Wednesday 17 August 2011

French Themed Cakes & Desserts

It was Bastille Day on the 14th of July and for the first time at work it was decided that we would create some French desserts to mark the day.  There were definitely a wide range of French desserts to choose from, and as much as I wanted to do many many more, we decided on a few that would be fast, easy and I guess at the end of the day, that sells.

Nonetheless, these are a few of what I did...and perhaps next year, there will be more elaborate ones.

 Rustic looking Eclairs. Filled with chocolate cream and topped with chocolate ganache

 White chocolate mousse, topped with raspberry coulis.

 Chocolate cupcakes topped with butter cream and orange cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream. The "French" theme fondant cut outs were hand drawn with edible ink.

 Crepes with orange syrup.


 Poached pears and chocolate ganache tarts.


 Tart a Tartin.


Salted caramel macaroons

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Baklava

It's been awhile since I added any entries to this blog..and its not so much I have not been baking. But on the contrary, I just have been too busy to keep it updated. I know I should...at least to keep the interest going.
Anyways, today I managed to learn how to make Baklava.
I have often seen these delicacies being sold at various Middle Eastern shops and have smelt the sweet smells that were emitted. As much as I love baking and perusing through cafes and deli and patisseries for all the delectable, mouth watering spread, I never could bring myself to really try any. You see...I love baking, but I do not like eating much sweet stuff.
So knowing how sweet Baklavas come...coz as they say "Eat sweet, speak sweet", I was still rather curious how all the flavours and worked together.
A very nice Greek lady, Alec offered to show me how it's made and so we set off to make this. I must say, if you have all the ingredients at hand, it does not take very long to roll the pastry and bake, and even douse it in syrup.
I must say, this home recipe had all the flavours down to a pat. It was not so sweet and I could still taste the spices and it had a nice crunch of the nuts and flaky pasty when you bite into it.

Rolling the filled pastry around a stick.

Rolled pastry lined up in the tray

Dousing the pastry with hot oil.


Adding sticks of cloves for the finishing touches, before being baked.


Baked Baklava, soaking in syrup.


The whole tray soaking in syrup. Need to let it sit a couple of hours before dishing them out.

Monday 10 January 2011

Devil Food Cake

It's been a while since I baked something for the fun of it. Having some time as it's the holidays, I came upon this blog http://cafefernando.com/devils-food-cake-for-design-sponge/ and decided to try it out more for the chocolate shards. Love how it's made and found some sites on youtube to learn some ways to make these.
I think I still need to practise on the shards to make it more curved. Perhaps use a better quality chocolate would help.
Besides that I used hazelnut spread to make the ganache as I could not find any Biscoff spread at the local supermarket.

Overall the cake was really moist and am glad I could share it with friends.