Toby Turns One!

Some of you might seen this face a few times before in this blog and yes, he is my beloved little nephew and he just turned one year! Oh, how time flies really fast, it feels like yesterday when he was born and now he's just so full of cuteness!

I did say in the older post that June/July is one of the busiest months for me, but nothing can beat September to early October for me. I live with one of my brothers' family with three kids and one mother in law, and all the three kids and the mother in law's birthday are one week apart, some even two days apart! Not to mention other friends and events happening at the same time that require cake, so you can imagine how stressful I am during that time. My niece and nephews are so spoiled with desserts, the older ones can request the flavor of the cake now, even the decoration! They watched me making cakes and decorate all the time, so they know what they like, most of the time.

Celebrating with big sister and Sunday School friends

Not for this nephew though, at least not yet, he's only one now but who knows what he'll request when he gets older. First birthday is a big deal, not so much for the years after except maybe the 18th or 21st but that's waayy in the future, so I tried to make it special this time. I came across this design when I was browsing for a wedding cake (another event for later) and immediately fell in love with it! I love the color, I love the simplicity-but-cute design, I love the 2D cutouts, a change from the normal 3D figurines that takes me hours to make. Coincidentally, my nephew has this zoo-animal-themed toy hanging on top of his crib, which resembles the cake so much, so it was set then.

There were two celebration for this birthday, which fell on the same day, at his Sunday school class at church in the morning and with family and close friends at home at night. It was a bit complicated deciding how the cake would work as I certainly don't want to make two smaller cakes and having to decorate them separately. I would rather make a tiered cake for appearance and divide the portion (somehow). After much deliberating, I decided to make a two-tiered cake 9"-6", and an additional 8" square cake. The 9" cake was chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, caramelized banana, and a layer of creme brulee in the middle (supposedly for the night party for the adults), while the top 6" tier and the 8" square will have the same flavor, fromage fraise (for the morning party which if for kids mostly). Everything got changed though when I found out that one of my tires went completely flat when I was about to go home from work, buy ingredients and make some of the components. To make a long story short, I can only make 8" fromage fraise and the top tier is the classic Indonesian cheesecake. (I got bored of making it but it seems like no one got bored eating it).

Making 2D cutouts is so much easier than making 3D figurines, although it still took me a good amount of time decorating the whole thing. Even though it's not perfect, I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out and I hope Toby would too when he get's older and look at his 1st bday cake pictures :). Happy Birthday my dear Toby!

Onto the giveaway result now, the winner is Lynne. Congratulations!! We'll send you an email shortly for the gift card :)

Baby One Month Celebration and A Birthday, And 25th Wedding Celebration

I decided to combine these two cakes in one post mainly because they have similarities in terms the disaster I was facing when making them :).

Remember my newest niece? She turned one month on August 25th (yup, this post is long overdue). It may not be a big deal for most of you, but in our tradition, we celebrate this special occasion. I think (I might be wrong) babies are still weak in that one month period since they still rely on the mother's immune system. They shouldn't leave the house during this one month due to the exposure to a lot of viruses. a lot of families would trim the baby's hair completely to let go anything that he/she carried from the womb, or something like that. It is also the time when you can cut the fingernail of the baby.

The one month celebration coincidentally falls on the same day as the mother's birthday, how awesome is that! They threw a party of 60 people to celebrate this special occasion and what is a celebration without a cake!

It was sorta last minute when the request for the cake came, and it took me quite a while to figure out how to incorporate the two theme into one cake. I browsed though A LOT of baby's cake pictures until finally decided on one I like. It was a three-tiered cake with pink and brown color combo, one of my favorites. I decided to just put a figurine of a mother holding a baby, which my friend, N, helped out with (Thanks!). She stayed for 4 hours until midnight to make the figurine while I was busy with the cake, fill, frost, cover, etc. It was a crazy crazy time, not to mention that it was on a weekday too!

We didn't really need a three-tiered cake to feed 60 people but we decided to do so anyway because it looks better with the color contrast. I made the second tier from dummy so that we won't end up with lots of leftover. The cake was a basic vanilla cotton cake, layered with fragrant blueberry preserve, and very cheesy cream cheese frosting.

