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.

A Display Cake, Wedding Cakes, and Favors for M&J's Wedding!

It has been a while since the last blog post, and I surely didn't do enough of a good job keeping up with the blog updates :(. Holiday season is crazily busy for most of us, holiday shopping, holiday baking, family members visiting, etc.

Good thing for me, that me and my family has never been big on Christmas gifts, it was never a tradition for us to exchange gifts, but I did try to at least bake some Christmas goodies to give for friends. Last year, it was extremely last minute, I baked some stuff the night before the last day of work to distribute to some coworkers. Then, I promised myself to plan better next year (which is this year) and bake lots of different goodies, I've already had a list of what I want to make and believe me, there are tons and they're all sounds so good! Now that "next year" is finally here, here I am being in the same situation as last year, if not worse. It's only days before Christmas and here I am typing a small part of this draft post on Sunday at work in between firmware builds, so sad I know.

Anyways, back to what this post is all about, I must have mentioned about working on a wedding project a few times now and this is it!
It doesn't feel like too long ago I made this bridal shower cake, and now they're husband and wife!

When M asked me if I would be willing to make her wedding cake (and favor later on), I immediately said yes. Not because it's a challenge (this would be my second time), but how can I say no when it's your good friend who's getting married? This is the least thing I can do to show how happy and excited I am about their marriage.

The word "Wedding" never comes easy. Everything that has that word in it has to be big and special, and unfortunately that also means stress and a lot of work for many people too. As usual, I prepared a giant spreadsheet containing very detail budgeting information, which online store I should ordered from, every single item I need to buy from 10 different stores, details as for how many servings, decorating details, recipe conversion for each size of pan I used, timetable, you name it, heck it has 6 huge different tabs. It took me about a month getting everything together and even during the last week, I'm still updating the spreadsheet every single day.

I asked M from the beginning if she's ok with having display cake and having the real cake in the back, not for budget reason though because having it this way is more expensive, but it serves a couple of advantages:
- I don't have to worry about transporting four-tiered cake to the reception
- No need to worry about refrigeration or the cake being unrefrigerated for hours
- You can be creative about the decor as it is more sturdy (although in my case, it's just a simple decor)
- The last reason which is the most important one for me is that you can be creative with the actual wedding cake and you don't have to be limited to buttercream cake!

The cons are that it's more expensive more labor-intensive, which is something I always try to avoid whenever I make cake, but this time, it's special. I decided to make two flavors on the actual wedding cake, chocolate-hazelnut (a.k.a Ferrero Rocher cake) for the chocolate lovers and white chocolate raspberry cake for the fruit lover. It might sound like a disaster waiting to happen when you're trying to serve individual cake to 200 people, and you can never please anyone, but I can't help it.

The display cake is very simple-decorated, I'm very fortunate that M is a very laid-back person, she's not picky, she's basically ok with everything as long as it won't add more work on my plate. She picked a design based on a magazine we saw and I think it was pretty easy to execute, I just have to match the color and add some flowers to match the theme of the wedding. She didn't request anything for the cake and favors (except for the budget of course), but she left all the flavors, and every single detail up to me, which makes it easier on my end. The hardest part was to constraint every single expense so that it would fall under the budget (or at least close). I wouldn't have so many problems if it's just a buttercream cake but since I wanted a nice (and complicated) cake, most of the ingredients are special-orderred, so it was quite a challenge.

The three goodies for the wedding

The last week of the wedding was insane, intense baking for 7 days, day and night, constant dish-washing, it was hard to imagine that I actually went through all those. Making multiple desserts for large scale in a home kitchen (a messy one at that too) is quite a difficult task. My mom and brother were coming in that week too from Indonesia, busy work week as usual, it was crazy! I think my biggest problem was not having enough refrigeration space for all those cakes and desserts! I really wished I had at least two very large fridge and freezer that can fit multiple half-sheet pans!

