"Ambrosia" Cake

I had an honour to make a birthday cake for my friend UW. It's a quadruple layer cake with white sponge and orange mousse filling. Sponge was drenched with coconut-flavoured simple syrup. The outside is coconut-flavoured whipped cream and coconut flake coating.

It had been quite a while (6 months?!) since the last time I made something out of rolled fondant, which made it even more enjoyable to make these frangipani/plumeria decoration. Also, this wonderful tutorial made it so much easier!

UW's husband PW asked me if the cake had a name and all I could come up with was "uh... orange mousse coconut cake?" Lame, I know. That got me googling for some info and I found this wiki article; hence the name "Ambrosia Cake"!

Here's more interesting fact! I'm pleasantly surprised how appropriate this flavour combo was for a birthday party ;)

"In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia (Greek: ἀμβροσία) is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the gods, often depicted as conferring ageless immortality upon whoever consumes it."

Teeny Tiny Quiche

A 3-1/2-inch pie dish from Yokoyaya made its debut today! Pie crust was prepared the night before using leftover dough from the teeny tiny apple pies. In egg/cream mixture are bacon, peas & carrots, green onions and cheddar cheese.

A perfect bite-sized slice of quiche :)

Teeny Tiny Apple Pie

(Super flaky pie crust + apple & raisin compote) x baked in muffin tins = the very last thing I made in 2009!
Happy 2010, everyone!

Gingerbread Cake House

I decided to make something fun for the nabe party hosted by my friends Mr. & Mrs. T... and here it is! My version of Gingerbread Cake House from Martha Stewart Holiday Sweets 100.

Since I don't have two 9-inch square cake pans, I used two 9-inch round pans instead and cut round cakes into squares... so the final product was much smaller than the original one in the magazine.

5 gingerbread kids represent my friends' kids - S-kun & K-kun of the T family, T-kun, L-kun & L-chan of the A family. It was so rewarding to see them excited to find their own gingies!

L-chan is in charge of decorating their Christmas tree ;)

Wishing you all and your loved ones a happy, safe holiday season from my teeny tiny kitchen!!

Christmas-y Bread Pudding

I used a day-old panettone instead of French bread that's called for in this recipe, which added extra Christmas-iness to this bread pudding.