Tropical Cake with Exotic Fruits and A Giveaway!

When most places are covered with snow now and most people are preparing the perfect Thanksgiving meal, here I am posting some tropical cake that seems really out of place and time at the moment. Well, this cake was made a few weeks ago when the weather was still warm and although it is freezing cold and raining, it feels nice to look at this cake and have a glimpse of the warm sun we've had.

When I was back from Hawaii (yes, it was a while ago but I still can't get over it :D), it was a bit sad to find that San Jose was all cold and rain, really missed the warm sun and beach there. I was trying to find some way to reminisce the warm tropical weather we just had and it also happened that my friend, Tony's birthday was coming up!

Before I went to Hawaii, there was this dessert competition in the company that I was supposed to participate. But since I was very weak to say no to Hawaii (it was super last-minute) deal, I had to back out just two days before the competition. Yes, they really gave me a hard time on that and can't stop calling me chicken from being scared and had to run away to Hawaii (tough love). Before I knew that I was going, I have already composed of what I would want to call "the perfect tropical cake", at least in my opinion. I wrote down the components and the layering to the very detail but didn't get to actually made it happen. So, in the spirit of tropical weather, despite the rain we've been having, I thought it would be perfect for Tony's birthday, especially since the birthday boy is a fruit type of guy, not the chocolate kind of guy.

The cake was also perfect due to the fact that I had some fresh passion fruit, thanks to my cube neighbor. The story began a few weeks ago when I was walking toward my cube and I smelled something really familiar but couldn't remember what, when I peeked in her cube, she was eating fresh passion fruit out of hand! I think I squealed a little when I saw that and immediately asked where she got that. I've been looking for fresh passion fruit here in the US for forever! I saw it once in a grocery store, but they're all wrinkly and ugly, and I just couldn't pay $3 for a very small size fruit, especially when I was so busy with birthdays that week, so I had to pass.

Ever since I discovered the passion fruit my neighbor at work has, I've been getting quite a few of them but didn't manage to make or decorate anything with it. I let it all get wrinkly and put them in the freezer hoping that they would last, they're like a gem to me. I also happened to have some starfruit on hand, first time ever here. I used to have the tree back home (in Indonesia), and now it is so hard to find them here. Seems like everything was in place for the tropical cake!

The cake consists of:
- Almond dacquoise
- Creme aux Ananas (pineapple cream)
- Sauteed Pineapple (with rum)
- Grand Marnier bavarian cream
- Joconde
- Exotic fruit mousse (pineapple, passion fruit, mango, and lime)
- Exotic fruit glaze

I hope you haven't got lost in that layering yet but I love playing with flavor combination and texture, trying to achieve that perfect bite. Being a tropical-flavor fanatic, I spent so much time trying to build the perfect cake and I got too excited in incorporating too many layering and I had to trim it down to the ones above.

It was a bit nerve-wrecking to find out how the cake would taste like, is it gonna be too sweet? too sour? too soft of a texture? I think I was too scared that this disaster would happen again, where the cake was waayy too tart (luckily the birthday girl loves tart). It was my first time dealing with passion fruit puree and I was surprised to find out how tart it is.

The kitchen smelled so good when I was making the exotic mousse, you can almost imagine being in an tropical island, just listen to Jason Mraz song or "Hey Soul Sister" song and you're good to go.
I can safely say that I think this cake worth all the effort and time making it. Although it took me four days to make, everything was paid off by the satisfaction of the people eating it. Glad that the birthday boy LOVED it, even though he only got a small piece of the cake (people are butchering the poor cake).

I also made a smaller version the week after for different occasion, Kiki's birthday! Her ultimate favorite cake is actually the Ispahan cake (lychee, rose, and raspberry), but I really don't have time making it, especially when I am in the middle of committed birthday cakes and wedding cake preparation. I can't just let her birthday go by without a cake, at least not without me trying to make it happen, so I decided to make this cake again since I have a few components ready. It is slightly different though, instead of covered with the mousse, it is covered with bavarian cream, with the mousse inside (I had the leftover mousse that I kept in the freezer). There is no alcohol in this cake either as Kiki is expecting a baby boy, except the rum in the sauteed pineapple, in which case the alcohol got burned off completely.

Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the birthday as I was sick, but I hope this cake can make it up for her.

But anyways, I have had done giveaway from CSN store twice before and the last one was not too long ago. They have been so generous and offered me the third one, a $45 giftcard! If you haven't noticed, CSN store is probably the largest online shopping company I've known, it has everything, and I mean E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G! In this holiday season, I thought their suitcase is perfect for those of you who are traveling, the kitchen stuff definitely makes a great holiday gift, accessories, anything you can think of, heck they have 200++ online stores!

