Della's Birthday and Some Chocolate Cake

Apology for the rather long break on posting, I was out of town for the past two weekends. I had a chance to go to Napa two weeks ago with a few girls, it was a beautiful day, a bit chilly still but quite warm under the sun. It was nice to get away from everything, from work, from chores at home, from baking, from everything and just enjoying the view. Fortunately, we are all foodies, so it was only natural that food was one of the highlights of the day, lunch, dessert, ice cream, dinner, wine, it was all good.

Updates and Lady Bug Cake

It feels like forever I went MIA. I can't believe I missed the whole month of May! I apologize if it seems like I've abandon you guys but things have finally settle down now. Thanks for the emails asking if I was okay, I really appreciate it *hugs

I had to make wedding favors before I left, it wasn't too fancy or anything just cat's tongue cookies, all 1500 of them! ahahaha... I was up all night for a week trying to bake batch after batch, packaged and tied them up. It was finally done at midnight before my departure :), so thank God. And I was so glad to hear that the bride and groom really enjoyed the cookies, yay! I guess all those long hours and sleepless nights really do paid off when people love the things you made :). I thought I took pictures of it but now I can't seem to find it :(

The day after the wedding favor is done, I went on a vacation for a week on early May to NY (yes, it was a while ago) and work was super hectic before I left and right after I came back (that always happens, doesn't it?). I came back with a severe windburn from NYC, which I got on the first day on my vacation :(. It finally healed up a week after I got back from my vacation, but never again I go out of the house sun or no sun without sunblock everywhere, it was a painful experience :(. But other than that, everything was great, we ate constantly, visited many bakeries, and we certainly walk A LOT. The first 4 days in NY wasn't very nice, it was so cold, rainy, windy, so not a good weather to stroll around, but it got better on the last day we stayed so we took the oppotunity to bike around the Central Park. We also went to DC to visit the National Mall, fortunately it was a good day in DC, warm and sunny and we did bike around the monuments. I will post pictures later after I got to it :)

It was kinda nice having a week off of everything, no work, no baking, no nothing for a week, although I have to confess that I did check my work email for the first three days but then I finally resisted :). After I got back, I was bombarded with super busy workload at work, and event after event, cakes and more cakes. Last weekend was actually the last weekend of this craziness. I said to myself, no more of this! I will share some of those events in a later post and hopefully, I am now back to my "normal" life.

Right now, this post is only for updates, to let you know that I'm still alive and baking and also to share this lady bug cake. This cake is for a little girl Olivia who celebrated her 2nd birthday at the end of May. The theme of the party is lady bug and her mom sent me a picture of the utensils they're using, so I based the decoration off of that. Truth be told, I'm never comfortable making kid's cakes, or buttercream cakes, or large cakes, and this cake is a combination of those three. Mainly because I'm not good at it, kids' cake needs to be colorful and bright with lots of decor, my buttercream skill is poor and I can't make a perfectly smooth buttercream cake, combined with a large surface area, let's just say I don't have as much confidence as I do in any other cakes I made. But why did I say yes anyway? Well first, I suck at saying no to people, second, their family has been asking me to make cakes for Olivia's 1st birthday and another birthday that it would be in appropriate to say no this time, no matter how uncomfortable it is for me to make it, but at least I tried to make the cake taste good :).

The flavor for this cake is raspberry and chocolate, with vanilla and chocolate sponge cake alternating. Making the cake base is not that difficult, just took a lot of time since it's big in size, 1/2 sheet, 12x18" and I only have one cake pan in that size, meaning that I had to make it three different times. That's the easy part, now the filling is raspberry white chocolate and cream cheese frosting with dark chocolate ganache, then it's covered with pink buttercream. Everything went well up until the raspberry cream cheese frosting, but then disasters happened. I blamed it on the long hours at work everyday that week that made me exhausted when I finally had the time at 9pm to start working on the cake. I basically did this cake for a few days every night and early morning, so you can imagine how tired I was :(.

