Happy Valentines day!

Cinnamon and vanilla shortbread cookies with a heartfelt message on it:

 The classic chocolate dipped strawberry, this time in a dark 70% chocolate:

Mini cupcakes for your sweetheart:

And all the packaging:

Mango Gianduja Entremet

This was a cake recipe I tried from the Bachour book. The recipes turned out great! I ended up doubling the recipe for the gianduja mousse though. The base is a dacquoise (I omitted the chocolate), gianduja mousse, a hazelnut praline layer, and mango cremeux. Mango fluid gel to dot the top and chocolate plaques to decorate!

Matcha and Azuki

This matcha azuki cake was made for a friend's mother's birthday. An almond joconde band surrounding matcha white chocolate mousse. Inside was a light matcha chiffon and cooked azuki beans. A thin layer of gelle on top before the cascade of chocolate curls and ribbons and cubes of yokan (a firm jelly made with agar) made from azuki bean paste and matcha. I love the color contrast and the different textures and heights make it really interesting.

The Farm

This farm cake is a dark chocolate cake filled with peanut butter icing and peanut butter ganache. The fat chickens here are probably my favourite animals on this cake.

Tennis Ball Green

These brightly colored confections were for a charity tennis tournament. Devil's food cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream and "tennis ball" fondant with neon green pistachio macarons.

Chocolates to snack on

These are great for when you need a chocolate fix but don't want anything too heavy like a chocolate bar. I took dried cherries and clustered them together with tempered dark chocolate, then tossed them in cocoa powder. Fruity, chocolatey, slightly tart.

Everyone Could Use Some Chocolate

Chocolate cupcakes with rich chocolate frosting and crunchy chocolate pearls.

A Hawaiian Dessert Buffet

Last night, I went to a fabulous Luau themed birthday party that included, shell leis, hula dancers, fire throwers, and a whole roasted suckling pig! I provided the desserts in a buffet style along with some beautiful fruit platters done by my friend. The birthday cake had a coconut sponge cake, coconut mousse, pineapple lime compote, and coconut cream cheese frosting on the outside and coated with shredded coconut.

These chocolate shells were filled with chocolate mousse and decorated with crunchy chocolate sticks.
I had some strawberry guava sorbet sandwiches and mini banana splits that had a cherry compote, homemade vanilla ice cream, and caramelized bananas. Pineapple macarons filled with a roasted pineapple jam. Coconut marshmallows atop the cake platter.
Mini pavlova shells filled with whipped cream, fresh fruit and passionfruit pulp.

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.

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.

Chocolate, Pear, Hazelnut

Gianduja mousse atop a chocolate feuilletine base. Slices of caramelized pear with a pear mousse to top it all off.

The Making of a Cake

The request was for a cherry blossom cake for a chocolate lover. No fondant. The cake itself is two layers of chocolate sponge sandwiching an orange ganache, topped with a chocolate mousse and a thin feuilletine layer.

I decided to show all the steps involved in the decorating process. This isn't even that elaborate of a cake so you can imagine how long it must take for those amazing cakes you see on "Ace of Cakes".



Step one was making the white modeling chocolate and tinting it to form the cherry blossoms. I cut out and rolled with a gum paste tool to create the petals and let those dry before dusting them with a pink food coloring and dotting in the stamens.



After the cake froze, I trimmed the edges and glazed it with a chocolate glaze.


I piped the the branches with a chocolate water mixture, trying to make it look natural. Adding water to chocolate will make it seize but if you have the right ratio, the mixture will still be smooth and you'll be able to pipe it. I usually start off with just a few drops of water and add till I get the desired consistency. Most of the time, you want a texture similar to Nutella.


Adding the cherry blossoms.



And the finished product!

Christmas Baking

Yes, I've been totally M.I.A. the past 2 weeks. The combo of all the birthday dinners and christmas baking left me exhausted. Hopefully this will make it up a bit. A few pictures from my holiday baking.

These were molded chocolates brushed with gold tinted cocoa butter filled with a baileys ganache:

Pink Macarons filled with Lychee pate de fruit and rose buttercream (pre-sandwiching):



White chocolate mendiants topped with pistachio, apricot, praline almond, dried blueberries, and craisins. I also did some dark chocoalte ones with dried pineapple but these had looked prettier:


Gingerbread reindeer!


Chocolates that I boxed up. I have salted caramel, chai, and the baileys:

Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

I know I've done peanut butter jelly chocolates before here but it's been a few years and I am happy to say that I've learned a few things since then. Instead of filling cavities with just peanut butter and jam, I made a grape pate de fruit (from Welch's juice surprisingly enough) and a peanut butter ganache and dipped them. The result:
The ganache was very creamy and smooth. The pate de fruit was not as sweet as I thought it would be. I do need to work on my dipping skills though.

