Cheese and Wine

Cheese and wine are a traditional pairing after dinner so it's only fitting that they're combined in a dessert. This is a goat cheese mousse with ice wine gelee on top of a hazelnut cookie base.

The ice wine has a lot of pear notes which go very well with the mild goat cheese. The different textures you get when you eat this one-bite dessert is also very interesting. You have the crumble and sandy cookie, the soft mousse, the crunch from the sugar decor on top, and the gelee. The sugar decor is something that is super easy to make and yet looks very interesting and different. I just took isomalt, which is a sugar substitute (you can find it at gourmet food stores or pastry suppliers), and mixed it with some food colouring. I got a more speckled look by not mixing the colour very thoroughly. Sprinkle the isomalt between two sheets lined with silpat and baked it at 350 degrees for 30 mins. Cool down without removing the sheet on top. When it's all cool, just peel of the silpat and break the large, bubbly sugar piece into shards and use as decor.

Earl Grey Mousse Cake

Since I have some time off, I finally get to test out some experimental cakes that I've come up with. This one here has a crunchy rice krispy hazelnut base underneath a flourless chocolate cake, topped off with an earl grey bavarois. The piping on top is a hazelnut chocolate mousse and on top of that is a hazelnut crumble.

The making of this cake was perfect timing because my sister loves earl grey and hazelnut so I gave some to her for her dinner that night. She loved it and said the only minor fault was that the bavarois could be slightly stiffer next time. I'll probably add one more gelatine leaf to it next time.

I absolutely loved the base. Ideally, it would be made with feuillentine but since I can't find any place that sells it at a small amount (I don't really want a big 5kg of it sitting around), I ended up using rice krispies. I was worried that they would go soggy but they remained crunchy which was great. I loved the contrast of the crunchiness of that as well as the hazelnut crumble with the smooth richness of the bavarois and chocolate cake.

I just got "La Patisserie de Pierre Herme" so I am hoping to test out a few, if not all, the recipes from there. So excited!

Strawberries!

Here is a strawberry mousse cake that I made just last night. Although you can't really tell from this picture, the outside cake is a joconde cake baked with stripes of raspberry jam and then cut to fit on the inside of the acetate. It was a little difficult cutting it though because the jam stuck to the knife and the cake, because it was so thin, tended to creak really easily where the jam is. It does piece together seamlessly though so that was a relief.

Inside is strawberry mousse with floaters of genoise and strawberry jelly.

For a Mom

My friend asked me to make a cake for his mom's birthday the other day and since she doesn't have too much of a sweet tooth, I made a fluffy sponge cake with layers of strawberry mousse. The outside has a thin layer of buttercream and the flowers are all buttercream as well.

The mom loves flowers and is into really "girly" things so I wanted to do something cute, but beautiful as well. Asians love chrysanthemum's (as do I) so I decided on a few hues of pinks, and purples although in the picture, it looks more like orange than pink. I had these cascading down the sides so it looked very elegant, like the mom.

The sides were a bit plain, so I decided to play up the cuteness by adding some small polka dots and tiny hearts from leftover coloured buttercream. She apparently loved it so I was satisfied and very happy. I think that's really the most important part in making a cake; it's the client's tastes you are catering to so if they're happy, I'm happy.

Mango Mousse Cheesecake

Mango mousse cakes are a favourite among Asian pastry shops and cheesecakes are a favourite among dessert lovers, so why not combine the two?

The exterior of this cake is the mango mousse part and the interior is a light cheesecake mousse enveloped in thinly sliced mangoes. The lightness of the cheesecake doesn't weight down the texture or taste of the mousse on the outside and the mango slices lend a freshness to the cake.