But yeah, when it was the time for me to make the ganache, I calculated everything in my head, although I probably shouldn't do that passed 10pm. That's when my brain just shuts down and refuse to work anymore. I guess the brain and the body demanded its rest when I was calculating the amount of chocolate versus heavy cream to make the ganache. The resulting ganache came out really runny and even after I refrigerated for 30minutes, it didn't improve (it was 1am at that time). So I pour the ganache onto the cake anyway, thinking that the large rectangular cake ring will hold it up, but little did I know that my cake ring failed on me for the first time. The ganache seeped in through every possible way and making its way out from the bottom of the cake ring. It was a nightmare, I tell ya. I almost cried and gave up, but then I would imagine Olivia will have no cake for her birthday, so I manned up (or womanned-up?) and continue. I wiped the ganache off of the table, cleaned up the floor where the ganache dripped, everything in the middle of the night and went to bed. The next day, I bought more ingredients to make ganache from the start, this time I knew what I did wrong the night before, I miscalculated the chocolate needed!

The cake was finally done and what a huge relief! and this cake weighed A TON! seriously, it was so hard for me to lift it up by myself. I told myself not to do kids' cake or probably large sheet cake anymore with the exception of my nieces' and nephew's cake probably, but it wont be sheet cake or buttercream cake for sure :).

ps: sorry for the lousy pictures, it's all I got :(

Spring-Inspired Birthday Cake for Two!

Yes, I am still on a Spring fever just in case you're wondering :). It was only natural when two people had their birthday on the same exact day, one is my brother, and the other one is one of my friends, S, I immediately thought of a Spring cake! The gorgeous weather we've had for 2 weeks (it's back to rain and cold now) is also worth a celebration in a form of a cake.

The birthday fell on last Wednesday, and yes they both were born at the same day, which is an advantage for me really so that I don't have to make two cakes :). Well honestly, the Spring theme wasn't the first that came in my mind at first. It was so hard finding a design that fits both guy and girl, I wanted something natural and since I was so in the mood of the warm weather, I decided to once again go for the Spring theme! It is a bit weird that I used to dislike green color, one of the least favorite color, but now it is definitely one of my favorites. Same thing with polkadot, I used to hate it so much (yes, hate) but now I think they're really cute and I'm loving them! It's interesting how preference change by age :).

Anyways, I probably didn't do a really good job covering the cake with fondant, especially the top tier. My excuse? well, it was on weekday, it was late at night and I was super tired, bla bla bla.... but bottom line is, I didn't do a good job with the covering :(. The butterfly was made from royal icing that I've already had (make my life a lot easier) and so was the bee. It is a very very simple design, but I love it! The finished cake looks somewhat girly still, probably it's because of the pink flowers, but I don't mind (and I hope the birthday boy didn't either :D)

We brought the cake to the restaurant and it is so sad to think that the cake was destroyed (read:cut) in a matter of minutes after 6-8 hours of work, but I guess that's the way it works, unless I want to preserve it forever :). This is gonna be a short post since I'm exhausted with too many events at the moment. It is exciting and exhausting at the same time.

You know what, come to think of it, I made a similar birthday cake for them last year here. It was a cherry blossom theme which was so much inspired by the Spring weather. I guess I'm that predictable, huh? and they will just have to live with Spring cake every year then :). I mean who would not be excited to finally wear sandals and shorts outside? Certainly not me :). I will post the picture of them both later here, they looked almost like a twin :)

Fromage Fraise

It is officially Spring!!! The weather has been gorgeous the whole entire week last week, too bad I'm stuck in an office on weekday, but I did manage to get a few sunlight on my skin when I had lunch outside for a few times last week. I wish the weather could stay this way and never change :D. Other than that, I was super busy too, you can probably tell that I didn't update this blog for two weeks now. Work has been busy, there are a few gatherings and also I got to watch "Wicked", the broadway show! It was my first time for me watching that kind of show and I was so excited! The show we chose was on Thursday night, there were so much things happening that day that I didn't think we're gonna make it to San Francisco on time for the show. But thank God, we arrived exactly at 8:02, while the show is supposed to start at 8pm. It was warm too at night at SF, very rare occasion if you know the weather in SF.

