Chocolate Bars

If you've never tried bacon and chocolate together, you're missing out. I know it sounds weird at first but the saltiness and slight smokiness from the bacon really goes well with the chocolate! Here I tempered a mixture of dark chocolate and milk chocolate, and mixed in some crispy, chopped bacon.

Vancouver Weather

So it's almost the end of June and yet just yesterday morning, it was pouring rain. Today was also rainy for a bit but thankfully cleared up. What's going on with the weather? Where's my summer? I'm still waiting for all day sun and hot weather with just a slight breeze. Sigh.

I'm glad it stopped raining today so that the delivery of this wedding cake went quite smoothly. Champagne background with darker curlicues and accents highlighted with gold dust. The topper was made with white and pink peonies, orchids, and roses. Fresh flowers are so beautiful.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

It finally feels like summer so I've been craving barbeque lately. After watching Top Chef Canada last week, I was really craving pulled pork. I've never made it before and the only times I had it were at Memphis Blues, and at a friend's who made it in her slow cooker. I have neither a slow cooker nor a barbeque so I had to go with the oven route. I used the recipe here from Top Chef but ended up swapping the vinegars since I didn't have sherry vinegar (I had sherry wine though). Mine also seemed to have a very large liquid to meat ratio so I cooked it some more after I took it out of the oven on the stove to reduce it. I added brown sugar as well as it was quite acidic. Overall though, it was delicious! I have some sitting in my freezer for future use too!

Ruffles

Another mango mousse cake. All I can say is, the mandoline is a wondrous tool!

Nemo Cake

A "Finding Nemo" cake for a friend. It only needed to be a small cake so I decided to make it a jellyfish and have it on a pedestal. The tentacles are made with ruffled fondant and pulled sugar to give it more texture and interest. I was really happy at how these turned out. Inside is a devil's food cake with hazelnut feuilletine and buttercream. For the Nemo, it was my second attempt as the first one looked a little wonky. I guess fish isn't really my forte. The mini birthday cake was my sister's favorite.

More Roses

Inside this rose covered cake is mango mousse with fresh mangoes and vanilla chiffon.

Earl Grey and Hazelnut Chocolate

Earl grey mousse, hazelnut chocolate mousse, flourless chocolate cake, feuilletine base. This cake has been made before but I did some tweaking and made some improvements. I love this log mold and think I'll be putting it to good use from now on.

Bibimba

This was a packet of Bibimba mix that I bought from the Muji in Hong Kong. I love Bibimba! For those who don't know, it's a fried rice mixture, usually a little spicy, that they put into a very hot clay bowl so that the outsides sear making it crispy. I made this with some egg, shrimp, green onion, and shiitake mushrooms, added the packet into it, and then placed it in a frying pan to mimic the sear from the clay bowl. It didn't quite do the trick with the crispness but the flavor was very good.

For All the Twilight Fans

This is a recreation of the cover of the first "Twilight" book. I admit I struggled with the hands but they turned out pretty good! I wanted to make a stiff top so that they could just lift off the cover and cut into the cake so I decided to decorate the inside "front page" as well so it's not too plain when they cut it. Not having read any of the books myself, I had to look online to see when the 1st page looked like.

Hong Kong Part 1

I didn't take many pictures while I was in Hong Kong being worried of coming off as too "tourist-y" but these are some food-related ones.

The great thing was the variety of bottled fruit juices that would be available at the grocery store, Starbucks, and in this case, food court restaurants. Watermelon juice with your ramen?


When I first saw this at the local grocery store, I was surprised and kind of chuckled in my head. Then I thought that it does make sense and would be convenient for people who don't like crusts on their bread.


Pretty self explanatory:


These are just 3 of the rows and rows of dried seafood stalls in the Sheung Wan area of Hong Kong. Everyday I would see them dry out assorted seafoods by the side of the road. It definitely makes me think twice next time I eat dried seafood when I think about how polluted it is and all the exhaust fumes the seafood must absorb while drying.


More to come!