I had to mention though, that San Jose was in the middle of a heat wave during the 3-4 days I started making the cake and to the actual celebration day itself. We do have AC (Thank God) but it wasn't enough to keep the house cold. It was quite a disaster as for some reason, the fondant I used to cover the middle tier cracked everytime I put it on the cake and I had to re-do it 6x before I finally decided to start with a new fondant (talking about being stubborn)!!! I don't think my wrist was functional after the 6th time, it was very exhausting and I think my wrist was about to crack anytime. Everything seemed ok that night, except that our fridge won't fit the 6" cake in, so I put it on the dining table unrefrigerated overnight, thinking that the weather at night and in the morning should be cool enough to keep the frosting in place. Oh, how I was so wrong. The next morning when I came down to check, the 6" layer was a disaster! The frosting went soft because it was too hot, making the cake very poor-looking. Oh yes, I almost cried that time, believe me. I almost didn't want to post this cake in this blog, as I don't want to be reminded of this nightmare but oh well, not everything always go smoothly and there's always a lesson to learn.

Other than the cake, I had to cook the Indonesian yellow rice and also a side dish. I don't know how, but somehow we managed to get them all done , just 30mnts late, which is a surprise really considering it was a weekday. But yeah, the cake went soft very quickly due to the hot weather, not to mention it had to stand outside on the table for a few hours before it was cut. It was messy but everyone doesn't seem to care or mind the appearance, fortunately :)

There was a lot of REALLY good food in the party, it was as authentic Indonesian as you can get here in the US, yumm!!

Speaking about making a cake during a heat wave, it happened to me once before, a few months ago. This cake was in my folder was so long and I never intended to post it, but since this other cake gets posted, it doesn't seem fair if I keep the previous one in the back. It was for a 25th wedding anniversary cake. I tried my best to keep it cool and perfect but it was so hot (100-ish), my AC was broken at that time, and the fridge was so full (bad combination). Despite all these imperfections, thankfully they still appreciated it and the cake still tasted good, which what matters the most really.

The 25th wedding anniversary celebration was held in their beautiful home, just checkout the landscape in the back! They set up tables in the backyard and put the food in the gazebo, it was truly beautiful. The flower topper for the cake is peony, back in the Spring when Peony was in season. Yes, it was that long ago and I'm too embarrassed to post this. See that wrinkles and unsmooth-ness of the fondant? It was similar to the baby and birthday celebration cake, the frosting gets really soft and it doesn't matter how much I tried to smooth it out, it won't be perfect :(. But there it is now, I'm showing it to the world. The wedding celebration cake has Swarovsky crystal on the cake, which makes the cake looked a little sparkly when the light hits it, but I don't think the pictures are doing it any justice.

I just bought a refrigerator a few months ago, but hasn't been used yet. It has fridge for times like this, and also freezer to stock all of the berries for Winter time, so I hope I learn enough not to let this incident from happening again.

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.

A Farewell Cake: A Combination of Chocolate and Tiramisu in A Cake

I've never liked saying goodbye, who doesn't afterall, especially if it's to the person you dearly cherished like parents, dear friends, families, it's never been a pleasure. I've had my fair share of tears at the airport for a few years back saying goodbye to my parents and loved ones when I used to travel back and forth between states and countries, and you would think that I would get use to it after some time, but I didn't. I don't travel much anymore, and if I do, it is for a vacation, so it's a whole different story.

It was such a short notice from my fellow teammate at work, H, that she would be moving to East Coast to join her husband there; I mean, it is only natural and normal that a man and a wife should be together. They've been living their separate live as husband and wife for a few years due to work reason and they've decided that they need to be together, and as much as I'm happy for them, there's this sadness I can't seem to get away from. I've been blessed by so many great people in my life and H is definitely one of them. It makes it even harder to say goodbye when they're no longer just "a coworker", but "a friend" instead.

We had dinner for her farewell, and also lunch on her last day at work, I regret not hanging out with her more often, I guess a lot of things in our life, we take it for granted. I could only think of making her a cake to send her away and I thought it could be a nice gesture.

The girl loves chocolate, anything with chocolate she would eat and it seems like she has quite a sweet tooth. She eats so little during our lunch break and I often tease her about it, sometimes I feel embarrassed for eating twice as much as hers, or more, but she has a hard time saying no to dessert I observed :). It is not the season for chocolate yet, at least in my season but I'll bake anything for the girl and I finally decided on this chocolate mousse and tiramisu cake. She can never turn down coffee too, she ordered mocha shake at Costco, Starbucks, McDonald's, anywhere with coffee, she'd get it. I made this cake the first time out of coincidence and it turned out very good, and I've been making it for a few times ever since, changing it a little each time and this time I added a layer of Valrhona crunchy pearl in the middle of the cake for the added texture.

