learned how to make a souffle, whip cream, and frosting (and let me say that it can still make a mean souffle despite it's age). All of the food blogs that I read seem to assume that their readers possess a stand mixer as a part of their kitchen equipment and often don't detail how to make the recipe without this vital piece of equipment.

Now, at 25, I'm finally able to afford this expensive kitchen plaything. After much searching and deliberation, I found the Kitchen Aid Professional 600 Series 6-quart stand mixer on sale on Amazon.com for 46% off! I couldn't believe it. Not only could I actually afford a mixer, but I could buy one with the dough hook and beater attachments as well as the pouring shield. I finally got it in the mail on Friday and already unpacked it and made it at home on my counter. Now, I can't wait to have time to make all sorts of yummy things that I couldn't have made before with no mixer.

Training Tips for the GMAT Marathon

2008-11-12T13:00:00.001-08:00

A GMAT survivor and I were discussing the GMAT last night and he framed my thinking of how to go about the GMAT in a very interesting way. He used the analogy of a marathon.

Honestly, that's kind of how I feel about the process right now is that I'm in the middle of a long marathon and am doing my best to not get tired. But his analogy was different. He looked at the studying process for the GMAT like one would train for a marathon, with actual GMAT test day being race day. I could no longer think of GMAT studying as just the memorization of formulas, grammatical rules, and practice tests. Instead, these were some of his thoughts.

1. Train for endurance. When you train for a marathon, you run for increasing lengths of time until you've almost reached the 26 miles in one sitting. The GMAT is much the same. You cannot do small problem sets of 10-20 problems and then take a break and then go back. On test day, you will be doing 35-40 problems in 75 min blocks. Why not train that way? Do 60 problems at a time, then when you get to test day your brain things "wow, only 35 problems? easy!"

2. Train for a time. Many marathon runners train with the goal of the completing their marathon in a certain time. We GMAT takers HAVE to complete the GMAT sections in their allowed time or suffer a serious blow to our score. Why not train that way? If you have to do a problem in under 2 mins, but you practice doing them in 3-5 mins, then you're not helping yourself. Stick to the practice test time limits and then this will be no shock on test day.

3. Improve your strenghts as well as your weaknesses. I guess this applies more to triathalon runners, but if you're very good at the swimming leg of the race, work on getting faster at that too. All it does is improve your performance in the end. The GMAT is the same way. If you're good at math, an amazing math score will compensate for a slightly weaker verbal score, resulting in that overall high score that top B-schools want from you.

These tips will definitely result in a different studying approach for me for my remaining 2.5 weeks before my test. Hopefully, they will help others as well.