For the whole week, I couldn't wait for the weekend to arrive so that I could catch up on my sleep, which I proved on Saturday when I woke up at 10am! This was the first time in so long that I woke up this late, especially on Saturday. It was a lazy Saturday, I did not make any plans on going out, I was planning to catch up on my errands too. It seems like a few months is too long to postpone stuff :D. I was determined to do a Spring cleaning for my freezer and my fridge. The refrigerator at our house has always been so full that it would be a challenge to organize the groceries almost everytime. So there I was making a cake as a result of the freezer Spring cleaning process. More on this on the next post.

For today, I'm just going to talk about this simple cake. The name might sound complicated for you but it's only a fancy name for cheese mousse with red berry gelee, topped with a bunch of fresh strawberries and cream. It was Saturday afternoon when my friend, D, called me up and asked if I would be able to make a cake for her coworker's birthday on Monday, and it needs to be ready on Sunday morning, because that's the only time I would get to see her to give her the cake. Hmm... as much as I don't like last minute thing, and as much as I advised her to get a cake from a bakery, I couldn't stand firm due to her sweet talk :D, I guess I don't have much ground to begin with :). So I agreed, and that I couldn't make the particular cake she asked for and I suggested her this cake instead. The reason? well, because I think it's simpler and I think I could manage it in a day, because I have frozen berries from last summer, and because I have been wanting to try this (the last reason might weigh more than the others :P), but she did say that it has to be some berry-type cake. So, I did grant her wish.

I used cotton sponge that I have on hand because I didn't want to or I didn't have time to make a sponge cake. In the future though, I don't think I would use cotton cake as it it too light for this kind of cake. And since I was on a Spring-cleaning madness, I was happy that a few more things are gone from my fridge :). I had some frozen raspberries and strawberries as well, a quick trip to Trader Joe's and Lucky for heavy cream, cream cheese, and a few other things, and I was ready to go to make the cake. I couldn't help to squeeze in an afternoon nap in between as it seemed to be a perfect quiet afternoon.

This cake has an 8" round cake as a base (moistened with Grand Marnier), pate-a-bombe base cheese mousse, a mixture of raspberry and strawberry gelee in the middle of the mousse, 6" sponge cake, covered in Grand Marnier whipped cream, and strawberries. It smelled so good when I pureed the raspberries and strawberries, they are really sweet, frozen when they were at their peak last summer, oh the smell of Spring. I got excited just by inhaling the fragrance of it. There were no mishaps in making the cake other than that I wasn't really satisfied about the overall look of the cake, it might be the white chocolate, I don't know. The pictures are poor, but I guess I'm lucky to still have a picture at all as I was rushing this morning. I think this cake is a perfect Spring/Summer cake as berries are plenty and succulent and not to mention the lightness of it, nothing close of being too sweet. Too bad I don't get to see the inside of it as this wasn't for me.

Speaking of berries, I saw the first harvest of strawberries today at the farmers' market. Usually, the first pick doesn't taste as sweet as I'd like it to be, but surprisingly, the one that I sampled today was very sweet. The color was vibrant (no orange, green, or white tip), tastes very sweet, and the texture is firm. Too bad I bought a case of strawberries the day before at the supermarket already for this cake, which left me feeling heart-broken seeing not-so-ripe strawberries being sold. It was a relaxing Sunday, I was torn between spending the day outside in this gorgeous weather, up and awake in the kitchen, or just take an afternoon nap. Yup, you guess right, I chose the last option. It was a very quite, warm Sunday and I was just too weak to resist.

Happy Spring everyone! Cannot wait to see what everybody makes to welcome the warm weather :)

Hachiko Turns 2!!!