As usual, the rule is so simple, just leave a comment on this post between now until Nov 28, 2010. Only US and Canada residents are valid for the giveaway (but of course anyone can leave a comment), no anonymous or no name comment (I won't have a way to view your profile to see where you are or if you're not some automatic machine typing), only one entry per person. Multiple comments under the same name will be counted as one entry. . The winner will be picked through random.org as usual. Good luck and have a GREAT Thanksgiving week!

Bridal Shower for Soon-To-Be Wife, Merry!

I was so happy when I heard that Merry, one of my close friends and certainly one of my first friends in the US, got engaged to her boyfriend, Jefry. Merry has always been that boyish kinda girl, which is cool. I still remember the time when all of us with her brother and sister and my twin sister (did I tell you that I have a twin?), would hang out together after school and we'd go to a bubble tea places, cheap Chinese restaurants and all. We don't do that (at least not that much) anymore since we've all grown up now, but we would still go way back.

So, imagine how excited I was when I heard this, so excited that I started thinking about her bridal shower immediately (and wedding cake too but that's for later), which kinda made me the default to coordinate it. I wanted to make it look as nice and as pretty as it can get. I kinda enjoy all the planning for events like this, I've always been the kind of person who loves spreadsheet, timetable, and everything, I love to see visually how things would flow and such. So, there I was planning, budgeting (the hardest part), arranging the bridal shower on a giant spreadsheet that contains everything you can possibly imagine, from very detail budgeting and pricing, menu, person who's in charge, favor, table setting, centerpiece, guest list, you name it, it's all there.

The original plan was to have an outdoor garden lunch but unfortunately, we found out earlier in the week that it would rain that weekend, bummer! So, the plan has to be changed to an indoor lunch. It also happen that in the same week as the bridal shower, I "had" to go on a last-minute vacation to Hawaii, which left me only two days to decide what cake I would make, the decoration, what favor, buy ingredients, gifts, and finalizing everything else. Oh yes, it was hectic, not a pretty situation, but thankfully there are always friends who are willing to help.

note: above photos are courtesy of nana

It was raining and a bit windy, but it didn't stop us from gearing up for the party. We had a wonderful decorating, thanks to Irene, the master of all creativity. The color theme for this shower is white, green and brown. The wedding itself is gonna be in bright purple and silver but we wanted the shower to have different color scheme. I think white, green, and brown has a warmth feeling to it, especially in the Fall season. We also had a very satisfying pasta lunch made by Merry's aunt. It was a bit sad when we had to tear down the decoration when the time of renting the place was up, it was too pretty. Merry looked wonderful that day, she had a trial make-up session with her salon for her wedding, so it was the perfect timing!

I made a traditional Indonesian cake, also known as "Lapis Surabaya" or "Spiku", as seen here, and brownie for the favor. I don't have a picture of the brownie inside the box as we had no more time, but I was determined to make it again, this time all dressed up with the ice cream and sauce! I'll post the recipe then as I had quite a number of people requesting the recipe for the brownie after the shower.

passion fruit drink

So there Merry, I wish you a wonderful beginning for your journey ahead, so sad that you will have to move after getting married, but hey, LA is not that far anyway :), we'll go visit :). Congratulations and big hug for you!

Double Princess Cakes for Two Birthdays and A Chocolate Hazelnut Cake!

What a week! Remember when I said in the previous post that more birthdays are coming up just a little over a week from the previous birthday? Yup, this is it. I had to make three cakes earlier this month and it might be the most cake I make in a week and they're all for Friday and Saturday.

After the older brother's birthday, it is now the sister and she's turning 5. She's the only girl among her siblings and just like every other girl, she LOVES anything princess and girly stuff, long dresses, hair bands, kids jewelry, heels, you name it. Being a good aunty as I am, I made her a barbie cake on her 2nd birthday, the first year I moved back here in CA, then I made her a castle cake on her 3rd birthday, a tinkerbell cake on her 4th birthday, and I'm running out of ideas for the 5th one. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday cake and as usual she answered "princess cake! A princess in a park!" Hmm.... okaaayyyy......

I didn't have much time to think about her cake as I have two other cakes I needed to make, but I asked her if she has a small princess plastic figurine I can use for the cake topper so that I don't have to make it out of fondant, a huge time saver! It turned out she only have one plastic girl figurine, not a princess, just a girl wearing a t-shirt and a short, hmmm.... I guess I could tailor it, put some fondant skirt and call it a princess, simple and fast. She'd be happy with anything that just look like a princess, she's pretty easy to please :).

