Monthly Archives: May 2013

Mocha Crème Brûlées

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So many macarons lately means so many spare egg yolks. And when there's egg yolks to use up there's only one possible solution: custard. Especially when your boyfriend loves custard a little more than he loves you. I'm totally cool with that. Custard is pretty amazing. Custard is especially amazing when it's in a crème brûlée.

I love a plain crème brûlée as much as anyone, but I also love playing with the flavours. When I first started baking I used to follow all sorts of different recipes whenever I wanted a different flavour custard, but after some failures and some successes I discovered that altering a classic shouldn't mean altering the recipe. Start with a trusty blank canvass recipe and add a subtle twist.

This twist incorporates two of my favourite flavours: coffee and chocolate.

Keeping it simple…

Daring Bakers: Swedish Princesstårta

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It's been a while since I've been able to participate in the Daring Bakers' Challenged for one reason or another. In fact, I think this might be my first challenge of the year. And what a challenge to jump back in on! This month, Korena of Korena in the Kitchen was our May Daring Bakers’ host and she delighted us with this beautiful Swedish Prinsesstårta!

One of my favourite things about the Daring Bakers' challenges is getting to try things you've never head of before. The Prinsesstårta was one of those things. Brand new, but my oh my it sounded heavenly. Sponge cake, custard, jam and whipped cream — let me at it!

When I described the challenge to my boyfriend, he said he thought the cake might be an appropriate treat for his dad's birthday cake.

The occasion warranted a couple of minor changes…

Earth Structural Layer Cake

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A little while ago, my sister approached me with an idea. She’s doing an education degree, and her and her friends had to give a series of lessons on the geological sciences to a class of primary school kids. One of their lessons involved teaching the kids about the structure of the Earth. One of her friends came up with the idea of presenting a model of the Earth made out of cake. So my sister asked me if I could make a spherical cake with all the layers of the Earth inside it.

I told her I couldn’t do it. “How do you get a sphere inside a sphere inside a sphere?” I recall saying. “Oh yeah,” she replied, realising what it would involve.

I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about it. I don’t admit defeat. Ever. But especially not with cake. Nothing is impossible is pretty much my baking motto, so to say this cake was impossible left me feeling weird. There had to be a way. A way that didn’t involve carving or crumbing the cake. I kept mulling it over until I had a breakthrough.

It finally arrived…

Salted Caramel Macarons

Posted in Baked Treats by

The macaron madness continues! And shows no signs of abating. Since moving to using silicone mats I’ve started to run into macaron errors. I guess it’s better experiencing it now then during my first try of them, but it can be frustrating. It happens most when I tweak the base recipe, so that’s gonna be a given.

But making mistakes is an important part of the learning curve. Through making errors and working to correct them, I’m learning. And hey, an ugly macaron doesn’t mean a bad-tasting macaron. Just an unbloggable macaron. I can deal with more excuses to bake.

Perfectly formed or not, these babies seem to disappear just as quickly as I can make them. So while they’re still desired, I’ll keep on baking!

Time for some salted caramel…

Domo Cookies

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Early this week was one of my good friends’ birthday. We have the misfortune of living on opposite sides of the country, so catchups are non-existent. She spent a long time encouraging me to join deviantART and has always been such a huge supporter of my work there since. She’s always telling me how much she wants to eat the stuff I post and I keep promising her ‘one day’. So for her birthday, I decided it was time I made good on my promise and attempted something I haven’t before: shipping baked goods across the country.

I sent her a gift box of various baked goods, which I’ll show you in upcoming blog posts, but these cookies were the main feature. Domo has always been this thing between us. I don’t remember how it started. It might have been some dancing domo emoticon we always used on chat. We’re so random and hyper when conversing it could have come from anywhere. But it developed into one of those ‘our thing’ things you have with friends. In-jokes you will cry with laughter over while everyone else stares at you like you’re insane. We’ve sent each other various domo paraphernalia and merch over the years, and receiving it has always made me cackle wildly.