Who's Hachiko? It's the name of my brother's dog. Yes, a dog. Remember this post? She turns two last Tuesday!! which is 14 years old in human years. You might wonder, what's the huss and fuss about a dog's birthday? well, truth be told, so do I :D. They said last year (my brother and my SIL) that this is ONLY for her first birthday and that's it, no more celebration after that, but guess what? I guess they can't help it :). It's probably another excuse for us to have a fun gathering in a weekday, and a cake of course!!! Hachiko is a really sweet dog, she's really cute, smart, curious, and she likes to pretend to be brave :), no wonder we love him so much.

Can't you tell that I'm in a spring mood lately? The lemon tart, the pink cake, and this yellow-green cake! I am definitely excited for Spring to come! Although we still haven't had the perfect spring weather yet, but we're starting to see more sunshine, the day is noticeably longer, daylight saving time begin next week . I picked the yellow and green theme on purpose too, for spring theme! I also thought it would make the cake looks brighter and more cute :). I think this design would be great for little kids' birthday too with probably a little kid figurine as well.

I was planning on making a simple cake, nothing complicated since again, this is for a dog, it falls on Tuesday, I only have Monday early morning and night after work to make it. At first, fondant seems to be impossible considering the time, but last weekend, a bunch of us girls were trying our hands on making Hachi figurine, while the guys are watching a movie in the living room (what a bunch of slackers :D). So, after all the time spent making the figurine, it was only appropriate to make a fondant cake, a 6" round probably, but then I thought it won't be enough to feed about 15 people. So, change of plan, I made 8" sponge base and the buttercream on Monday morning and trying to get off work as early as I can in the evening and start assembling, fill and frost, fondant, etc until it finished at midnight. It is a big cake, and probably too much for a dog (size and decoration-wise), but why not as well make it better if we can do it with a little extra effort, right?

We had lots of fun enjoying Hachi's cake, and a really yummy meal made by our beloved friends. Special thanks to Nana, Marlene, and Annette, Della, and Irene for helping out with the hachi figurine, alf-looking and bear-looking dog figurines. And no, the sheep and the mummy figurines don't belong in this cake guys, that would be for some other cake in the future :). We also watched movie "Hachiko-a dog story", a very sad story about a faithful dog, that's where my brother's dog's name came from. The DVD came out yesterday, the same exact day on Hachi's birthday! What a nice coincidence! Most of the girls were tearing up watching the movie, the guys were probably just pretending to be strong and make excuses to go to the restroom and go upstairs :D.

Hachiko and the proud parents

Surprise!!!

Pink Stripy Cake

My friend, D, had just undergone lasik procedure and I couldn't have possibly imagined if I were her. Fortunately, my eyes have always been good. I can see pretty normally in the day, I just need to wear my glasses at night, when driving, or when I'm outside, basically my vision at night is not as good as in the daytime. While she is okay now, I decided to make her a get-well-soon cake on last Saturday to make her fell better since it wasn't so busy that Saturday afternoon either. Other than that, I was also planning on make a mini or individual cake for my friend L whose birthday falls today on Monday. Just for fun, or maybe because I have been craving some cake for a while, I was also planning on making Indonesian cheese roll cake, so much planning in one day, eh? I always try to make my Saturday really productive and try to make as many baking done as possible as this is the only day I can do this. But little did I know that something unexpected or unplanned could be happening.

When I was preheating my oven to bake my roll cake, I smell something funny coming from the oven. It turned out that there is an acetate sheet in the corner of my oven and it has been transformed to a gooey liquidy mess. Since the temperature of the oven is ready, and the batter was also ready, I had no choice other than just sticking the pan inside the oven and hope that the melted acetate doesn't get worse. I worried so much and I became impatient of the baking time. I guess the cake wasn't completely done when I took it out because when I attempted to roll it, it breaks. Frustrated, I just cut the broken sheet of roll cake using 3" cake ring to make two individual cakes for D and L, killing two birds with one shot :). Plus, I think they will love it more if it's Indonesian cheese layer cake instead of some sort of French/American cake (trust me, it never gets old in my circle of friends :D)

So, after cleaning up the oven by removing the base of it and trying to get the melted acetate off completely, I began to decorate the individual cakes. Ever since I owned Peggy Porschen's book a while ago, I immediately fell in love with her design for her stripy cake. It was so beautiful and neatly done. I've been trying to find the perfect occasion for more than a year to replicate it, but it's either than the occasion was never suited this kind of design, or I that I didn't have the confidence to make it, until last weekend.