Just like the previous ones, this cake consists of two chocolate sponge cake, brushed heavily with espresso and rum solution, with dark chocolate mousse in the bottom layer, mascarpone tiramisu cream on the second layer of filling. The whole cake was then covered, top and sides, with milk chocolate whipped cream, and finished off with dusting of rich cocoa powder (I used cacao barry). From the three times I made this cake, I experimented with different chocolate mousse recipe and I think I'm pretty happy with this one, using pate a bombe batter. I need to work on the proportion of each component though so that I don't end up making too much or too little for each component.

This cake wasn't so big, it was only 12x10" but it seems like the surface area is too large for me to decorate. I admit that I'm not very creative in the decorating department, but nothing a few berries can't fix :), you can almost guarantee that berries and chocolate would make a great presentation on a cake.

There was a little cake accident during the transporting process to the office. The chocolate fence was starting to melt in the car, it had to sit unrefrigerated for two hours due to some unavoidable circumstances, but it didn't stop the people from devouring it I guess. I was just glad that I didn't pass out on the spot when I saw my cake almost got destroyed by unrefrigeration.

I got some of the components leftover and I used them to make this mini cake. I used chocolate glaze to cover the top just because I've already made some, and I just realized how hard it is to take good shots with shiny glaze. You can see all kinds of reflection on the cake, making it look not very smooth, but anyways.... The mini cake has the same components as the big one, but only have one chocolate sponge instead of two and dark chocolate glaze instead of cocoa powder just because I wanted to practice glazing, which I found that I am not so good at :(

The pictures of the final cake didn't turn out so good, it was so dark and I didn't have time to play with the camera, so I'll take what I've got :)

So to H, I wish you the very best in life for you and your husband. Thank you for being such a good friend all this while.

Mascarpone Cheesecake with Chocolate Sauce

I should have posted this three weeks ago or so, because I made this mid august and I have this post on draft for so long and never had a chance to come back to it. It's not that I haven't been baking, trust me because I've been baking up a storm and the posts and pictures just piling up to be done, so I'll get to it slowly while baking for the next one :).

This is at least the third cheesecake I made in just a month (this was made a few weeks ago) and that surely is a lot of cream cheese. What I love about making cheesecake is that (given that you understand the basic method of making a good cheesecake), they're pretty straight forward, it is very versatile, you can modify it all you want and they will come out good, and it's always a crowd-pleaser. It takes longer for cheesecake to bake, and more time resting in the fridge, but technically, there's nothing you need to do really at those time, unlike the multi-component cakes which takes a few days to finish due to the many complicated components that go inside the cake.

This cheesecake however, was made by request from a friend for his wife's birthday. They're both a cheesecake lover and they (more like the husband) want nothing else than cheesecake on the birthday. I was a bit disappointed and relieved at the same time when this request came, disappointed because cheesecake=no challenge=can't experiment with new stuff; relieved because cheesecake=easy=quick=works great with my schedule which means that I don't have to slave myself in the kitchen early in the morning and late at night, besides, I can always try something different with the accompaniment or the decoration for that matter. It worked for the best actually as I was out the whole day before the birthday, so cheesecake was the perfect choice :)

Even though I made a lot of cheesecakes in my baking life, I don't normally use the same recipe each time. When I was in college, I used a lot of recipes from foodnetwork, and let me tell you, I made quite a number of cheesecake during that time, from regular dense NY cheesecake, cheesecake using whipped meringue, you name it. They were all very good and gone in a few minutes, but for some reason, nothing quite stick in my head.

When I started baking more seriously and from the many simple experiences I have with cheesecake, I began to understand how cheesecake works, not saying that there's a whole lot to it, but why some cheesecakes have flour in it, why some have cream, sour cream, etc and I develop my own preference toward cheesecake. I also learned that basically, all base cheesecake recipes are very similar and that you can flavor and play with them in hundreds of different ways. So, that's why I've never stick with one recipe for cheesecake because it is so versatile, you can change it up any way you like.

This mascarpone cheesecake though, is based on just a very basic cheesecake, and substitute half the amount of cream cheese with mascarpone cheese. This is the only cheesecake recipe I stick to whenever I want a very good and creamy cheesecake, not too dense, which is the way I like it. I love mascarpone cheese so much that I'm trying so hard not to use mascarpone in all of my baking. The creamy sweet taste and texture just makes everything tastes better. I reduced the sugar from regular cheesecake because mascarpone is not as tangy as cream cheese, I'm still using the same basic almond crust that I'm always using.

