Chocolate Collar

I made this sometime back for my aunt's 79th birthday.  It's just chocolate cake sandwiched with chocolate ganache but what I wanted to showcase here was my 'innate' ability to make a chocolate collar :P

Close friends will know that from a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being Sylvia Weinstock (see http://www.sylviaweinstock.com/), my dexterity with cake frosting, decoration and such falls somewhat below 1, so what was I thinking when I thought of making a chocolate collar ... then again, how hard can the following steps be ?

1/ Melt chocolate
2/ Spread chocolate out on parchment paper (measured to fit the diameter of your cake)
3/ Let chocolate harden slightly but not too hard
4/ Wrap cake with it
5/ Carefully peel away parchment paper

Fast forward to a messy kitchen and a messier me ... ta-dah ! Chocolate collar it is ...

Fruit flan

This is another something that I made over the weekend for a friend's birthday.  This is just a simple pâte sucrée with crème pâtissière.  Trying to show off my French :) but seriously, its just a simple sweet shortcrust pastry with pastry cream.

The trick however is to use the best butter you can find for your crust.  As for the pastry cream, please make your own, its very easy.  Sorry, but I detest those yellow powder custardy thing that comes out of a box or can.

Simple and rustic and yet it makes a big impact on the table.

Happy birthday Hock! Hope you had a swell one.

Orange Chocolate Cake

This is another good way to utilise your leftover mandarin oranges.  I baked this cake recently for my aunt who celebrates her birthday each year on the 7^th day of the Chinese New Year.  Except that I didn’t actually manage to deliver the cake to her as I fell terribly ill after that and couldn’t bring myself out of bed.  And she left for a trip the day after.  So I got to keep (and eat) the (entire) cake.  I then made a mental note to send my aunt a virtual cake through the blog, but only remembered to post it up now.  I have the memory of a gnat these days (and I am not even that old… really, I’m not kidding you :P )

Anyway, this is a real keeper.  The fusion of orange and chocolate is a brilliant one.

Another Seventh Day Bake

This is the second installation of my seventh day bake.  Since its the Chinese New Year (CNY), I decided to balance the earlier Chocolate Layer Cake with something more colourful, as the Chinese has this taboo against wearing black or dark sombre colours during CNY, particularly so when the seventh day marks everyone's birthday.  I'm not sure if presenting a dark coloured cake falls under this category, but I'm not taking any chances, especially when gambling is involved, and all my aunts are so-called high rollers regular gamblers.  By the way, gambling is how we bond with family and friends especially during the CNY (or any time throughout the year !).

For this purpose, I decided to experiment with an orange layer cake, filled with mandarin oranges, peaches, blueberries and raspberries, and frosted inside and outside with lemon buttercream.  What a combo.  But it turned out to be such a refreshing cake, which is much welcomed after a full 9 course Chinese dinner.

The Seventh Day & A Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache

The seventh day of the Chinese New Year (CNY) is traditionally known as ren ri 人日 (meaning "Birthday of Man", "Day of Man", "Day of Humanity" or "Everyman's Birthday”).  It signifies the day when everyone grows one year older. It is the day when people in Malaysia and Singapore toss a colourful raw fish salad, yusheng, and make wishes for continued wealth and prosperity.  I remember when I was young, one eats yusheng only from the seventh day of the CNY.  These days, yusheng has become so commercialised, and profiteers will take advantage and start selling it weeks before CNY.

Anyway, as the seventh day of the CNY is "everyman’s birthday", everyone is considered one year older as of that date. In traditional China, individual birthdays were not considered as important as this date. Everyone adds a year to his age from this date rather than on his actual birthday.  Gosh, I rather defer for as long as I can.

Every year, my aunt celebrates her birthday (according to Chinese calendar) on this day.  This year, I had the good fortune of serving my homemade cakes at the family dinner (read: making everyone my guinea pigs).  I took this opportunity to experiment on 2 different layer cakes, a Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache, and a Fruity Orange Lemon Cream Cake.

Let’s start with the Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache.  No surprise here, I love this cake, although I could really improve on the aesthetics.  I wanted to decorate the cake with white chocolate rings, but they ended up looking like onions rings.  From afar, I even managed to fool everyone into thinking that there were indeed onion rings.  Seriously, I really need to hone my piping skills.

The recipe for this cake is from Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum.  The resultant cake is soft with moist tender crumbs, due to the  substitution of a little bit of oil for butter.  Yummy.  I did make a little boo boo though – I used mocha chocolate instead of the requisite unsweetened chocolate for the ganache, but no harm done, the ganache was still yummy.

Pecan Crunch Layer Cake

Following on from my last post, this is the other cake that I had baked for my mom's recent birthday.  The insurance cake (or back-up plan), as I call it.

This started off as a simple whipped cream layer cake with caramel frosting, from Nick Malgieri's Modern Baker.  Halfway when I was caramelising some sugar for the frosting, I decided to add some nutty crunch into it.  Unknowingly, I ended up with 2 different themes for the birthday cakes i.e. a fruitty cake (the berries layer cake) and this nutty cake.  Which was a good thing, as half the guests liked the nutty cake, while the other half opted for the more refreshing fruitty cake.

By the way, caramel making was not as easy as I had imagined, I had burns on my fingers, and hot cream splattered on my face !  Partly due to my own fault really, as I wasn't paying attention and was dreaming about how to make some pecan brittles for the cake.

Treasure Box

It is my nephew's 4th birthday today.  Prior to that, I had promised him that I'll make him a treasure box for his birthday. When my cousin, his mom, asked me what's a treasure box, I convincingly told her, "You'll see, it'll be a nice surprise".  She didn't look very convinced, and asked me again "Have you done it before ?", to which I replied "No worries, I've got it all sorted out".  What was I thinking ? Truth is, I had no clue. But a promise is a promise, and I was planning on keeping mine.  Days before the D-day, I still had no idea.  Luckily, I vaguely recalled an image of a cake which I had come across previously (sorry, but I can't remember where).  Phew.  Double phew :P. 

Toffee Macadamia Gateaux

My girl and I played a birthday game last evening with her new dessert set, complete with candles and all.  Our repertoir included singing the birthday song, making a wish, blowing the candles, cutting the cake and licking the icing off them :).  We started the game with our own birthdays, but then extended to include her furry friends, and each and every member of our (extended) family.  In total, we must have done about 20 birthday repertoirs before she decided she wanted to be an ice cream man.