What I didn't know is that decorating mini cakes is a lot more difficult than decorating a big cake, at least for me. I think it took me longer to finish these two mini cakes compared to decorating a 6" or 8" cake. The fondant is harder to smooth out on the edges since the surface area is smaller, etc. Peggy uses royal icing to pipe the lines, but I decided to use fondant instead, knowing that I wouldn't be able to pipe that straight of a line. This was also the perfect time for me to try out the clay gun I have been having for a few months now.

In the end, it turned out okay, I was pretty pleased, although the stripe could have been closer, that's my only regret. I put each cake inside a mini white box with window on top and most importantly, D and L were so happy to receive it, and that's the most important thing :). I still want to make probably an 6" version next time and this time, I'll be sure to put the stripe closer together :).

Black Raspberry, White Peach Jelly and Mascarpone Mousse Cake

This is the third cake in a row last week, out of four (not counting the mini cakes). I almost officially feel like I want to take a break from baking for a week, but of course that'll never happen. There are so many delicious things to try and since time is very precious to me, I won't be wasting it :).

To be honest, I was completely exhausted before starting this cake but there's no way that I would buy a cake for Lawrence, one of our close co-worker friends :). Not having the time to do a full shopping, I tried to use what I had at home. Besides, I almost always have heavy cream, assorted frozen fruits purees, different type of chocolates, gelatin, eggs readily available at home, so I'm good. I had some white peach puree that I froze last summer and also a little frozen black raspberry left in the bag. Remember my depression when I found that Trader Joe's no longer had black raspberry? I was completely devastated, and I saved the last half-full bag in the freezer until now. I figured that sooner or later, it had to be used, it can't stay in the ferezer forever. I did some research and there is two or three farms that sells them frozen, the problem is just that I have to buy it in bulk quantity and there's no way I could use up 10lbs of black raspberry by myself.

Okay, back to the cake. I baked vanilla bean cotton sponge cake and layered it with white peach gelee, black raspberry gelee, and mascarpone mousse. I didn't have enough puree for the black raspberry jelly and I had to add a little red raspberry puree to it. The taste of the white peach is barely noticeable, the subtle taste was completely overpowered by the other flavors. So I probably won't be using it in mousse or jelly form in the future, as a cut-up fruit inside of the cake might be nice. I was using my 8" square cake ring for the first time. It was a little too short, only 2" high, so the cake looked short (or was short). I was going to trim all four edges so that it showed the different layers, but I cancelled that idea since it will make the cake smaller considering the short height. I was completely blank for the decor, I think I came up with this super simple decor about 20 minutes before I had to leave for work.

Although I wasn't too happy with the decor, the most important thing is that everybody loved the cake!! It was indeed a very light cake, far from fulfilling. We are all Asians afterall, so we have the same taste in cake, not too sweet, light as feather, and refreshing :D

More Tiramisu

Just when the world doesn't need another tiramisu post, here I present you with two tiramisu. They're similar in design but for two different occasions. The mould is yet another collection of mine that I haven't got a chance to use. The design is also similar to the previous tiramisu here, except that this one is square instead of round. Since I think I made enough tiramisu already, this one is gonna be a short post. I just want to share this new look of tiramisu with you :)

These two tiramisu's are for different birthdays. One is for my coworker and the other one is for another coworker's girlfriend. The size is pretty small, about 4x8", enough for 6 people I think. I still like to use gold dragees to decorate the top, and I think I will be using them for my tiramisu :). I don't know which design I like better, the first or the second one. I think the first one is neater, although I used chocolate fence+ribbon combination pretty often already. The second one is simpler. Hmm..... decision decision.....

Anyways, since this is gonna be a short post, I'll just leave it at that. I hope you enjoy the pics. Have a blessed week everyone!

