D e l i s i o u c i t y

I had been making an awful lot of children birthday party cakes and favours lately that I missed out on posting a couple of them here. This short post is all I can muster at the moment, so enjoy!

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing for Aedan’s yacht club pool party guests:

These are bespoke items: hand crafted, custome-made, colour-coordinated, individually wrapped and heat-sealed. The level of customisation ensures Delisioucity’s clients receive premium quality products made out of passion and taste.
(Well ok, I tried very hard to make each one as perfect as possible!)

Amir’s brownie cupcakes. His family aren’t big fans of desserts or sweet things, so I settled on brownies (they’re a rather one-off consumption kind of thing) and the toppers are removable, bien sur! They had a proper ice-cream cake for everyone else too, so the 6 pieces were just right for themselves, post-partee.

I’m liking how Marie Elefantey is turning up to be quite a pseudo-mascot for delisioucity. (hehe)

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Whew! Nearly didn’t make it for this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge (again!) April has been a right heck of a month and my oven is well worn out from all the baking. But one finale – in the form of a cheesecake baked in a water bath, well deserves to be the ‘cherry on top’ as my series of baking culminates to its end (well, at least for April that is). This cake is awesome too, by the way! Thanks Abbey and Jenny

The challenge this month was to create a cheesecake based on a basic winning recipe by Jenny’s friend, Abbey. Initially I wanted to make something completely off, well at least to my taste buds… and that’s durian cheesecake. Just imagine the pong! It would’ve been daring indeed, you see But I couldn’t find durian paste in the supermarkets and didn’t bother about the bulky Thai durians either.  Also, I realise that this I had wanted to make a pear frangipane tart earlier, so the pears went in to this challenge instead. They are poached in water, rose syrup, 2 pieces of cinnamon sticks, and a couple of cloves till tender. You then cool the pears and continue to reduce the liquid until you get a syrupy mixture. Slice the pears to top off the cheesecake later on.

And here’s the full recipe:

Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake:
crust: 2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

I halved the recipe and made sure the cheesecake batter was filled with half of the poached pears. I also used brown sugar in the crust mixture, along with an addition of almond meal. I think all cheesecake bases should have some nutty input Husby is not a big fan of cheesecakes, but actually loved this one as the cheesiness isn’t overpowering. I just thought this recipe was fantastic except that it was a bit creamy and felt undercooked as I was expecting a drier texture from the baking. However, it does produce a lovely moist cake because of the water-bath method. Not too bad, and I think you should try this recipe too if you like the combination of fruit and flower

For other bloggers’ submissions on this cheesecake recipe (and boy, you will see so much yummy variations!) head over to the Vanilla Fairy badge on the right sidebar to access the Daring Bakers website.

*Update: This cheesecake is truly one of a kind, as I sit here with my slice that had stayed overnight in the fridge, I can’t help but feel calmed  and somewhat de-stressed! *ecstatic eye roll*

Note: This is a very sweet coincidence: a recipe win and my 100th post. I present to you now, macarons (yes, again!) and a report on the recent Foodie Bloggers’ Challenge, in celebration of my 100th blog entry!

Oui, ouui, absolutement! Troisieme place! These Pandan (pandanus plant) French-Malay dessert fusion were among the macaron flavours that I entered in the Foodie Bloggers’ Challenge on Sunday, 26th – and subsequently won third place for! I was so excited that I couldn’t stop grinning like a fool. It was like getting a healthy dose of endorphine (ok, sugar rush rather), especially after meeting up with people whose written words you read on a regular basis. These bloggers, amongst who I lurk/stalk in the comforts of cybertopia, are all the nicest and most generous people you could get possibly acquainted with! The amount of knowledge and information, food-wise, that was inherently part of the din yesterday, were all but not muted by the scraping off of Pablo’s pumpkin soup, Reeda’s champion lamb, and Eleanor’s roasted garlic & anchovies. Ouh my God, you know. The spread was amazing. I truly am very honoured to even achieve a third spot seeing that the competition was in effect a showdown of everyone’s culinary talents. And it was mixed genre too!

Here is a full list of the winners:

1) Quick & dirty lamb – Anak Brunei.
2) Roasted Garlic & Anchovies – Foodie Tales
3) Macarons – Delisioucity (Homygosh!)
4) Sea bass - Chef Pol of Self taught Chef
5) Lolita Macaroni – Hajah Zarinah
6) Cheesy Fruity Triffle – Hajah Tom
7) Tangy Prawn delight – Maria Rahimin
8)  Herbal Chili Chicken – Zulfadly of Soul Connection
9) Chinese Chicken Salad - Foodie Tales
10) Lamb Herb Jus - Creative Chefs
11) King prawn tomato – Hajah Sabtuyah
12) Red Snapper – Creative Chefs

As you can see from the list, only two were desserts! I am so tempted to have a desserts showdown in the future, and wonder if there would be many to participate? Other people who brought desserts that day included Maurina (lovely & funny girl!) with her chocolate pudding and some other entries that I was too busy going here and there that I didn’t get to taste them. In fact, I shamefully didn’t even get to eat the winner’s entry But no matter though. The book that is to be the result of this event will be available soon, and will be sold for charity Double excitement ^_^ A recipe for the French method macaron shell (au blanc monte) is going to be in the book, so I can finally sleep well at night with the thought that I at least have brought this piece of dessert to some well-deserved attention (hehe). I mean, many have called macarons “gifts from the Gods” on one end, and on the other, (especially those who have tried at least 7 times before they can get a perfectly domed and collared shell), often call these “divas” or even devil cookies. Sigh, such repute.

