Opera Cake

This was a traditional opera cake with thin layers of joconde (almond sponge), coffee buttercream, and ganache. I covered it entirely with ganache as well because the sides were not as clean as I would like them to be; normally opera cakes would be made in a sheet format, glazed, and then cut and trimmed of all the sides to have that ultra-clean visual but since I had to make it in a round collar, I couldn't really trim the sides.


I have the recipes posted below.

Joconde sponge:

85 g whole eggs

60 g icing sugar

60 g ground almonds

30 g flour

13 g melted butter

-whisk together

110 g egg whites

30 g granulated sugar

- whip whites till soft peaks form, then gradually add sugar and whip till stiff peaks

-fold egg whites into 1st portion in 3rds until mixed. Spread onto a 1/2 sheet pan and bake at 375 degrees farenheit until slightly golden.

Coffee Buttercream:

100 g water

200 g sugar

- cook until 121 degrees farenheit

100 g egg whites

- whip until soft peaks form, then gradually stream in hot sugar mixture and whip till cool ot the touch.

- gradually add in 300 g soft butter and whip till fluffy.

-dissolve about 1/4 cup instant coffee granules with 2 tbsp hot water and add into buttercream

Ganache:

200 g chopped dark chocolate

200 g cream

2 tbsp kahlua

- bring cream to a boil and pour into chocolate. stir until well blended and add in kahlua

Assembly:

-cut 4 rounds out of your sponge. Place one layer on the bottom in a lined cake ring. Add on a layer of coffee buttercream, about the same thickness as your cake layer. Smooth out and place a second layer of cake on top.


-pour an even layer of ganache on top of this and add another layer of cake.


-repeat with the remaining buttercream, cake, and ganache. Freeze and remove collar from sides. Glaze with leftover ganache.

Tiny Lemon Tartst

These cute little tarts were for an 8 year old's birthday. Fresh raspberries topped onto lemon curd gave it a pop of colour and flavour.

Mango Mousse

Here's another Mango mousse cake to add to the pile. 2 layers of genoise cake with diced fresh mango sandwiched with a mango jelly and all covered in mango mousse. Sorry about the bad quality of the picture (though it's probably not too far off from my usual mediocre photography), I couldn't find my camera so I ended up using my phone camera.

Happy Birthday Cakes Aplenty

I have been very bad with updating, so here's some catchup pictures, all of which happen to be birthday cakes! I guess birthday season is upon us.

The first two are the same cake inside. Almond hazelnut dacquoise layered with a crunchy praline layer, then topped off with hazelnut chocolate mousse. Both had to be a bit masculine or gender neutral so I went with something simple and classy.

This cake is just a vanilla pound cake soaked with a rum simple syrup and layered with vanilla buttercream. The Appleton Rum bottle was much more intricate and detailed than I first thought so I was a bit overwhelmed in the beginning. I decided to simplify it a little without taking away from the total effect of it.

I'm not much of a painter and it was my first time using powdered food colouring but it turned out pretty well I think. For the "bottle" part of it, I painted it with a coloured piping gel to make it look shiny, as if it was actually the glass bottle.

Penguins and Turtles

I was at Daiso (the Japanese $2 store) a while back and found these adorable cookie cutters so I finally put them to good use. The base for these cookies are a maple sugar cookie and it's decorated with rolled fondant and royal icing lettering. I love the turtle. So adorable!

The Everything Granola

My sister has been asking for me to granola for her for over a month now I think and I finally had time to do it. I never really had a recipe to make it though, I kind of just throw in this, and that, and whatever else I have lying around the house so the "everything granola" makes perfect sense here.

Let's see, there's oatmeal of course, craisins, currants, almonds, hazelnuts, flax seed, pumpkin seeds, dried apples, honey, a little bit of butter and sugar, and...I think I'm missing something else but I can't remember. Hmm..oh well. So yeah, great granola though!

Jasmine Green Tea Delice

This recipe was from the Indulge book, which by the way is amazing! It's got great tips and amazing recipes with photos. It's got a green tea almond sponge on the bottom, jasmine infused mousse in the middle, and a green tea white chocolate mousse on the top.

In the book, she used green tea to infuse the top mousse but I opted for matcha which I love but it overpowered the jasmine tea so I think if I do it again next time, I'll either try it the original way, or infuse more jasmine into it. The bottom sponge was alright I think but a lighter fluffier one would balance it out more. I served it with some diced cara cara oranges and strawberries in some orange reduction.

Red Roses

This was a cake made for a 35th birthday for a woman who wanted a coffee and hazelnut flavour. I layered chocolate sponge cake that was soaked in a kahlua syrup, with hazelnut buttercream and coffee buttercream and covered it in a pale yellow fondant. The theme was red and the invitations had a really beautiful dark red rose on it so I decided to imitate that with some gum paste roses on the top. Below are some sugar cookies that went along with the cake:

Appy Time!

So yesterday, I completely forgot that I had to bring an appetizer for a dinner party so I had to come up with one fast. I had some frozen ahi tuna steaks in the freezer (individually wrapped too) so I defrosted them quickly and came up with this tuna and mango appetizer.

I cut the tuna into strips and seared them off, seasoned of course, glazed them with sweet chili sauce, and cubed them. Put them on top of cucumber rounds and topped it off with a mango salsa. Quick, easy, healthy.

What I'm Addicted to Now

So you know how yogurt is supposed to be all healthy and good for you and how you should eat it everyday? Well, I never did before. Actually, I always followed that for about a few days before I would completely forget and by the time I remembered to eat it, it would be expired. Anyways, now, I'm completely addicted to it. Every single day. It's such a great snack!

Here I drained some 6% fat yogurt in cheesecloth and then thinned it out a teensy bit with some whipping cream, folded in some berry compote, and voila! Delicious, healthy (albeit a bit fattening, but hey, go bacteria culture!), and filling. I made granola recently and added that in too and it's sooo good. Mmm. But yeah, the drained yogurt really does make it tastier. It's richer, slightly less sour, and it's more....dessert-y.