Strawberry and Pistachio Mousse Cake

This cake followed a few days after the previous cake, which was for another friend's birthday, Annette. This was one of those time that I had no clue of what cake I would make. I guess all my energy was spent on thinking the different components of the previous passion fruit cake :D. I just bought heavy cream on Friday night after work thinking that 99% chance I will need it for whatever it is I will decide to make the day after.

I was hoping that I could use some of the precious stuff I had in the freezer so that I won't have to buy something. I still have a large ziploc bag full of very ripe summer strawberries that I kept since summer and since summer this year is only a few months away, I decided to put them to use. The cake consists of two layer of sponge cake (already available), strawberry mousse for the bottom layer, a layer of cream cheese mousse layer hidden inside the strawberry mousse, and pistachio mousse for the top layer. I made strawberry gelee for the top layer too to brighten the color. The kitchen smells really good when I cut up the strawberries and pureed it, I felt like summer already. And the strawberry tasted exactly just when I bought it in summer, very ripe, juicy, tasty and sweet. The pistachio mousse itself was from pistachio mousseline that I lightened up with some whipped cream and I added more pistachio paste to it.

The end result looked a bit too tall for me, especially for 8" round cake that's not too big. I think the decoration for this cake is very different than my other cakes. I usually like simple, elegant decor, but surprisingly this time, it turned out so bright and cheerful, hahaha.... I did decide to put some red ribbon to match the red gelee and the strawberries on top, making it look even brighter :D. Oh well, in this middle of winter, we all can use some bright color to brighten up our life, don't we? :) Have a blessed week everyone!

Tropical Gateaway in A Cake: Passion Fruit and White Chocolate Mousse, Mango, and Raspberry Jelly Cake

It has been pouring down hard and heavy these past couple of weeks in California, San Jose to be exact. It seems like there are five storms passing with heavy rain one after another (so I've heard). I think this is the longest rain I have ever seen in this area for the past eight years if I remember correctly, when I moved here. I have never liked cloudy, rainy weather. Weather affects your mood, well, at least for me :). While on the other hand, I'm all about sunny warm weather. Sun makes me happy (not scorching hot though) and excited. But fortunately (or is it?), I'm inside an office building with a stable temperature everyday, so the rain doesn't really affect me all that much, except when I'm going out to lunch, weekend, and when I got home from work of course. Believe it or not, I woke up earlier than usual when it rains at night. The sound of the rain hitting the window next to my bed easily wakes me up bright and early in the morning (in this case, dark and early :D).

Anyways, the bad weather makes me longing for something summery, or maybe tropical. Although it wasn't too long ago that summer had passed, but I already miss the smell and taste of berries, cherries, peaches, mangoes, ... It also happened to be San San's birthday last Wednesday. Although weekday birthday is never good for me (if I'm making the cake), but I tried my best to plan my schedule accordingly. I had also been wanting to lay my hands on passion fruit, in terms of creating something with this tropical and exotic fruit. Back in Indonesia, we can easily find this fruit at the grocery store, but it was a pain to eat or to extract the juice, so I didn't really care so much about it, but that was before I started making cakes. I couldn't even cook rice in a rice cooker at that time (can you believe that?)! Now that I'm into cakes and desserts, passion fruit has been one of my most-wanted items :D and I was so excited that I found a baking supply warehouse near San Fransisco and they also sell to individuals! They do carry passion fruit puree as well as tons of many other stuff, so I got that a week before the bday.

It only seems appropriate to match passion fruit with mango, and raspberry was also came to mind. Mostly because they have floral-y or tropical smell that I think compliments each other a lot. I also paired it with white chocolate mousse to balance out the flavor and two layers of almond joconde that have been brushed with Grand Marnier as the base. It might look like too many things going on in one cake, but I love texture and complex flavor combination, although at that point I really don't know how well it will turn out.