I don't usually make cheesecake with a sauce accompaniment, mostly because I'm too lazy. Most of the time, I just used some jelly on top, or fresh fruits, but I thought it would be so good to eat this with just a simple chocolate sauce drizzled on the top and with fresh sweet strawberries.

Oh, I gotta tell you this, I went to farmers' market at the Ferry building in SF the day before I made this. I went there a few times before during winter and spring time but there wasn't much around, and I really wanted to go there during Summer and see what they have to offer, and I'm loving it!! The price is a little more expensive that the ones we have here in San Jose area, but I found some interesting thing I never found here. For example, I found this cute little organic strawberries (the one I put on top of the cheesecake), they're a lot smaller than regular strawberries, the shape is different too, a little pointy, but let me tell ya, they're one of the sweetest strawberries I've ever eaten. When I cut the strawberries open, most of them doesn't have a tiny bit of white flesh showing up and they're very tasty! Too bad SF is not very close to me or else I would go there every week. I also bought some zucchini flower, and I was very excited to cook with it, but unfortunately, little did I know that they go bad real fast. They turned brown and wilty after one day and molds grew on the second day :(.

So back to the cheesecake, I was keeping it simple with the decoration. Well, to be honest, I was trying to find the fastest decoration I can do since there was really no time to do anything else :).
I apologize for the poor shots, these were shot just before the cake was butchered by 20 people, talking about being under pressure.

Anyways, Fall is starting to creep in here in San Jose. We still have gorgeous weather, mid 70's mostly, chilly in the morning and at night, we've also had a few heat wave not too long ago (more on this on the later post of how it destroys my cake :( ), I'm not sure if I'm ready to welcome Fall yet, as I don't think we've had a real summer here in Bay Area, except for a few very hot days, but I'm trying my best to get a hold of the last stone fruits, and fill the already-overflowing freezer with assorted berries. I haven't had the chance long enough to make all the frozen treats in my list, or even had the chance to make some sangria or cocktail :(

I hope you're enjoying the last summer wherever you are, because if you're like me, who gets excited easily just by seeing assorted berries laying in front of you like jewels, or the smell of the air early in the morning at at night, or just the joy of wearing flip-flops, shorts, or pretty dresses, you'll be dreading waiting for the next summer to come. I hope all these projects (work and non work) scheduled around me for the next few months will keep be distracted from the weather, at least then I can start baking with salted caramel, banana, chocolate, citrus, back again. There's surely something special in every weather you got :)

Giveaway Winner

I didn't mean it to be this long to post the winner for the giveaway from the previous post, but it was busy busy busy. I'm typing this while sipping my coffee in the morning after baking a batch of cake base (more batches later), and hurrying to get to work.

Anyways, without further a do, after filtering unqualified comments (double comments, people residing outside US & Canada, etc), using random.org., the winner is (drumroll please) Cynthia

Congratulation Cynthia! CSN will contact you for the information directly to send the gift card.

I have to leave this post at that now, cake and more cakes are coming soon. I wish I have 48 hours in one day and only 8 hours of working hour or none at all :).

Have a great Monday everybody!

Strawberry Ice Cream Cake and Max's 2nd Birthday!

I hope you haven't gotten tired of seeing red in this blog just yet, because I still have more coming :).

Do you remember this little boy? It feels like it was just last week that he turned one year old, can't believe how time flies really fast, makes me feel not to take time for granted. Well, this little boy now turns two and he is definitely one of the cutest boys I've ever known. He's so bubbly, seriously, he loves to smile and you can see it in his eyes. His eyes are smiling with him everytime, and I can't help but to smile each time he's doing it. You will love being around him, makes you want to hug, kiss, more hugging and kisses, and more. He is so gentle with babies, unlike most kids, he is so precious indeed and when he does his little dance, I always feel like spanking him (jokingly and gently of course), it's cuteness overload.

Our family (me and my brothers' family) is very close to Max's family and we have been so blessed to know them. They've been one of the greatest blessings in our life, they've been such a huge help too with the kids when we needed them, I could go on and on without getting tired.

When Kiki, Max's mom, reminded me that Max's birthday was coming up, I was so unprepared. I completely forgot about it with all the things that are happening lately, it seems so hard to remember things anymore :(, thanks for calendar in my iPhone that I can pretty much keep up with things.