The favor: Macaron with rose buttercream and lychee filling

The favor was purple macaron that I brushed silver streak on with rose buttercream filling and lychee center. I finally got some help to fill the macarons and put them in each favor box, thanks A and S! I bought a new silpat mat for this (I used to have only one) but for some reason, every batch of macarons that I baked them on, it always failed, always, and it drove me mad especially when it happened three batches in a row in the middle of the night, and you still have more than 100 macarons to make. All you wanted to do was cry, I almost gave up for quite a number of time to be honest.

The assembly line

Fortunately, everything went very well, everything was done on time. There were some minor glitches such as the catering didn't have a dessert plate, all they had was China plates for the entree, I freaked out. They finally came with a backup plan and although we had to settle with less, I was happy to have a plate for my dessert at least :).

I learned quite a number of things in this experience, one of them is that making cake for large portion is very different than making a small one. I converted each ingredients needed but the result was different for some reason. I was so scared that the taste would get impacted and that it wouldn't taste as good as I wanted to be, but my worries didn't come true. Yes, it tasted different than the small version I usually make and I hoped that it would be better, but as soon as I got a lot of people going to the kitchen asking for seconds, I could start breathing peacefully :). I even heard that some people are going around the tables after the reception to find more unopened favor (the macaron), yay! Mission accomplished!

We had a thunderstorm and a VERY COLD weather that day. We even had a blackout for about an hour in the middle of reception! Yeah, it was unprepared and pretty hectic at first, but I think it made the whole wedding memorable and quite casual as candles were lit everywhere, making it very romantic. The songs that some of the guests were singing had to be improvised to acapella too and they sounded great! Not to mention that M looked absolutely beautiful, she looked gorgeous! Jefry has got to be one of the luckiest men.

The beautiful bride and groom

So cheers to you both and I wish you both a happy and wonderful journey together. As Linda (the maid of honor and also the sister) said "may this day be the day where you love each other the least" --> not sure where she got the quote from but I love her speech! :). CONGRATULATIONS to you both!!

I don't have too many pictures of this as I didn't snap a thing during the reception and the cake-in-the-making, but I'm glad that at least I have something to show you in this post :). Won't show too many of the wedding pictures since they haven't been published yet :)

Happy to get two pieces :)

A Welcoming-Back Cake: Chocolate and Hazelnut Mousse Cake

We're on a transition from Summer to Fall currently, and believe it or not, with this unpredictable weather (there is another heatwave now here in SJ, and a cold week last week), my life or my routine has been affected a bit. For example, my sleep. Sometimes, it is super hot in the afternoon but cold i in the morning and at night. A lot of time too I had to sleep with my window open at night because it was too hot and I find myself waking up in the middle of the night feeling really cold. I blame the weather, the bed, and the comforter too on this one :)

This is the time when I would dream for a new comfortable bed sets, modern and comfy. You see, for these past few years, I've been sleeping in an open futon with a really comfortable foam mattress next to a window. Not that I have too much complaint about it as it serves me pretty well, especially when it is not my own house, but I would really love to have one of this when I finally have a house of my own.

Anyways, just for some background information, I volunteered to order the food for my weekly lunch team meeting from the catering company for our company, mostly because no one didn't seem to want to doit and also so that I can choose the food I like :) (this is probably weigh more that the first reason). From doing so every week for more than a year, I somewhat knew the people I interact with, and although we can't be considered good friends (yet), but we have a good relationship.

There's this one lady that I used to see almost everyday down at the cafeteria, but I hadn't seen her for quite a while. I found out from the other lady later on that she just had a brain tumor surgery recently and needed a month to recover. She also asked me if I would bake her a cake to welcome her back in the workplace after so long and to celebrate her healthy comeback, and how can I say no to that?

This cake wasn't in my original schedule of cake making, but it was all well worth spending all the times and effort to make it for that very special joyous moment. It didn't take me too long to decide what cake I wanted to make for her. After a few questions of what she likes and doesn't like, I decided to make something with chocolate (yes, two chocolate cake in a row, during summer time! very unusual), more specifically a chocolate and hazelnut cake.

