Oh! its been AGES!!
And now finally I’ve decided to continue blogging..
Here’s my new address

http://sweesan.blogspot.com
and promise, no MIA

]]> http://foodaholic.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/moved/feed/ 1 swee sweet-art-header-copy1 http://foodaholic.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/oh-well/ http://foodaholic.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/oh-well/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:51:47 +0000 Swee http://foodaholic.wordpress.com/?p=460 ]]>

I’m most likely not blogging for a long period of time.

Till then, have a good day and enjoy blog-hopping

Hello everyone,

this post is to tell everyone that I’m still around and not too busy catching butterflies yet. There’ll be a post about mooncakes coming up in the next couple of days. Please wait just a while more..

Some random pics

Toys! hahaha Cakes for display only. they;re really small and dainty..

*why is my pic so smalll… Uh after not logging on for 4 months, I gotta get use to wordpress again .alot has changed since. not just wordpress but everything else. Oh well We’ll keep that for later.

Oh yummy Sex and the City themed cupcakes.

cupcakes for wedding. the bouquet and ribbon looks a lil bit too oversized but somehow in some way it looks fine to me.

why lah all cupcakes. boring already.. ok wait just wait …..

i’m not disowning my blog. just recuperating for a bit

till then

A=Asparagus

B=Bunoshimeji Mushroom

I’m happy with the variety of mushrooms nowadays as compared to 2 years ago, where shiitake and enoki conquers all. Now, there are lotsa Japanese / Korean mushrooms (Bunoshimeji, shimeji, Eryngii) and even Portobello and fresh button mushroom. Now that makes me a happy person cause I’m a mushroom fan.

(Photo from hereandtherejapan.blogspot.com) – because I didnt take any “before” photos; too eager to cook

Fair enough, I happened to buy some tiny asparagus from the market at a cheap price because its their last packet and I’m their usual customer. It was a huge bunch. Immediately I was thinking of some asparagus tart or some quiche. But oh well I dont think my family take “tart” as starters or a meal. Being Chinese, we like to have a few dishes on the table (meat, vege, tofu etc) and savour them with rice (uh, staple stuff)

So what happened was I blanched the asparagus in salted water. Set aside.
Heat wok with oil and sesame oil. Stir in mushrooms. Add in oyster sauce and a tiny amount of soy sauce.
Add in the asparagus, a little bit of water. Stir stir stir. Done!

No, I did not make or attempted to make it. I just happened to be invited to a *free* event/workshop by Pastry Pro some couple of weeks back. Chef Christoph Riedel was in town representing Dreidoppel from Germany to show us some new products, flavourings and inventions from Dreidoppel / Pastarom.

Chef Christoph showcased some interesting desserts and sorbets.

Limoncella – Lemon custard tartlet with cherry fruit filling

Pistachip mousse tart with cherry filling

Ok, I didnt know what that red colour thingy was..

Dragonfruit sorbet (that tasted like bubblegum to me- well because dragonfruit is naturally quite tasteless anyway… )

Dolcino Cilegia – Cherry marzipan tartlet

Mousse made with vegetable-gelatin.

Pastry Pro’s Pastry Chef demonstrated their airbrush set..

Pulled sugar display

Chef christoph and Buttermilk-cherry sorbet, dragonfruit sorbet and vanilla ice cream

English Temptation – Milk chocolate mousse with bavarian tea cream and ginger sponge

Yummy.. always good to indulge in new desserts and pastries (oh free food yay)

ps: i have a new blog

Applause on those who got it right on the trivia I posted up yesterday! The answer is….. *drum roll* Pancake Mix.  I know I know it must be question marks all over by now if you haven’t come across Nigella’s new book Nigella Express. Actually I haven’t land myself the book yet, I saw the fantastic idea from the book, and just erm, well, let’s just say, borrowed it for now. (I will get myself that book when I’m not so broke, or open for donations. HAHA)

Anyway, Nigella once again, is a genius. Making the pancake mix, store it in your pantry. and everytime if there’s a pancake craving, just scoop some flour out, add egg, milk and melted butter. Tadah, you have pancakes! It certainly saves alot of time if you’re making pancakes for breakfast isn’t it ?

So the idea is to sift together;

600g flour
3 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
40g sugar
1 tsp salt

Put into a container, label it Pancake Mix or even, give it to your friends. That mix should make abundant of pancakes!

And, for every 150g of flour mix, add in

1 egg
1 cup milk
1 tbsp melted butter

*this would yield about 10 or more pancakes depending on the size…

It’s just THAT EASY! now, the book wasn’t called “express” without any reason.

Ok so I made some pancakes, mashed peas and also some cheese sausages. oh yummy

The pancakes are fluffy yo!

What does 600g flour, 3 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1 tsp salt and 40g sugar gives u ?

Check out tomorrow !

I couldn’t quite think of a better emoticon to describe the above combination. 1. to show, oh man! its SO GOOD. 2. to show, oh man !! all the calories !! *cries* But its all worth it.

I was on a baking-roll lately that I just wanna bake bake and bake despite the fact that I also bake bake and bake at work. Tiring but well, both are different things. One, is like a mini routine. Whereas another, is more experimental and “Oh-I-feel-like-a-chocolate-caramel-thingy-today” kinda thing if you get what I mean.

Being all so ambitious, I just wanted to bake everything. But this particular luscious tart caught my eye from Kate Zuckerman’s The Sweet Life. Almost everything from the book is so attractive. I think this is the first (but not last) dessert I made from the book. I did get alot of ideas from the book, like my self-invented caramel mousse cake with rum jelly, and the brown butter, and some macaron ideas. The next thing I wanna make from the book would be… ermm, we’ll see. Maybe some sorbet / ice creams.