Mocha Hazelnut

Almond dacquoise sandwiching coffee buttercream and topped off with chocolate sponge, mousse, and hazelnut nougatine. I later dusted the lettering with gold lustre dust to create more of a contrast.

More Salted Caramels

More of the salted caramels packaged up.

Chocolate Caramels

The last time I was in Seattle, I went into Fran's Chocolates and sampled these amazing gray salt caramels. I tried to recreate something similar here using himilayan pink sea salt. The recipe I used for the caramel is from the book "Chocolates and Confections at Home".

The recipe doesn't specify exactly what degree to cook the caramel at and just tells you to test it out with a spoon. For the caramel that I made, I ended up cooking it till about 246F and it was a good consistency. It held its shape but was still soft enough to chew on.

Soft Caramels
-from Chocolates and Confections at Home by Peter Greweling

4 oz water
1 lb sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
1 can condensed milk
12 oz light corn syrup
6 oz unsalted butter, soft
1 tsp salt (I used 2 tsp)

-lightly butter a 9x13" baking pan
-combine water, sugar, vanilla bean, condensed milk, butter, and corn syrup in a pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Mixture will foam so be sure you use a fairly large pot.
-continue stirring till about 245F. Start testing caramel consistency with a spoon at 240F
-remove from heat and stir in salt. pour into pan and cool to room temperature
-cut and dip in tempered chocolate

Baby Shower Time!

I think it's a given that most women become chocaholics when they get pregnant, what with the change in hormones and the rush of endorphins you get from eating chocolate and all. So here was the "chocolate" of all chocolate cakes: the great Sacher torte.

Austrian in origin, the Sacher is composed of a moist chocolate cake (made with melted chocolate by the way, no cocoa powder for this one) soaked in syrup, apricot preserves normally, though I used raspberry jam instead, and chocolate ganache. A slice composing of 4 layers and your chocolate craving should be satisfied.

Topped off with a chocolate glaze and chocolate decorations (fit for a boy that is).
And here's a side view of some cute little diapers and pacifiers:

Chocolate and Raspberry - A Match Made in Heaven

So here I am with another cake, finally. This one was for a 3rd birthday for a kid who loves Toopy and Binoo, a cute cartoon show that shows on YTV Treehouse. I think this cartoon is quite new as I had never heard of it before but a little research got me some pretty good pictures of it. The only other specifications were: Chocolate and fruity. I got to thinking and here is what I came up with:

2 chocolate dacquois meringues sandwiching a milk chocolate rice krispies layer, and on top of that, a raspberry jelly floating inside chocolate mousse that has fresh raspberries folded into it.

The outside is just a dark chocolate glaze and the picture, I piped out of chocolate. The design turned out exactly how I wanted it to turn out so I was relieved and very happy with the result. I didn't get to taste the cake unfortunately but I heard that it was a big hit so I'm absolutely delighted. Can't wait till the next experiment!

The Not-so-Traditional Black Forest Cake

So I've been out of the blogosphere for a while now (my mind being distracted and all) and I'm back for now. Hopefully I'll update more regularly 'cause I have some plans to experiment a bit more with new techniques and recipes. Here's the first little test of mine in a while with the black forest cake.

I got the inspiration on a trip to Sweet Revenge down on Main St. one night when they had the Black Forest cake as their feature of the day. I don't normally like Black Forest cake all that much (I'm not a fan of the maraschino cherries and kirsch though I know, I know, that's what makes the cake) but they were using fresh cherries instead of the maraschino ones. I was a little disappointed in that you couldn't really taste the cherries because the kirsch covered it all up. The cake itself was alright I guess; it was slightly grainy you could say. I could only finish half (it was quite filling) and I got the idea to do my own take on the Black Forest. One that I could actually enjoy.

I decided on using a chocolate sponge cake that used actual chocolate instead of cocoa powder and that was high in butter so that it was rich but the texture was still spongy. I soaked it in simple syrup with framboise and spread a thin layer of raspberry jam on top. Fresh pitted cherries came next and vanilla whipped cream with mascarpone cheese (I had leftovers). I covered the sides in chocolate panels and more fresh pitted cherries. The top picture shows the 6" version that my sister brought to work and I had some leftover cake so I made myself a mini one. I definitely enjoyed this better than the traditional one. The absence of kirsch was a blessing and the hint of raspberry jam lended sweetness and complimented the fresh cherries.