Raspberry

It's been a while and I haven't really been focused lately so today I baked. Baking always helps me get my mind off of things, focus on the baking at hand. It helps me unwind and is way more practical and productive than just sitting on the couch, watching tv.

I made teeny tiny raspberry tartlets filled with vanilla pastry cream and decorated with freeze dried apricots. I also made some chinese coconut buns and worked on some fondant flowers but I'll put pictures and recipes up later for those. I just love these adorable tartlets. Definitely a one-biter but it's quite a bite!

Last Minute Fruit Tarts

Rushing to get these fruit tarts done for my sister, a simple pate sucre, thin layer of raspberry jam, vanilla pastry cream, and fresh fruits. I had some extra pink modeling chocolate lying around so I did some quick roses out of that while watching tv (I love multi-tasking, haha).

Peach Tart

Peaches macerated in some sugar and ginger atop quark cheese. The tart is an ultra crumbly brown sugar sweet dough.

Cheesecake Tart and Rum Cake

This was kind of a last minute improvisation because I had some mango cheesecake mousse left over from an previous cake. I added some chopped lychees to it and filled up some silicone domes to set. I had seen some really pretty tarts before where it was filled with creme caramel or some other type of mousse so I decided to try it with some puff pastry. I made kind of vol-au-vent type thing with it, sprinkled a little bit of sugar, and baked it to a nice golden crisp.

I made myself some mango compote with a pinch of orange zest and filled the tart with that first before placing the glazed cheesecake on it. The sides were showing a bit and it needed a little bit of colour so I took some strawberries that I had and made little tiny balls with my mini melon-baller, which by the way makes everything look so cute and dainty. The little tiny balls of fruit were, as my old chef used to say, "fruit caviar".

This rum cake was a request of my mother's friend due to the fact that she loves rum so much. I had warned her that the rum in here was quite a strong dosage and she said that that was what she had wanted. This is a small version with some slivered almonds on the bottom (the cake is reversed after baking) and it is injected with lots of rum glaze.