Do you remember this? It was the time when I would try so hard to recreate the flavor and the crunch of ferrero rocher in a cake. I would say it was very successful at that time, based on all of the feedback and request for the same cake from my friends. I used nutella and also some rice krispies in the cake, which was great, but maybe you would remember too that I lost the notes where I scribbled down all of the measurement I used. I've been wanting to recreate the cake ever since and this time, I also wanted to make it with the "correct" ingredients, for example, gianduja paste/hazelnut paste instead of nutella, feuilletine instead of rice krispies, and perfected the component layer that goes inside the cake.

I ordered all of the ingredients from one of my favorite sites a few months ago and they've been sitting in the box for quite a while now. After much thinking of what a "perfect chocolate and hazelnut cake" consist of, to me, I came up with this:
- Hazelnut dacquoise with scattered hazelnut on top
- Hazelnut paillete feuilletine with milk chocolate and hazelnut praline
- Gianduja mousse
- Dark chocolate sponge
- Brandy
- More gianduja mousse
- Thin milk chocolate plate (in between the mousse)
- Milk chocolate cream
- Dark chocolate glaze
- Chocolate Macarons and gold leaf decoration

It sounded like a lot of components and complicated but if you spend a couple of days making some component, it is not impossible. I usually avoid using dacquoise when making cakes, mostly because it is so sweet, but wanting to have that textural balance, I tried reducing the sugar by a lot!

There are a lot of ingredients that are new to me such as the gianduja paste, hazelnut praline, feuilletine, and I was scared to mess it up at first but thankfully it turned out fine. I LOVE the hazelnut praline, it tasted like the outer shell of ferrero rocher with that bits of hazelnut in it, so good.

I did try a slice of this cake just to see what improvement I need to make, if any and to my surprise, I think I've found what I've been looking for in a chocolate and hazelnut cake. If I can say it myself, it tasted very very similar to ferrero rocher, only better!! There's definitely lots of crunch when you bite into a spoonful of it and the different texture provides the perfect balance. I still need to work on my glazing technique, it is still very poor :(, but practice makes perfect? The most important thing is that the lady who came back from the surgery LOVES it, and that's all that matters to me.

This cake is a little bit involved than many of the cakes I made and I realized that the ingredients are not things that you could find in a grocery store or even whole foods, but some substitution can be made. I guess I need to make two versions of this, the complicated one and the simpler one, just like the first ferrero rocher I made before, using rice krispies instead of feuilletine, and nutella instead of gianduja paste. The amount and the recipe is definitely different but you can get the same textural balance and same great taste. I still need to work on the "simpler" recipe as I lost it when I made it last year, but I'll try to post the recipe whenever I make another one (and not losing it) :). The "complicated" version is still on my scratch paper somewhere, with little notes here and there, no direction even. I don't have the picture of the inside and forgot to take a quick snap on my slice, so this is all I got. I realize there's not much variation on the pictures, but I was lucky to at least got a few minutes to take pictures :)

Let's move on to the giveaway now. I did a giveaway for CSN store just a few months ago and they kindly offered me another giveaway for $45 that you can spend on their 200++ online stores. It won't be enough to get that bed set I was eyeing on, but I'll dream about it :). The rules are simple:
- Leave a comment on this post anytime between now to October 10, 2010. I will draw a winner randomly using random.org and announce it on the next post when the giveaway has ended.
- No multiple entries
- For anonymous (preferably none), leave your email address and where you're located at
- If you disable your profile view, please do the same as item #3. I won't be able to email you or find out where you are if I can't view anything.
- This giveaway only opens for US and Canada residents only.