I don’t remember when the idea of domo cookies popped into my head, but once it did the idea was just so obvious and perfect it began to feel like it had always been my intention.

Then I just had to hope they survived the trip…

Mille Feuille Gateau

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On Sunday Cameron and I spent Mother's Day with his mum and immediate family. We started the day early, catching breakfast at a gorgeous cafe called Earthly Pleasures. It's situated in a stunning, heritage listed stone manor. The beautiful gardens, medieval architecture and the manor's removal from the surrounding roads and buildings lent to a relaxing atmosphere for the morning. Coupled with the lovely food and pleasant company, it made for a wonderful morning.

We went back to their place after breakfast and spent the afternoon chatting and munching on goodies. The time of gathering had me searching for lighter options for the cake. I wanted to avoid anything too rich or too sweet. The last thing you feel like after breakfast is a dessert that's going to make you feel like slumping on the couch for the rest of the day. So I looked to flavours that would feel a little lighter on the palatte.

Cherry and Coconut seemed like a night place to start…

Spicy Rose Cupcakes

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With Mother's Day just around the corner it's a time for making all things pretty and elegant. The first thing that comes to mind for this occasion is roses. The rose has been used as a symbol in most societies throughout human history. And it's little wonder. It's a beautiful, and varied, flower. Qualities that make them a lovely way to say thanks this Mother's Day.

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose…

Cook Book Challenge: Week 38

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One thing that's delightful about this challenge is that I'm starting to run out of books. And when I say run out, I mean I've used all my regulars. I'm starting to delve into books I've shelved and have never picked up after that first flick through. This weeks book, "Cadbury Chocolate Cookbook," is one I have little memory of. Perhaps that's because there's very few pictures in the book. I'm drawn too books with mouth-watering pictures. I'm also what's called a VAKs learner: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic. It's great because I have no weaknesses, but then no strengths either. I need to hear or read the instructions, I need to see how it's done, but I don't truly learn anything until I dive in and try it myself. When a recipe lacks a photo, when I can't see what the end product is supposed to look like, I feel like I'm flying blind. Or at least one third blind.

A lot of people often argue that a good cook book doesn't need pictures to be a good cook book. So I attempted to shove my picture-snobbery to one side and pick a recipe from how it sounded. There were a few recipes that sounded alright. Many I had tried before, or were just too simple for this challenge. There was a mocha bread recipe I liked, but lacked ingredients for. I'd almost given up hope of finding something I could make today when I stumbled upon on of the last recipes: the roulade. It's a thought that still intimidates me. I almost skipped that, too, when I reminded myself that that is the point of this challenge. To challenge myself. I took a deep breath and collected the necessary ingredients.

French Chocolate Roulade…

Orange and Cinnamon Macarons

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I'm addicted to making macarons lately. And I have no intention of stopping until I iron out the little creases that are the imperfections in my biscuits. As if I'm going to stop when I do finally get them perfect. Ha!

They're so addictive and so appealing to make. It's becoming and\ obsession. There are so many colours and flavours and possibilities just begging to be explored.

My major challenge at the moment is getting the biscuits all the same size. No matter how carefully I drew the circles and how carefully I piped, they'd always be different. I'd spend ages trying to match up same-sized biscuits, getting grumpy about the misshapen ones. So I thought it was time to try something new.

Breaking habits…

Cook Book Challenge: Week 37

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This week's challenge comes from one of my many Women's Weekly books simple titled 'Chocolate'. This is one of my books that has a lot of overlap with others, each of which people have gotten me as presents. They all offer something different, though, so I don't mind.

I bake from these books a lot, and some of my favourite cake recipes come from or have been adapted from these books. The part this book has that the others don't is a cookie section. It's all about the old and classic in these ones. I've been wanting to try Pinwheel Cookies, on Choc-Vanilla Spiral Cookies as they are called in this book, for a while. The challenge was the perfect excuse.

hit the jump for more…