OKay, let me introduce the tart. Its a chocolate tart (duh!) Wait, let’s be more specific.

Chocolate Caramel tart filling, that’s almost mousse-like in texture but at the same time so rich and fudgy. For the crust, the normal sweet pie crust. For this, I used a hazelnut sweet crust which was so good! In which, hazelnut meal substituted a portion of the plain flour or almond meal. It’s like magic!

mmm yummmyyy

Nevermind the fact that I’m always amazed with anything that contains “gianduja”. Think Nutella and Ferrero Rocher

So, after a long long time of not baking at home leisurely, I decided, alright, today is the day. Once again, I have alot running in my head on what to bake. This time around, I wanted to try on macarons ala French. Not coconut. We’ll talk about that later but lets hope into the wonderful world of hazelnut.

For me, hazelnuts are the next best thing to pistachio, if not, actually both are my favourite nuts! I can still remember the amateurish Pistachio Chocolate Cake and Chocolate Ferrero Rocher I made long time ago, pistachio ice cream, gianduja chocolate cannelloni, and the ever-cool Chocolate Croquembouche with assortments of chocolate truffle. But the problem here is that, hazelnuts and pistachios are rather expensive compared to other nuts like almond, cashew and walnuts. (Hey, there’s a price to pay for good stuff)

I hooked up with Nigella’s Torta Alla Gianduja from her How to be a Domestic Goddess bakebook. The picture looks amazingly attractive and rich. I wanted to take Hugh’s recipe when he challenged Gordon Ramsay in The F Word show going on now in 703 or 707. But couldn’t really find it. Oh no, wait. That was actually a Chocolate Chestnut cake. Not hazelnut. Anyway…

I decided to make them into mini cakes rather than a huge cakes because it’s easier to share this way. I used my canele-look-a-like flexipan mould for this cake.

Torta Alla Gianduja

6 large eggs, seperated
pinch of salt
125g soft unsalted butter
400g Nutella (1 large jar, yes you’ve read it right its 400g)
1 tbsp Frangelico
100g ground hazelnut
100g dark couverture chocolate, melted

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.
2. Whisk egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry.
3. Meanwhile, beat butter and Nutella together in another bowl. Add in Frangelico, egg yolk and ground hazelnuts.
4. Fold in cooled, melted chocolate and then lighten the mixture with a dollop of egg white.
5. Gently fold in egg whites a third at a time. Pour into prepared tin and cook for 30-40 minutes depending on size of mould or until the cake is beginning to come away at the sides.
6. Cool on rack
7. Serve with ganache and toasted peeled hazelnut.

*Tip: If you buy unpeeled hazelnuts, roast them in oven first. Then put them in between a dry cloth and rub them. The skin will peel off easily. Return to roast those which needed further roastings.

Perhaps it was a wise move to make them into mini sizes because they were so rich. SO RICH! but it was awesome.  It should replace the choc pistachio cake as my favourite chocolate-nut cake.

And with the drizzling Frangelico infused ganache. its just awesome.

Thought I should do a proper post since it’s been ages I blogged here (anywhere).

Well, I guess I’m not so updated with the blogging world nowadays knowing the fact that I hardly blog anymore because life’s just became mundane lately and there’s no interesting baking adventure lately. Just that sometimes I have crazy ideas for my desserts, it just stops in the head, not real. (I’m still secretly wanting a Paco Torreblanca book someday) [Collette Peters' book would satisfy me for just this moment, OKAY, actually I need sponsors to go Debbie Brown's class in May]

Anyway, early this month, I did a cake for my cute little niece. Its her 1st birthday. Knowing that I did a amateurish Magical mushroom cake for Faith, it would be unfair to not do one for Adira (younger sis) And the theme came out, it’s farm animals

Its actually my first time making a full-fondant cake, and it’s not often I cover my cakes with fondant because there’s just so much more other things other than fondant. But using fondant actually creates a neater finish as per buttercream and it stays the same in just room temperature. Gumpaste / fondant figurines are not advised to be kept in fridge. Best at room temperature.

Its a marble cake. Just basic vanilla cake, took 1/3 out and mixed in with some melted Callebaut Chocolate. Poured into batter and stirred with a satay stick, chopstick would be ok as well.

But the texture was fantastic. *har har*

Then I covered the cake with melted chocolate to create a even smoother finish before I spread diluted jam and lay the fondant on top. I didn’t have the smoothing-tool to make the edges tight, so I used my palm and fingers, thus a little bumpy here and there.  I learned that its not good to roll the fondant toooo thin (about 4 mm is okay for me) when there’s alot of cornerings to do. If its just a around or square cake, you can roll thinner but, just not so advisable.

As for the animals, I did them the night before so it would dry on time for me to put as toppers. I did some recognisable animals like elephant (OK its not farm animal but its cute ok!) pigs, ducks, cows, dog, cat and a fat monkey

I decided to keep things simple because of time constrains. Can’t do too many detailing stuffs.

Then, did the grass, pond, trees and placed all the animals on top. The fake rocks are actually chocolate candies. Hehe (needed to do some scouting). Then, I piped some dots at the bottom side of the cake to cover the ‘mess’. That way it would look neater because the last thing you want to see is cake crumbs outside.

piggie!

The cake.

I think it’s OKAY being the first full fondant / novelty cake i’ve done. Not the best but I still think I’m more of a dessert person. I seek different flavours and textures. Man.. I so feel like a Chocolate Chestnut cake right NOW !!!!!

more photos here