Bûche de Noël

My friend HT hosted yet another awesome Christmas party in early December. I made my very first Bûche de Noël with chocolate genoise, chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache. I'm glad that everybody liked it - but I found it a little too bitter/too much of dark chocolate :p

A week later, I made quite a few Bûche de Noël at work. Hazelnut sponge, white chocolate mousse and hazelnut buttercream. Mmm. That's more like it ;)

Plum Frangipane Tart

OMG. I can't believe it's been almost one year since my last post. I can't believe how many things have happened to me and how much my life has changed.

Anyhoo, I just installed the Blogger official app on my iPhone and I am ready. Ready to post more. Yes, I said it.

Here's a plum frangipane tart that I made recently. Fresh and simple. Kinda like the way I feel about life.

homemade marshmallows

I still can't believe how easy it was to make marshmallows from scratch. I followed Martha Stewart's recipe except peppermint extract which I don't have in my pantry. I used coconut extract instead.

By the way, this picture was taken with my brand new iPhone - Hipstamatic App, to be exact. Oh, I love my iPhone.

Chocolate Truffle Mousse Cake Ver. 2.0

Here's a great opportunity to review what I learned at baking school a while ago. Chocolate Truffle Mousse Cake, as per my friend Mrs. HT's request. Slices of chocolate sponge nestled in luscious chocolate mousse, topped with rich chocolate ganache.

I could have skipped the decorative sponge part, but... why? That's the fun part of this cake! :D haha I piped the word 'friends' in mirror image with decorating paste and froze it while prepping biscuit joconde. Spread the biscuit joconde over the chilled decorating paste and bake it at quite high temp quickly... and there you have it. The most difficult part might have been finding the right font in right size for the template to pipe on!

Almond Crème Caramel

Mrs. SP kindly gave me a bottle of Orgeat syrup for me to try. I tried mixing it with cold unsweetened soy milk, and voila! Drinkable 杏仁豆腐 :D YUM!

I love the Orgeat flavour so much that I wanted to use it in non-beverage recipes... Thanks to Google, I found this recipe at FOOD & WINE.

This was my second try to make crème caramel (the first time was at baking school a few years ago...). I used various smaller ramekins, so I got 12 servings in total. I baked (cooked?) 4 at a time. The first group totally failed - a perfect example of custard cooked at high temp. I blame my finicky oven :p

Luckily, the following groups turned out pretty well. No ugly holes. Nice, silky, smooth texture. Caramel was spot-on, I must say :) hehe