Tiramisu Eclair

Been wanting to try this flavor for eclair since forever, but never gotten to it until now. Another dessert I made together with the Vanilla Bean Cream Puffs for my neighbor and for my New Year's Eve dinner dessert. I wasn't planning on making this actually, at least not at that moment. But I suddenly felt the urge of making it when I was in the middle of making the cream puffs. So I made another batch of choux and pipe it to make eclair. I think tiramisu flavor would be better with eclair instead of cream puff, although they are the same generally. It's just that eclair has chocolate glaze on top, although I usually like to drizzle my cream puffs with chocolate glaze as well :D. So practically, they're the same. But eclair sounds much more elegant and looks fancier than cream puffs.

The filling is the same as the regular tiramisu cream. I just piped the cream into the eclair, and that's all. Piping filling into eclair has never been my area of expertise :(. It was messy, but I think I got it pretty good at the end :). It was a three-step process, making the choux, the filling, and the glaze, but I'm telling you, it was totally worth it. Not to mention the failed ganache glaze I made the first one. I was out of heavy cream and decided to use milk instead, but the mixture was grainy. When I was finally able to get it smooth, the color was so dull, not shiny like usual. It won't thicken, well it did a little but still runny even after a couple of hours. So, I got myself about one-1.5lt carton of heavy cream and made another batch. Now I still have 90% full of heavy cream in my fridge that I need to use up quickly before it goes bad. I can't seem to get any inspiration of what I want to make when I have this kind pressure :(.

Everybody just went crazy over this tiramisu eclair. I didn't eat it that night because I was too full, but everybody just kept saying how good the eclair is. I was actually surprised myself when I ate it the day after. I like to leave my eclair or cream puff at room temperature for some time to let the pastry to soften up a little, I think it's better that way. I'll definitely make this more often, although yes I realize that it took me a long time to make this from start to finish, but it was definitely worth it.

What did I do with the leftover tiramisu filling? Make tiramisu of course!! But this time, I made it in martini glasses since I didn't have enough leftover cream to make it in a pyrex or container. I just layered the cream with broken lady fingers that have been dipped in espresso-rum mixture. Dust the top with cocoa powder and there you have it.

I hope the neighbor enjoyed it as much as we do :)

Vanilla Bean Cream Puffs

Cream Puff is one of those desserts that's simple to make but yet satisfying and easy to please anyone. It's one of the desserts that almost always come up in my mind whenever I want to make a snack for a group of people, for snack at home, for bridal shower, or any gathering for that matter. You can change the filling easily to suit the occasion depending on your fancy.

So, when I was trying to find something to give to one of my good neighbors, cream puffs naturally came to mind. I was planning to make it for Christmas but I was sick for a couple of days that I couldn't do anything except lying on my bed the whole day literally :( and it had to wait until New Year's Eve.

I was just planning to make a regular cream puff with soft and creamy pastry cream filling, but as I made it, I felt like making the filling a little fancier than just a regular filling. I quickly got my vanilla bean (instead of extract) and added it to the milk to infuse (I wasn't that far in making the pastry cream). I always like to lighten my pastry cream with a little whipped cream whether it is for cream puffs, fruit tarts, cake filling, etc. Depending on what it's for, the amount of whipped cream varies as sometimes you would want a lighter filling and sometimes toward a creamier filling, etc. So, I added a little whipped cream just to lighten it a bit, not too much that it would be light as mousse. And just like any other cream puff filling I made, I always add rum to the filling. I couldn't stop myself from licking the filling and my nephew just kept coming back and asking if he could taste more cream :)

It would be better if it was dusted with a little powdered sugar or combination of powdered sugar and cocoa powder but I was out of powdered sugar at the time, bummer. But it served its purpose successfully without the dusting anyway. I served the rest as dessert for New Year's Eve dinner at the same night and it was definitely a big hit.

Vanilla Chiffon With Cheese

As far as I remember, out of the many chiffon cakes I made, pandan, pandan with cheese, mocha, durian, etc., somehow I've never made the vanilla version. I did once or twice but it was about one or two years ago. No particular reason, it was probably because I always thought that vanilla or plain flavor is too boring.

So, I made a couple of pandan chiffon cakes the other day to give to some friends, and I managed to squeeze in one vanilla chiffon that I've been wanting to make for maybe a month. Fortunately, I have a little buttercream leftover in the fridge, perfect amount to cover this 8-in chiffon cake, then covered the whole cake with cheese and voila!

Believe it or not, I RARELY eat the chiffon cakes I made. I always made it for other people. And even if I make it for people at the house, I don't usually eat it, well I might taste it a little. There's something about eating your own cake :P. But this time, I actually ate it, a couple of slices I might add :D. I was surprised that the texture is super light and super soft. Gave half of the cake to my brother and his wife and they devoured it completely. I can't decide whether I like this vanilla-cheese combination better or the pandan with cheese. I will gladly take both of them anytime :).

Here is a picture of the last slice that I managed to capture

Chocolate Fudge Cookies

It seems like I've been baking a lot of chocolate goodies this past couple of weeks. Well, it has something to do with the 5-lb 75% Belgian dark chocolate that I need to use up. I think I still have about 2lbs after making all this chocolate goodies.

This cookie recipe struck me when somebody posted the recipe in my mailing list about a month ago. Since then, many people in the mailing list have been trying it and the response was really positive that it even tempted the non-chocolate-fan like me to try it. When I saw the picture of this cookies, it reminds me of the dark chocolate cookies with white choc. chips that I used to love when I was in college. It was sold in the school cafeteria that I worked at and I usually hide a couple before they're gone. These cookies were not available everyday and that's another reason why I treasured it so much.

