Life has been like making a sourdough loaf

When you make a sourdough bread (disclaimer: amateur baker here has not actually made a sourdough in her life yet, I just watch a lot of recipe videos haha), you make a starter dough. This gets proved over time in approx 5-6 days? You keep feeding the dough and it keeps proving until you've got yourself a fully functional and very much alive starter.

Well, that's what life has been a bit like these years. A bit testing, and very much feeling like I needed to constantly prove my self worth. Life is a constant sourdough making process, and its a slow development but like sourdough, if you don't give yourself time you're never going to rise to your peak. Hopefully soon I will feel like a rustic sourdough loaf. 

One summer my sister and her boyfriend was visiting (they now reside in HK) so I decided to make them a choux cake. 

It came out OK, it was a little dry because there wasn't any kind of frosting on the outside (I was lazy with glazing it with sugar syrup). In hindsight I should have made a creme diplomat rather than just whipped cream in the middle and creme pat on the top. The filled choux buns made the cake top heavy of course. I needed much stronger forces to keep them in place instead of just creme pat. Mmm, maybe some creme de beurre? A french buttercream will adhere to the cake nicely and nestle up the choux buns rather cosily. 

Mental note to self: long bamboo sticks do not hold a cake in place for very long, no matter how light the sponge is...

Ending this with a delish toffee ice cream (WITH BITS) I made ages ago. So delish I took a spoonful (albeit a little spoon) before taking a photo to marvel at the swirls. 

Those little flecks of vanilla are so pretty, in this photo they look like stars amidst space, flowing through a yummy, swirly milky caramelly way.

I've found joy in baking again, which means I've probably found that part of peace that was missing again. 

Random bakes

Matcha Ice cream

Matcha again I guess, haha. The first ice cream I made was vanilla, so original huh? I then made this vegan ice cream afterwards. It was...not to my taste, the recipe called for coconut milk instead of milk which was too over powering for me. The coconut over powered the matcha and the maple syrup was too sweet on top of the coconut milk too. Coconut milk naturally has a sweetness to it as well as milk, but coconut milk is much stronger. My brother's fiance and her family enjoyed the ice cream a lot though compared to me, they polished it within one day of bringing it back to her home, haha. 

Checkered biscuits, 2nd time round. 

They're square shaped this time! Was so over joyed they came out looking more like the photos shown in the recipe book this time round. I made two batches of these cookies from William Curley's recipe.

These were part of the assorted baked goods gifts I made for my family over in Hong Kong. They know I love to bake and I've always wanted to bake something decent for them, so when my mum travelled to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year I did my best to put together a few boxes of baked goods. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of everything that was in the boxes, next time perhaps?

Carrot cake cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and a chocolate birthday cake

Mmm. This was for a friend's birthday. In the UK, we don't have block cream cheese and so making cream cheese frosting to pipe is always hard. I added gelatin to help stabilize it a bit but should've been more patient and waited for it to set then whip it so it has more body to pipe. Other than that, the taste was lovely. 

Opera slices and Japanese strawberry shortcake cupcakes

I've made opera cakes so many times but I believe this is the first time it's actually appearing on my blog. Opera cake is one of my favourites, chocolate and coffee marry so well together. Its definitely a rich cake. It's very popular among my family and friends too. The buttercream had a few cracks here and there because I popped the cake in the freezer to set up before slicing it which froze the buttercream too much. It should have been kept in the fridge over night instead, ahh. patience, patience. I will be making it again for my cousin's upcoming birthday in September. 

I made these bakes for a friend since he said he hadn't tried my baking in a while. So I made my two favourites. I didn't want to carry a whole big strawberry shortcake to university though so I made them into cupcakes. Results: the cupcakes needed way more cream. Even though I had hollowed out the middle of the cupcakes to fill it with strawberry and cream it wasn't enough. The cream is very light and fluffy and tastes just like ice cream. 

To finish this post off, I will end it with a heart shaped Japanese short cake (there can never be too much). I made this for my dad's birthday. I didn't have a heart shaped pan so I had to do some construction work. Yep, so big haha. The biggest cake board we had just about fit the cake...even so, this cake was finished within 2 days of eating. 