If there's one thing that little boy loves other than his parents, it would be his strawberry. Yup, he adores strawberry ever since he was so little (he still is), whether it is super tart or sweet, he'll gulp them down in no time, no joke. The parents have to limit his strawberry intake or else he would finish a whole pound in one sitting. Unlike other kids, Max doesn't like sweet stuff, or more specifically cake or dessert, he's starting to develop his fondness toward ice cream in the past few months though. So when I asked K, what Max wants for his birthday, K suggested strawberry ice cream cake, and who am I to argue?

Max would be more than happy with just plain ice cream covered with strawberries, his eyes always lit up whenever he sees those red jewels, but I decided to make homemade strawberry ice cream. I'm never a fan of store-bought ice cream really, mostly because it is too sweet, and the taste is not as real as I would like, and so I decided to make homemade ice cream despite the crazy schedule. This is gonna be my first time making it, so I wouldn't promise it would be perfect, good thing it was for Max who will eat anything strawberry, be it good or bad, perfect victim I say :)

I bought a box full of ripe strawberries at the farmers' market the week before, hulled, washed, dried, and froze them. If there's one thing I learn from experience and not from book, it would be that frozen berries have deeper color and stronger taste if you puree it. This is true mostly for raspberry and strawberry, which is another reason why I love freezing fruits at its peak. I did use some fresh raspberries for mousse, sauce, coulis before but the color is somewhat pink and not deep red color like the frozen ones would produce, it also has some "raw" taste to it, which is great in fruit tart, or for decor, but I prefer the deeper taste and color for puree.

I used the basic custard recipe from the previous green tea ice cream cake (with different method), added some sugar and strawberry puree until I was happy with the taste. Most strawberry ice cream recipes I saw uses vanilla (bean, extract, or paste) to flavor the custard but I omit this because I want the taste to be pure strawberry, not strawberry-flavored vanilla ice cream. I ended up using quite a bit of puree to get a strong strawberry flavor and pretty pink hue. A squirt of lemon juice would probably brighten up the flavor too, but I didn't have one at that time, you can try it if you want. I also have some sponge cake in the freezer so I used that instead of making another one. The dome-shaped has two layers of sponge in it (8" and 6"), while the other one has only one 8" round cake in the bottom.

One great thing about making ice cream or frozen desserts for that matter (among other great things of course) is that you can add anything you like to the base, you can use mint or any other herb (lemon-thyme, lavender, etc), you can combine ingredients, you can mix some flavor, add this and that but still have a good result, it's very forgiving. I added roughly chopped strawberries into the leftover ice cream after assembling the cake to enjoy on its own too.

I made two ice cream cakes, one is for Max's birthday and the other one I was planning to bring to a housewarming party at a friend's house. The one for housewarming didn't quite make it there because we lived about an hour away. I stopped at my brother's house on the way to take a picture really quick but it was melted (as you can see in the picture). A quick trip to the freezer didn't seem to help either as it was so hot in the house. I guess I wasn't very smart in deciding what to bring to the party this time :(. So, it was my brother's luck that I had to leave the ice cream cake there for him and his family as I wouldn't possibly drive another 40 minutes with semi-melting ice cream in my car.

Anyways, Happy Birthday dear Max, wishing you another blessed year ahead and many many more and may you grow to be a man with faithful and humble heart and that you will be a great blessing to others just like how your parents is, we love you :)

I'm off to LA this weekend for Disneyland for the first time. Yup, my first time ever after 9 years living in CA. I know, I know... but for some reason I've never had the urge or passion to go. I'm never been a fan of disney, cartoon, or deathly roller coaster ride anyways. While all of my other friends are super excited about the Disney, I'm a lot more excited of eating good food :), so we'll see if I can bring the kid in me this weekend. Have a good weekend and see you all next week!

Strawberry Ice Cream

500 ml heavy cream
250 ml whole milk
200 g sugar (see note)
6 egg yolks
1000 g strawberry puree
a squeeze of lemon juice (optional)
chopped strawberries (optional)

• Combine the cream, milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil
• Meanwhile, break the egg yolks and whisk it until it blends well
• Temper the egg yolk and the milk mixture, and put it back in the saucepan.
• Bring the mixture to 84C over low-medium heat, stirring all the time
• Remove it from the heat and strain it to avoid any lumps
  
• Cool it until it reaches room temperature
• Add the strawberry puree, mix well
• Refrigerate overnight, and process in an ice cream maker
  

Note:

• My strawberries were very ripe and sweet, adjust the amount if your strawberry is just so-so or not very sweet.
• If you're adding chopped strawberries, add it when the ice cream is almost done