I halved the recipe and slightly modified it. I cut down the sugar by quite a bit, since I'm really not a fan of those really sweet cookies. It is still a little too sweet for my taste. I will need to cut the sugar a little bit more next time
Here's the modified recipe:

Chocolate Fudge Cookies
modified from this recipe

100 g toasted nuts (I used slivered almonds)
60 g cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. espresso powder
450 g dark chocolate (I use 75% dark), finely chopped
60 g butter
250 g sugar
4 large eggs
150 g semisweet chocolate chips
150 g white chocolate chips

• Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and espresso powder. Set aside.
• Melt the chocolate and butter in a stainless steel bowl on a double boiler. Remove and set aside.
• In the bowl of electric or hand mixer, beat the sugar and eggs until pale yellow and thick (ribbon stage).
• Beat in the melted chocolate and butter and mix only until incorporated.
• Fold in the toasted nuts and both chocolate chips.
  
• Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the batter is firm enough to be scooped, about 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 350 degree F
• Using ice cream scoop (I use the medium size), drop batter on parchment-lined cookie sheet, spacing evenly.
• Bake until the top is cracked and shiny. The time will depend on how big and how thick your batter is. Approximately 12-18 minutes. You might need to adjust the baking time.
• Do not overbake or it will be dry instead of fudgy.
• Transfer to wire rack to cool completely and keep in an airtight container.

This is also my entry for Holiday Cookie Baking and Giveaway event hosted by Sharmi.

I have been wanting to participate more in this kind of event but time has always been my enemy. I hope in time to come, I can make more time to participate more. Thank you Sharmi for hosting :)

Durian Chiffon Cake

This is actually my second attempt experimenting with durian chiffon cake recipe. Well, maybe the third but the first one was completely followed a recipe to the tee. For the last two attempts, I tried to make my own recipe from scratch. After making chiffon cakes for so many times, it's not hard to approximate how much each ingredient you need to make the texture you like.

The previous one failed on me about 3 or 4 months ago. I didn't bake the cake long enough, apparently the bottom wasn't cooked enough that it collapsed or fell when I turned it upside down. But I really liked the flavor and the texture. My brother (who didn't know that it was a failed cake) even asked me to bake another one. I've been dying to make another one ever since, but never had a good durian so far.

Well, I had some durian leftover from last week that I froze. This time, the durian is pretty flavorful and so I determined to make another durian chiffon cake! I rescaled the recipe I had for 8-in pan instead of 10-in, but decided to use the full amount of durian pulp in the batter because I thought it wasn't going to give enough durian flavor. This time, the chiffon loves me. It baked beautifully. The smell of durian immediately filled the whole house (I know some people would consider me crazy). The texture is so light and fluffy and moist and the durian flavor is intense too. I can't describe it until you try it yourself :P

Black Velvet Chocolate Mousse Cake

It was one of my friends' birthday last weekend and I was asked to make the cake. I thought the birthday is this week, but when I found out that the birthday was actually last Sunday, I began to panic! It was Friday night already when I realized this. Luckily, I still had the whole Saturday (so I thought) and Sunday afternoon (the celebration was on Sunday night). But what do I know, Saturday turned out to be a very busy day for me. I didn't get home until midnight or so. I was super tired that I just fell asleep.

The birthday boy is a chocolate fan and the gf asked for something with chocolate cake of course. I decided to make this cake, which I had been wanting to experiment for some time. Yes, I want to experiment with chocolate occasionally, even though I rarely eat chocolate cake.
Remember the black raspberry I found at Trader Joe's that I fell in love with immediately about a month ago or so? When I smell and tasted the fruit for the first time, one of the things that came up in mind was to pair it with chocolate. And this is the perfect opportunity to make that happen, considering that I don't make a lot of chocolate cakes usually.

This cake has two layers of moist chocolate sponge, brushed with Chambord (black raspberry liqueur) syrup, brandied dark chocolate mousse and black raspberry jelly in between the thin layer of mousse for the bottom filling, and another thin layer of black raspberry jelly on top of the second layer of cake as well before adding the final layer of brandied chocolate mousse. Sprinkled with cocoa powder, put the chocolate fence around, tied with ribbon, and we're good to go. The jelly also has Chambord in it to enhance the flavor.

I was so happy when the birthday boy said that he liked it so much. He said that it wasn't like any other chocolate cakes, which usually heavy and you know how sometimes chocolate cake can be so rich that you can only have a little of it. But this one is really light that you can finish a big slice. Also, it has than fruit layer in the middle to cut the richness of the chocolate that can be overwhelming. I personally really like this combination. For next time, I will need to put more gelatin in the jelly as it was softer than what I would have liked, and maybe make it a little thicker layer so that the flavor won't get lost in the middle of the chocolate. But, for a first try, definitely satisfying! Can't wait to try another flavor combination with this black raspberry wonder :)

Christmas Goodies

Made this about a week ago for a friend's request. He called on Wednesday night asking me to make cat's tongue and kaastengel to give to his relatives for Christmas on Friday morning. That means, I only had one full day to make the cookies, hunting for containers, ribbon, etc. Luckily, I had all the ingredients available, so I could save a trip to the grocery store.

Nothing much to say about these cookies as I had posted it a couple of times before. One thing I learn or notice though, when I made the kaastengel, the dough was a lot stiffer than usual. Most likely because the weather was really cold (made it early in the morning on Thurs. and Fri.) and the butter just wouldn't soften as much as it would when it is warm. I had to reduce the amount of flour, which worried me for a bit. But it turned out to be ok. The cookies were still great and crunchy. I hope they like them as much as I do :)