The cake for her birthday cake was a couple layer of vanilla sponge, with baked cheesecake filling in the middle and raspberry mousse (made from a mix due to time constraint), covered with thin buttercream. Since she mentioned "a princess in the park", I decided to put some grass all around the cake to make it look more like she's in a park, don't know if it really succeeded what it was meant to be. The other accessories were from her birthday presents that night.

The next cake was for her grandma and she's turning 70! What a milestone! I admire her for who she is, she's really kind at heart, willing to help, and the sacrifices she made for her kids are just unconditional. I decided on the D-day that I would make her a Swedish Princess Cake just because I have everything on hand, so that I don't have to do to the store to get the ingredients. I thought the Princess theme really shows here although she might not have believed that this cake really is a princess cake.

We had a join celebration for these two birthdays and we enjoyed the Swedish Princess Cake that night. The other princess cake was brought to the church the day after for her to celebrate it with her sunday school friends.

The last cake was a small cake for a coworker's birthday. She's been requesting me making her a cake since two years back, and I had not able to fulfill her request until now. I decided to make her the same Chocolate Hazelnut Cake, the smaller version, since I have a couple of the components left in the freezer from the previous one I made. Plus, she's a chocoholic so this was perfect! Nonetheless, she was beyond happy when she knew I really made it for her and that's just makes every sweat and every second of that lack of sleep worth it.

At the end of the week, I was just thankful that the crazy week had past and everyone seemed to be happy. I guess cakes always put a smile on everyone's face and that's just priceless :)

Triple- Layer Ice Cream Cake

I know I have been posting lots of ice cream posts lately, but exactly a week after my nephew's, Toby, turned one, it was his brother's turn, Nathaniel (although we call him by his Chinese name). It is definitely one of the busiest weeks full of family's birthday, two more was coming just a little over a week after that. His birthday was actually a month ago and yes it took me this long to post it.

Children are usually sold on the cake based on the decoration, they need to be colorful, cute, or has a theme according to the child's liking, but not for this nephew. While he definitely would appreciate well-done decorated cake, he would care more about how it tastes. Yup, he's definitely a foodie, he's been trained well :D.

When I asked him what he would like for his birthday, without thinking, he replied "ice cream cake!" "Why?", I asked. "I love ice cream and I want pineapple!". Well, he surely knows what he wants and good for me too as I don't have to think so hard on the cake :). Pineapple is his absolute favorite flavor of anything, even when it is made with pineapple flavoring, he still loves it. Since the sound of pineapple ice cream cake sounds a bit boring to me, I proposed to him to make a three-layer ice cream cake instead and he agreed as long as there's pineapple flavor in it :). He picked blueberry for the next layer and anything up to me for the third one, easy peasy.

Making ice cream is easy, but it is very time consuming, mostly on the waiting for the ice cream bowl to be frozen. I need to freeze the bowl for 24hrs before using it for the next batch so that it's completely frozen. I bought the pineapple a few days earlier to let the fruit to fully ripen before making it into a delicious sorbet. The birthday dinner was supposed to be on Saturday night, but when making the last batch of ice cream, I ran out of time and just use the ice cream bowl only after 12 hours freezing it. I guess it wasn't so good of an idea because the bowl was not frozen enough, causing the ice cream batter to never thicken. So I had to start all over again, and freeze the bowl for another day, the dinner had to be postponed to the following Sunday.

This cake has a layer of vanilla sponge cake as a base, blueberry ice cream, pineapple sorbet, and black raspberry vanilla ice cream. The last layer sounds fancy, but it wasn't really. I had a tub of vanilla ice cream ready in the freezer and since I ran out of time, I decided to melt it and re-churn it, then swirl the black raspberry jam into it. It didn't turn quite like a swirl, instead it's just mixed all together, oh well.

I learn some things while making this cake. To be honest, I've never pureed fresh blueberries before and when I did that and strained it, the puree becomes like a jello with unappetizing color. I didn't know what went wrong as I was expecting a bright purple hue, but what I got was far from that, so I froze it expecting that the texture and the color will get better. After a few days, I strained it again and it wasn't much difference than before freezing, but I only used the purple liquid coming out. I bought a bag of frozen blueberries after that and cooked it with a little sugar and lemon juice before pureeing it all together. The color was much much better, it was actually what I was looking for! the texture wasn't jello-y anymore. So, no more pureeing fresh blueberries for me in the future. Same thing happened with black cherry a few months ago though but that's different story :). Oh well, you learn something new everyday and I'm glad I learned this.