I was pretty surprised to find out that the passion fruit puree was really sour and very liquid-y in terms of texture, almost like water although not as much. I have never used passion fruit in any of my baking before so I didn't know what to expect. I put LOTS of sugar to sweeten the puree but it seems like no matter how much I added, it was never enough and I didn't want to add more to it as it was almost the same amount of the puree itself. I had so many difficulties making the mousse as the mixture was so thin (before the gelatin sets) and the mousse was leaking from under the cake ring. After much frustration, remade the mousse to made up the lost amount and put it in the freezer to set, I went to sleep as it was already late.

The big cake for birthday

As predicted, the mousse was on the tart side, a little to tart for my taste in fact. The mango wasn't helping either as it wasn't sweet enough, which is expected I guess since it's not the season for it yet. Good thing the birthday girl likes tart stuff, but it might be too much for some of my friends :D. The gelatin wasn't quite enough to set the mousse as it was a little too soft. So, I put white chocolate fence and a ribbon around it to hold the mousse. At that point, it didn't look too bad, in fact, I think the white chocolate and the green ribbon added another dimension to the tropical theme :D. My friends were all agree that the cake was tart overall. I guess, it wasn't an ultimate success, but hey experiments don't always turn out so perfect, do they :D? I definitely want to play more with passion fruit and still curious with it, somewhere along passion fruit chiffon, or mix it with white chocolate ganache for macaron filling, somewhere along that line and I can't wait to have the ultimate passion fruit cake/dessert!

I brought the mini cakes to work and let my coworkers tried it and surprisingly, they liked it! The textured firmed up a little more and I guess the flavor blend in more after a few days.

I don't have the picture of the inside of the cake, but I left one cake "undecorated" so you can see the layers that made up the mini cakes. There's white chocolate mousse layer in the middle of the passion fruit mousse, you can probably see it from the white streaks in the picture below.

Another Year, Another Tiramisu

This is the first tiramisu of the year. Although it wasn't too long ago that I made Baileys tiramisu, but oh well, it's another year and tiramisu is a perfect start to a new year.

This was actually a request from a friend for a birthday, so I had no choice and I didn't get to argue or persuade her to request something else :). I guess I do enjoy making tiramisu as it is easy to make, tastes good, and make the house smells like coffee and rum, hmm....

The cake in the picture here was actually made with leftover tiramisu cream from the big cake. I didn't get to take a picture of the big cake because it was so... last minute. The person was almost arrived at my house before the cake was done. Good thing it finished just in the nick of time that she didn't have to wait and watch me decorate it, that would be a nightmare in any way. So yeah, too bad although it was not that special, it's still square, brown colored, chocolate fence, ribbon, gold dragees, textured sheet cake, but I would really like to remember what I made a few years from now :)

But at least I got this picture here. I had some leftover cream and there's no way that it was going to waste. Worst case, I probably going to freeze it, but fortunately, I had some chocolate sponge cake that I then drenched it in the coffee-rum mixture and I had been dying to try one of my newest baking tool collections :D. I used what's called cake transfer sheet. It is basically a textured mold made from clear plastic, about 1.5" high. I did have some difficulties unmolding it after taking it out from the freezer (I have to freeze it before unmolding), but it works great afterall. I used the leftover chocolate squares from the big cake. I used my arabesques chocolate textured-sheet for this one. I'm starting to really like putting gold dragees on top of tiramisu. I think it makes the cake looks elegant :D, but it's just me though :)

Ferrero Rocher Cake

I know it's way too late but I want to wish everybody a belated Christmas and Happy New Year. It's better late than never :). Unfortunately, to be honest, I didn't have a great holiday break this time as I was really sick and literally stuck in bed for the whole three days. I could walk around a little for the next three days, but still need to sit and rest frequently. I was kinda disappointed being sick for a week during the holiday, my plans got thrown away, even the plan to clean the kitchen, my room, and my car, wasn't really come to reality. Making them even worse maybe, especially the room. But I guess it's better rather than being sick on workweek? I dunno, bottom line is, it sucks being sick, really and I mean it. So, please don't ever get sick, if possible :).