Baked doughnuts

Mmmm. It almost seems like the only time I ever post anything on here its during summer. ha. University has been great this year, I thoroughly enjoyed most of my time of 2nd year. With one one module being my favourite, cell communication. This upcoming academic year there will more nutrition centered modules, looking forward to it a lot but will miss the more science based subjects greatly, even though they gave me a lot of stress it was so much fun learning about the subjects, ahh. Farewell, farewell. 

Matcha baked doughnuts and strawberry cupcakes

I love working with matcha, the vibrant green it gives my bakes are so lovely. My brother's fiance and her family absolutely adores matcha, anything matcha related in London she has probably already tried. Her love for matcha is equivalent to my love for chocolate.

Strawberry cupcakes! Strawberry is another favourite flavour of mine, as I have probably mentioned before. It sort of started off with the mini milk lollies that my mum use to buy for us, they came in three flavours, milk, chocolate and strawberry (ahh could do with one right now). I loved those milk lollies even to this day. The obsession with strawberry flavoured things grew when I tried haagen dazs' strawberry ice cream. I enjoyed the mini nuggets of strawberry the most in the ice cream and would often dig at them as if I found gold digging in the ground. 

The buttercream was a little disappointing, I recall it was a french buttercream that I made and I had used freeze dried strawberry powder to avoid the buttercream from splitting, plus freeze dried strawberry powder is so delish. I remember the buttercream tasting too rich and not light enough but I often found that way with french buttercreams, hmm. Possibly try another buttercream next time. 

Strawberry baked doughnuts

The freshly baked doughnuts just looks so mesmerizing with their browned surface. ^^

This time I made strawberry baked doughnuts (yes there was at least a few months time difference between when I made matcha doughnuts and strawberry doughnuts xD). I added way too much freeze dried strawberry powder which immediately turned the icing into a deep red rather than a blushed pink which was what I had hope for. I experimented with different decorations this time as I had some mini sugar flowers left over and I had always wanted to try made those cute doughnut characters. 

Next time I will be brave and try the traditional fried doughnuts. Hoping to make either creme brulee doughnuts or nutella. Mmm. 

-Listening to BTS' cover of Shinwa's perfect man (and dancing shamelessly) live whilst sipping cold brewed green tea. On a sunny Saturday in my living room. 

Choux creme, and more random bakes

Continuing from my past bakes-

Choux creme

Hmm, there's something about choux, that makes it especially...distinctive. In my eyes anyways. It's so cute and petite, I love the cracks it forms and how it puffs up into a well rounded dome. Kinda resembles tiger bread yknow? I find them more attractive than macarons and cupcakes. I most likely sponged off my choux creme obsession from my big brother, who in the past, would frequently buy a dozen of choux cremes during the days when beard papa's was still open in London (how heartbroken he was when they closed down). 

My first experience of choux creme was a pleasant one, not one that got me obsessed with it though, not to the extent that I wanted to master choux pastry anyways. My interest for it grew when I watched the drama 'Absolute boyfriend', choux creme appeared for a significant amount of times, the way they talked about it and shot it was just so...influential (in my case), not sure if that is the best word to describe it, but owell. 

Fill with chilled custard creme and bam yummy choux cremes. Not as lovely as beard papa's but still, choux creme is choux creme. Forever love.

Mini Matcha cupcakes and mini coffee cakes 

First of all- ignore the lovely Sainsbury's mince pies at the back. These were the left over mini treats from a Christmas party my mum held for her group of badminton friends, I chose coffee and matcha to suit an older person's palette, plus, the majority were orientals so going with matcha was a good decision. A little of the matcha ganache goes a long way, the matcha was strong and the kids in the party who tried the it disliked them due to how bitter the ganache was, for me and my sister however, it was the right balance. We like our matcha strong.  

Evidently the appearance of the matcha cupcakes weren't stunning, so when I made them again the other night, (yes this bake is actually my most recent bake- in which I'm not late to post a blog about, ha. miracles. unicorns. shooting stars alala.) I improvised and whipped up about 50g of some matcha buttercream, roughly piped it around the outside and scooped some matcha ganache into the middle. Ahh, there we go, a cavity that could contain the ganache but not look too sloppy at the same time. May try something else next time, but for now, I'm too lazy to think of any other designs, maybe another improvising night?