Spring Cleaning Part I: Tiramisu and Chocolate Mousse Cake

If you read my previous post, you will know that I like to store things in the freezer, leftover sponge cake, tiramisu cream, mousse, glaze, puree, fruits, buttercream, cheesecake, you name it and it's there. It does save time here and there when I need to whip up something quick, especially the sponge cakes, but it also makes the freezer full. Besides, storing stuff in the freezer doesn't mean that it will last forever, it can only last for a limited amount of time before it goes bad (freezer burn, freezer taste/smell, etc.). So, now that it's Spring, it's time for Spring cleaning! or more like freezer Spring cleaning.

You could probably guess that I had some chocolate sponge, some tiramisu cream that has been mold to 6" round, and in an attempt to clean the refrigerator, I decided to remake this cake. It was created out of an accident, but it turned out so good and was a big hit that I knew I had to make it again, so it was automatic and instant that whenever I had tiramisu and choc. sponge leftover, I would think of this cake. It doesn't mean that you should make it only when you have leftovers though, trust me, this cake is good!

But as the title says "Spring Cleaning", I wouldn't have the exact recipe for it, so I will just tell you what the components are. This cake has two layers of thin chocolate sponge cake moistened with coffee solution (add rum to make it better :D), with a layer of tiramisu cream in the bottom layer, and dark chocolate mousse on the second layer. On top of that, I made milk chocolate cream as well over the dark chocolate mousse (it's very hard to see the line of dark chocolate mousse and the milk chocolate cream from the picture), and a heavy dust of cocoa powder finish it all. I didn't make the dark chocolate mousse from scratch either, I have a pouch of Alaska Express chocolate mousse mix given as a sample a few months ago and I've been wanting to give it a try, plus it's quick and easy! I didn't want to make an over-the-top decoration for this cake either, so I simply melt some dark chocolate, spread it on an acetate sheet, and broke it randomly, it looks rustic, but it's okay. I didn't even bother to decorate the mini ones, that's why the sides look kinda ugly, but it doesn't matter when "leftovers" taste this good :).

This is only part I, stay tuned for the next part, hopefully I can get to it as soon as possible :)

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

Espresso and Chocolate Mousse Cake with Cheesecake Filling

This was a week before Thanksgiving a few weeks ago that I received an email asking if I would be willing to make a cake for birthday party. Long story short, what I thought to be "a cake" turned out to be "a couple of individual cakes". They wanted 8 individual cakes with espresso and cheesecake flavors in one cake. I had to think really hard for a combination of the two that would actually work and how to incorporate it together and I finally suggested this cake, espresso and chocolate mousse cake with cheesecake filling and they agreed.

Little did I know that I would be really busy at work before Thanksgiving holiday, and I was gone the whole 3 days of the holiday for a retreat. The cakes were for Sunday afternoon and I came back home on Saturday afternoon. You would think that I would have plenty of time to make everything, and I thought so too, but flu came without notice. It was probably because I was out in the cold and slight raining for about two hours on the day before and my roommate was sick too, not a good combination I tell ya :). I did took a nap for a few hours after I got back home, but it didn't help much. It wasn't a fever, it was a sore throat, congested nose, headache, and ache all over my body (we had days packed of activities in the retreat), but don't worry, none of the virus was transferred to the cake in the making and I was really making sure of that :).

Fortunately, I already made the chocolate cake base and the cheesecake filling before I left and wrapped them really well in the freezer. It would make it easier for the cheesecake to be inserted in the cake as well. The sponge base was moistened with brandy mixture. I wasn't going to put the chocolate fence around the cake because I wanted the cake to show the different layer of chocolate mousse and espresso mousse, you can't really see the cheesecake filling since I put it in the middle of the mousse, smaller in diameter. But as wish would have it, there are some air bubbles showing and making it not perfectly smooth. So, the chocolate fence was a last minute decision. It wasn't what I envisioned it to be but I guess it was ok.

I was just glad that I could finish the cake in time and maybe I was also glad that it was for Sunday and not Monday because I could hardly stand that day. I'm so glad to hear that they all loved the cake afterwards. In the end, that's just all I wanted to hear :). Happy belated Thanksgiving!