Other than that, I spent the rest of my holiday just eat, eat, and more eating. Seriously, I don't think it's possible for a human to be sick of eating but I kinda did. We ate crabs three times in less than two weeks, we talked about lunch tomorrow when we haven't even started with the dinner tonight. But in the midst of all that, I'm still thankful for everything, all the food, the friends, the companionship. I'm back to normal now, my normal appetite and the craziness of this life :).

Before I got sick, I got the chance to cook up a Christmas Eve dinner with a bunch of close friends. I REALLY wanted to make it special and over-the-top but unfortunately, things will never go as planned when you're in a hurry. The planning was last-minute as we had a birthday celebration a few days before, so my mind was taken up to think about the cake more rather than the Christmas Eve dinner. Plus, I was still working until Dec 23rd evening, not even going home early, so that's not really helping. But that's not the most important thing, is it? As long as you have friends and family with you, that's all that matters :).

Now, let's talk about the birthday or the cake to be precise :D. I knew all along that this time, it would be chocolate cake, or something similar, not fruit-flavored. Nothing against it as he likes it anyway, but he's more of a chocolate lover, not really chocoholic, but there's no doubt that he likes his chocolate. He craves it once in a while. For some reason, all I can think about at that time was a ferrero-rocher-inspired cake. I've been dying to recreate the flavor and the texture of ferrero rocher chocolate into cake form. I've been scribbling down notes for ideas of what the components should be. I want taste as close as the real thing as a lot of texture for sure. The real Ferrero Rocher chocolate is composed mainly of milk chocolate and hazelnut flavor. It is a little too sweet for me so I decided to use both dark chocolate and milk chocolate in the cake as to cut the sweetness.

After much thinking with the options of the components and the ingredients that are available without having to online order it, I decided on something finally. The hardest part was to determine what would I use for the crunchy layer of the ferrero rocher chocolate in this cake. So lo and behold! This cake has two layers of chocolate sponge cake brushed with brandy, chocolate-hazelnut praline (made with rice krispies), toasted halved hazelnut, chocolate-hazelnut mousse, valrhona cruncy pearl, milk chocolate cream, and finally dark chocolate glaze. Phew! This cake was all about texture! There's no doubt that there was plenty of crunch and crackling sound with every bite of this cake and I absolutely love it! I actually made a hazelnut dacquoise base but ended up throwing it away as it was way too sweet even after I cut the sugar down by half. So I had to use two layers of choc. sponge instead of dacquoise and choc sponge.

What I was so happy about in this cake, is the praline. I was about to go buy some feuillantine online, but I didn't want to spend the shipping just for it, plus there was not enough time. So, I used rice krispies instead and it works wonders! This was also the first time I used valrhona crunchy pearl, and despite the high price, I love the texture it gives to the cake. And the last thing, I was completely happy with the chocolate glaze. I have been looking for a recipe for a shiny mirror-like chocolate glaze, not the ganache type as the color becomes dull after being refrigerated. I used lots and lots of Valrhona cocoa powder to make this and it gives the glaze a dark and deep taste as well as the color. What I like so much about it too is that it doesn't taste powdery at all. My only regret for this cake is that I didn't have edible good leaf to put on top of the cake. I would imagine it would look a lot better with it instead of a piece of hazelnut :(. And with no doubt, this cake ranks the highest immediately among my friends. Even until now, this cake was still mentioned at birthday celebration, and that means a success!

I had to make this cake again a few days after the bday for the Christmas party dessert by request. I used almond joconde to replace one of the sponge layer and I like it even better. I think the second cake looked kinda plain, but my friend was dead-set against me putting something on top of the cake as they said that "it will ruin the smooth and shininess of the glaze", LOL! I still wish that I had some gold leaf though :(

I quickly wrote down the amount of each ingredients I used to make the cake on the paper so that I won't forget it like the way I used to do, but... sad but true, I lost the paper!!! I got sick just a few days after making this cake and when I got better and was about to type it up, I couldn't find it, even until now :(. I guess this only means one thing, and yes you guess right, I just have to make it again! :D

Oh, here's a picture of the inside of the cake. It looks messy after being butchered but at least you get the idea of the different layers that go into this cake