And next to those are- brownies and resting on top of them are some viennese cookies. Such soft and melty cookies. Thank you Mary Berry. 

Strawberry shortcake

Finally, I'm going to finish off with my Father's day cake. There has definitely been better days in terms of piping and smoothing the cream around the cake, but hey, can't complain, the cake was really nice. I finally found a recipe online that had the right amount of everything, the cream tasted like ice-cream, and the cake was so light! Thanks to stumbling upon a good recipe.

First time I tested the recipe, turned out pretty nice, so I repeatedly made it another 3 times after. -friend's birthday, father's day, and another friend's birthday- 

Side note- to all readers out there who likes food and reading- Nigel's Slater's 'Toast' is amazing, so far for me anyways, his episodes with different foods always brings a smile to my face. It's a short book that can be easily finished. 

The first time I came across his book was when I was in my english class in secondary school in year 8, we went over an extract from his book, the first few paragraphs- about toast. It was one of the many extracts or books that we had to study in which I actually enjoyed. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I had remembered a lot of what the extract contained even though it was only short. Just when I thought I'd never find that book again (I never paid much attention to the author nor the book title) I managed to pluck it from a shelf in a charity shop. Ah, such luck~~!

Anywho- I'm twirling into a dangerous sleeping pattern again, So I better just post this and head to bed, (maybe read a bit of Toast first though, tehe.)

Ciao.

Tarts, cheese sticks, and first Mont Blanc attempt

It's been a rather long time...looking back, my last post was posted in 1st December 2013...guess the sluggish side of me won, but hopefully I will be able to pick it up again and bake and post more? Tehe.

Tarts

I initially wanted to do a dark vs light tarts kind of like the idea of one pitch black and one bleaching white kind of tarts, however they somehow spiraled into something that turned out just pretty average looking, not as special as I anticipated. Which was due to my laziness in drawing up designs, improvising 90% of the time whilst baking. Am thinking of making the tarts again, this time I would add edible carbon powder to blacken the pastry, along with cocoa to darken it further. As for the 'white' tart, normal pastry will have to do. 

First time I made Cheese sticks- Oh the way I actually bothered to egg wash, then twist and turn them. Baked them again for Christmas, and another time for one of my brother's birthday that just passed, seriously, he wanted cheese sticks instead of a cake. I recall retreating to bed at precisely 9am that morning I baked these, ah...no words. 

Mont Blanc

Evidently, these were a first attempt, I didn't follow a recipe for the supposedly chestnut cream. In fact its barely cream but more chestnut puree, it hardened very quickly after a while and I had a hard time piping it out neatly (back ones and ones in the far right. Although, I probably didn't have to point it out, you all have eyes). Most of the chestnut cream all had rather large quantities of butter or whipped cream, which I thought would diminish the flavour of the chestnut.   

The Mont Blancs with the cake bases were considerably easier to eat, the ones with the rounded bottoms were sable breton, obviously much too thick to be eaten in a delicate manner. The taste overall was decent enough, had the texture of the 'cream' had not hardened slightly in the fridge, it would have been better. My sister actually preferred the slightly uncooked sable breton, but meh, that's my sister. She likes dense textures. 

Brioches 

They look so ugly, weren't bad tasting. Could only thank Richard Bertinet for providing the recipe I guess. The tops of the Matcha swirl buns completely failed the spiral pattern, must make again. 

Despite the rather sad looking tops, I rather like the pattern that formed in the insides of the buns, stretched branching patterns if you will? 

The flavour- was very good. I never was a huge fan of matcha, not as much as I am a coffee nor chocolate fan, but matcha is still up there, just trailing behind strawberry and passion fruit. The intensity of the matcha really did go well with the brioche. the unflavoured brioche by itself I found that after a few days; dry and hard to eat, but with the matcha the texture didn't bother me much, even though it was my sister and mum who chomped most of it down. 

A Smiley Kunamon biscuit to end this post. The oval red object are red eggs- traditional Chinese birthday treats back in the day. Very old fashioned in fact, my friend didn't even know what they were aha. 

Post more later. Eat a lot of cakes, and be happy.