Kids' Birthday and Welcoming Fall

I don't know where the time has gone, but it has been flying by so fast. I think the birthday season for my family just ended. It started in July (right after I got back from honeymoon) and continued to October. You see, I have two brothers and their family living nearby and that includes five nieces and nephews. All of their birthdays, their parents, their grandma, and DH's birthday are one after the other. That is seven birthdays in about two and half months!!! I've been baking up a storm and I will post them one by one, but here's a glimpse of our changing season.

Some people get really excited that Fall/Winter is coming, especially those who live in Texas because they can now get a crisp weather, but not me. I love the warm 75F weather and crisp morning everyday in California and not looking forward to have to wear jacket all the time. But I have to admit that I love seeing the change of feeling that comes with it. Pumpkins are everywhere! All different sizes and shape, colors, it is exciting. The leaves are turning from green to yellow, then red, it is pretty!

Anyways, with mostly kids birthday, I don't have many exciting cake story to tell because some of them are very similar cake, just different shape. It is funny how excited kids are over a custom-shaped birthday cake. So even when some of them might be similar cake underneath, it still never failed to impress them.

Here's a combined birthday for my nieces from early August, V and Z, they are the cutest!! The inside is blueberry sponge cake filled with cream cheese buttercream and blueberry preserve. I got the blueberry paste and preserve from my previous Indonesia trip and they smell (and taste) like candy! The theme was ship, ocean, under the sea creatures and such. I got the inspiration of the colorful waves online (I didn't save the link :( ) and I think it is very suitable for kids as they are very colorful. DH made the figurines, and although they looked a little "chubby", I think he was really creative by using the cocktail umbrella, I thought he was a genius for coming up with such an idea!
We saved the top tier for a second birthday dinner with family only.

The next birthday was Tobias' birthday. I made a cake for him every year (and for my other nieces and nephews too). He is super obsessed with cars (after Thomas the Tank Engine craze last year). His current favorites are lightning McQueen and Chick Hicks car. We decided to make the lightning mcQueen car because it is more popular, easier to decorate, and this was the original plan before he got obsessed with chick hicks a week before. As usual, DH was in charge of the carving and decorating it, he enjoys doing it and I think he is really good at it! Maybe one day we can team up and open up our custom cake bakery, haha. I was in charge of making the base cake, coloring the fondant, and drape the fondant over the cake, then it was all his.

It took us the whole weekend to do this, we were so dead tired by the end, but after seeing the birthday boy excitement over it, it was worth it. He was literally running when he got home to see the cake. The inside of the cake is "lapis surabaya" (Indonesian vanilla and chocolate cake alternating, made only/mostly with egg yolks and butter) with blueberry preserve and shredded Indonesian cheese (a classic favorite). I need to find an alternative cake for carving maybe soon or else we will all be gaining weight during this kids birthday month considering the amount of egg yolks and butter that goes into it.  Oh well, soon enough, they will be big and hopefully get over the children cakes and start appreciating French pastries :).

I have made a lot of cakes lately too and I finally made my first pumpkin pie! I will blog about it soon.

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Back to Blogging and Classic New York Style Cheesecake

Yup! Another very long break for me after almost five months of not updating this blog, but for a good reason.

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A Long Break and Fermented Cassava Balls

As you have probably noticed, I have not been updating this blog for about four months! I couldn't believe it has been that long. Many things had happened since I wrote my last post and life couldn't be busier. It doesn't seem to slow down anytime soon.

Well, as a start, I got engaged! We got engaged mid January after coming back from vacation. With M being in Korea for business trip most of the time, it is really hard to plan. We are planning to wed this July in Bali, mostly due to practical reason since my family is there and we are having a reunion too for my family at that time, but Bali is also very pretty! Other than my wedding, I am also planning my parents' 50th wedding anniversary just two weeks before my wedding. Crazy!

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Lemon Frenzy: Cheese Cake Citronné (two ways) and Assorted Lemon Tarts

First off, Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year! Whatever you did, I hope that you had a great time with friends and family and for those of you who had a Christmas break, I hope you had a nice one.

I wrote this post just before I left for my vacation, hoping that I could post one last one to wish you a happy holiday, but I was missing a few pictures and so I had to postpone it. I had a really great vacation despite being sick for half of it. I had 2 week-long vacation and I was sick for a week. I noticed that I have been sick on Christmas holiday every year, at least 3 years in a row, this is a little odd. When visiting M's family, most of us were sick, and so we spent the holiday in bed with M's mom running around to take care of us. I feel bad.

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Winter Cleaning Part III: Chocolate-Coffee-Rum Entremet

It feels like it has been a while that this blog doesn't get updated. A little update here, I was on a baking frenzy the week before Thanksgiving, mostly making tons of lemon tarts and multiple Ambroisie and some other baked goods for office fundraising benefiting Canned Food Drive. Then I was gone for a week visiting Mike's family for Thanksgiving and for his nephew's birthday. It felt a bit weird not running around trying to catch up with time, but I got used to it very easily and thus making the day so much longer than usual :). I was back last week and took a week of break from baking and I am back in the kitchen now, at least for the next two weeks before the next trip. In the meantime, trying to finish office work as much as I can before my Christmas break.

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Apricot and Matcha Tiramisu

 Today is probably the first time I felt that Fall is here. It was a cool crisp morning with a little sunshine when I went to work today. Leaves are falling and the wind would blow them everywhere. Ah, this makes me crave for warm soups and the warm smell of cinnamon and winter spices. Nothing much is happening lately, my routine has been work, go home, cook, watch a few episode of Futurama, then fell asleep on the last episode. I did manage to make a couple different desserts last weekend though.

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Nathaniel's Birthday Part II: Roasted Banana and Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cake

 I just got back from a weekend trip for a friend's wedding, and now I come back with a flu. I guess it is the season and I always refuse to get a flu-shot because I am afraid that I will get sick from the shot. The weather has not been friendly either, it is still cold and pretty gloomy here in norcal, with some sunshine in the late afternoon. Fall is definitely setting in.

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Nathaniel's 10th Birthday Part I and Winter Cleaning Part II

Weather has not been normal lately. It is that time of the year when the transition happens from Summer to Fall. The temperature has been going up and down lately. It was beautiful sunny 80s last week and it was cold and rainy 55 today and will stay that way for a few days.

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Toby's 3rd Birthday Part II, Thomas The Tank Engine Birthday Cake

As I mentioned before, my nephews' and nieces' birthdays are generally celebrated twice, and Toby's birthday this year was no exception. We combined his big birthday celebration with his older brother's birthday, Nathaniel (their birthdays are exactly one week apart). I had to make two different cakes though for each one of them.

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Winter Cleaning and Toby's 3rd Birthday Part 1, Raspberry Pistachio Mousse Cake

I have been very busy with cakes ever since I got back from my Asia trip. I might not have posted enough to show that but I have tons of backlogs to post.
July to October will always be my busy month every year though. It is when most of my family here have their birthdays on. It was my little nephew's birthday a few weeks ago and the thing with my nieces' and nephews' birthdays, they always get celebrated twice, one with the Sunday School friends, and the other one with the family and adult friends, making my baking schedule twice as busier.

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