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.