Since I've always have difficulty decorating ice cream cake, chocolate is always the best option and that's what I used. The original idea was to wrap the whole thing in white chocolate while forming some sort of "flower" in the middle. It looked pretty in my head, but of course it's different in reality. I used parchment paper to wrap the whole thing and I wish I had an extra hand or two to help me do it, since the parchment paper is pretty flimsy. The resulting finish looked like it has "plastic bag" look to it. I filled the middle with raspberries for the color to pop and dust some powdered sugar.

The cake certainly doesn't look like a child's birthday, it looked like an adult cake instead of children cake, but this nephew is a bit different anyway. He might turn eight this year but he's a lot more mature than his age. I can talk to him seriously as if he's an adult, I can ask his opinion, I can ask him to accompany me. He LOVES reading and math is his hobby, yeah go figure. Of course he's still a kid too at heart, he can be a pain sometimes, but he's a good kid. The parents (a.k.a my brother and his wife) let him pick which restaurant he wanted to go. We weren't going all out, it was just a simple family dinner with my other brother's family. And guess what he picked? He picked Texas Roadhouse steakhouse! I'm not complaining with his decision though, in fact I'm very pleased, hehehe.....

We cut the cake near midnight on Sunday after we came back from the restaurant. We were so full, there wasn't any desire to eat a cake but for some reason, everyone had a slice. I guess ice cream cake is not so filling or rich afterall, it was like a palate cleanser or some sort. I take it that my nephew loves his cake so much (and the other family member) as the cake disappears the next night and there weren't many of us in the house. We don't usually finish a cake in a short period of time, heck we barely have an appetite for cake when we finished dinner at 10pm and that happens quite frequently. So, Happy 8th Birthday my beloved nephew!

Pineapple Sorbet
adapted from Grand Livre de Cuisine by Alain Ducasse's Desserts and Pastries

1000 g pineapple pulp
240 ml water
240 g sugar
30 g atomized glucose
6 g (1 1/2 tsp.) sorbet stabilizer

• Cook water, sugar, stabilizer, and glucose to make a sugar syrup. Let cool.
• Stir in pineapple pulp
• Cool to 39 F (4C), let sit and process in the ice cream maker

Note:

• My pineapple was really sweet so I don't really need much sugar, adjust the sweetness to your liking.
  

Blueberry Ice Cream

250 ml heavy cream
125 ml whole milk
75 g sugar (see note)
3 egg yolks
350 g blueberry puree (cook the blueberry slightly with lemon juice and some sugar if the blueberries are not sweet)

• 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 blueberry puree, mix well. You can use more or less puree, suit your taste.
  
• Refrigerate overnight, and process in an ice cream maker

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
I'll post it on another post since I'm planning to make another simple dessert using this ice cream :)

Mascarpone Ice Cream Two Ways: Peach and Raspberry Swirl

I don't realize how I have abandoned this blog for two weeks! so much for wanting to update more, but I have good reason this time other than the usual excuse I gave, which is bake, work, and more bake. My friend found a really good deal to Hawaii last week, but we had to go in like two days after. We found the deal on Tuesday, bought the ticket for 10 people who signed up on Wednesday noon, and off we went on early morning Friday. It's surprising how spontaneous we can be at times :).

The vacation was so much needed and Hawaii, Honolulu to be exact, is such a beautiful place. The first thing that came to mind when we landed was how similar the island is to our home country, Indonesia, with American influence of course. I love the warm beaches and its breath-taking views and all the water activities. You've got to love how laid-back people are, it's like they have all the time in the world. Love those snow-cones, passion fruit and guava-flavored desserts (my all-time fave), and let's not talk about those hunky guys ;). I love how people in Hawaii start the day early (just like in Indonesia), I woke up around 6-7 in Hawaii and the sun was already up and you can hear all sorts of busy sounds in the street. I love my walk in the morning to get a cup of Kona coffee in a nearby store, oh how I miss the slow pace there. When I came back home, it was still pitch dark at 6am, even 7 (maybe not as dark), but you can clearly feel the difference.

The view on the highway on the way to north-shore

Now that I'm back to the fast-moving life and all the activities that comes with it, I have to catch up on my routine, doing my blog-reading round and see what I've missed on Tastespotting and Foodgawker, replying lots of email, catching up with work. I was welcomed back to California with rain, in fact, it's been raining for a few days now. It's been really cloudy and sad here (can't you tell I miss the sun? :D), but anyways....

I know Summer has officially ended and Fall is happily getting its way out here, but I still have so much items on my Summer list that I haven't get a chance to do, such as this one (and many many more). It's like secretly hoping that even though Fall is officially here, but I just have that tiny tiny hope that the Summer temperature would stay a little longer. I still see lots of peaches, nectarines, and strawberries in the market, which always makes me smile everytime, but I know that they won't be here long enough for me to get through all my list and my usual Summer-fruit freezing time.

Leaves are starting to turn red here and there, the wind is breezy, rain falls here and there, and I started to find myself waking up early in the morning because it's too cold and ended up curling up under my blankie. I started to close the window again at night because it's getting really cold at night. I am so used to let it open in the Summer time as I love the gentle breeze in my room and especially the smell of that fresh air in my room, but I guess it is almost the time to back in Winter mode. I saw lots of chocolate post, pear and apple goodies popping up on multiple blogs already.

Just to celebrate the season, or more like hanging on to the Summer a little longer, I decided to make more ice cream in the middle of the birthday month crazyness when the temperature was a bit warmer a few weeks ago. Mascarpone ice cream to be exact. Some of you might have already known my love toward this one ingredient and I especially love the combination of mascarpone and raspberry such as in this one and I want to recreate the same taste in the ice cream form.

I made one batch of basic ice cream and added a full 8-oz tub in it, then divide the batter in half, one for peach, and one for raspberry swirl. I feel like I have never given yellow peaches a fair share of its beauty in dessert form or anything at all, I barely eat it fresh. I always opt for the white type because I think it's sweeter and more fragrant. Other than that, I think what contributes the most to my hesitation towards yellow peaches is the canned peach. I am not a fan of those canned yellow peaches and back when I was still in Indonesia, we didn't have fresh peaches and all we know about peach is the canned one, and I think it tasted horrible. But before the season really ends, I decided to give these yellow peaches another chance and bought a whole basket of gorgeous yellow peaches in the farmers market. It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, it was so sweet and juicy and I just couldn't turn it down, very different than the canned version (duh!). Although, I did try and bought a couple from grocery store, it looked ripe to me and fragrant too, but they weren't sweet at all, kind of tasteless and so mealy. So, I'll stick with my farmers' market for my source of fruits.

I blanched my peaches briefly to loosen the skin and the color was just gorgeous, I couldn't help but just taking a shot even though some parts are bruised from me squeezing it, but the color was just so vibrant and bright!

Talking about a farmers' market find, I also bought half a case of raspberries, my favorite berry of all time! I didn't have the chance to play a lot with it this summer because I thought I still have a few months to go, but I just couldn't resist getting some in the market. I froze 98% of them because I knew that I won't have time to do anything with them soon and we all know how fast raspberries go bad, although my mind was completely full of ideas when I saw the sweet sweet berry. I used a little of the berries to make the swirl for this ice cream.

To me, the taste of peach is subtle and it's hard to make it stand out, even after I put a huge amount of peach puree in it, making the mascarpone taste somewhat disappear. It's definitely peachy and I also put some cubed peach as well, but for some reason, the flavor is not very bold, unlike the raspberry one. It's not the ice cream though, it's just yellow peach in general, I guess peach is better in it's original form rather than processed into something else (in this case, it's ice cream). I barely taste the mascarpone in the peach version as I put a lot of puree in it. However, I love the raspberry version! You can never go wrong with mascarpone and raspberry anyway, LOVE IT! These two will always be one of my favorite flavor combination.

There are still a couple of frozen treats I want to try, but hopefully the warm temperature hangs long enough for me to make all of them, juusssttt a little longer :).
Mascarpone Ice Cream (peach and raspberry swirl)

500 ml whole milk
250 ml heavy cream
150 g granulated sugar
6 egg yolks
8-oz mascarpone cheese

• 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 (or almost to room temp).
  
• Add the mascarpone cheese and stir well. This is the base of the ice cream
• For peach: Add about 500 g peach puree to half of the ice cream
• For raspberry swirl: Make a raspberry coulis from about 75 g raspberry puree and some sugar (depending on the sweetness, I didn't weigh mine). Heat the two together until the sugar dissolves, let cool and set aside.
  
• Refrigerate the ice cream batter overnight and process in the ice cream maker
• For peach: Add some chopped peach in the final ice cream and churn for a few more seconds to mix
• For raspberry swirl: Layer the ice cream and raspberry coulis alternating in the container (swirl it with spoon). Don't add the coulis in the ice cream maker as the churning will make the raspberry sauce to be incorporated completely and makes the ice cream pink instead of swirl