Here are some pictures from the event itself, which includes the desserts entries, the main dishes, and a cooking demonstration from local chefs from the infamous Empire Hotel (omg, woooot!!) Flambe-d too, they did!

The host, Senor Pablo‘s wife, Bunny, has a business selling all sorts of desserts. I absolutely loved her apple maple cakes (top left), they’re so gorgeous and classic. They just melt and melt in your mouth… *rolling in fields sensation* And it is no surprise she is also a sweet lady Just imagine the aromas coming out of Pablo’s house thanks to her!

The following are some main entrees, sans Reeds’s winning lamb. Sigh. Drool.

And finally, the Creative Chefs. Work it!

It was such a fun evening, and the weather was also simply beautiful. I’d like to thank Pablo for hosting this event and hope that the good deed of the charity recipe book sale will bring you and your team great blessings! A final shout out to Eleanor, Chef Pol (I had a good chat with this guy and thank you for putting my macarons on par with that of Laduree’s! I’m humbled), Maurina, Thanis (omg u are such a foodie!! fun talking to u), Hani, Azian, and Reeds’ lovely wife!

Oh and the local paper, the Borneo Bulletin also did a coverage (albeit an erronous one: apparently I am an  ingredient in Eleanor’s roasted anchovies dish!) Cheers for that.

P/s: Macaron flavours that day: Le Signature Chocolat (nude, cocoa-dusted shells), milk chocolate (pink shells), pandan (green, with painted shell), and a rather daring mango cinnamon in cream cheese base (dense yellow). This one went soggy fastest, and I have to say, needs terrible adjustments. Oh well, food is after all about experimentations too!

I’ve been up to my eyes with rolling sugarpaste the past weeks that I find their very scent rather appaling! Quite right too, as I have been veering off a bit much from the main purpose of my blog/gastroventures, which is to unearth the secrets and techniques of classic (& classy) pastries and desserts. Certainly food decoration can be simple, elegant and tasteful and non of this have anything to do with fondants :p The whole sugarpaste phenomena probably became more significant with the advent of video tutorials, Sex and the City (with the cupcake scenes), flickr, and sugarpaste that are readily-available to home kitchens. If I never become a pastry chef in this life then I’d probably make half a career in food styling or something. I like! I want! And there’s so much to learn and get inspired from.

I’m talking about photography knowledge and skills here as much as a defined, crisp taste in spatial arrangements. Ok there you go. I am finally outing myself: I am a trained Geographer and I love anything to do with spatiality.. how things connect in a spatial context, where they are located, and why. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense, but most times (and architects alike will know this) it is about taste, and aesthetic pleasures… all working in tandem with functionality and practicality, of course. My perpetual fixation towards details can be overbearing at times, to the point of being completely anal. It frustrates me when overall pictures look great but details tell otherwise (such as the poor lighting in my photos, hence the shadows). I wish I could make time for lessons, but you know what? Minute flaws can be quite artsy too! (Such as crummies accidentally strewn about).

Anyhow, these “teacakes” are formed with a scone ring and are sandwiched together with Cocoa Italian Meringue Buttercream, a type of buttercream made with a technique akin to making the Italian version of macarons that I quite enjoy making it. The texture is silky too, and though I vouch for my dislike towards buttercreams in general, I do not mind these in small, small doses.  The cake here is adapted from Peggy Porschen’s recipe, and baked in a 10″ sheet. They rise quite well, hence the tall-ish structure, and when carved or cut, do not crumb too much. Pretty foregiving and decent for novelty cakes I must say; and according to Porschen, makes a great bottom tier for stacking.

It doesn’t end there either. These cakes are also moist and spongy, and the denseness is nicely cut with a light cream such as this. Although,… I probably won’t mind it even more if I drowned these poor old sods in Creme Anglais. Or or minty ice cream! Ouh the possibilities.. for all the senses!

Surely chocolate wins all the time, doesn’t it?

My niece Batrisyia loves green so much and wanted this ladybug cake made for her birthday party. The inside is a carved Rich Dark Chocolate Cake layered with Belgian Chocolate Ganache and frosted with Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream. Fondant covered, and decorated with fondant pearls. I thought the pale, pastel green makes it look sweet rather than alarmingly alien and unpalatable. But I don’t really know anyone who eats fondant covers or decors, really :p

Having said that, why do we bother with decorations in the first place? Most people just peel the fondant off and eat the cake. But cupcakes I suppose have come a long way… the amount of fancy designs that you can afford makes them a great gift item(s). And the added perk is the fact that the edible, yet uneaten, fondant toppers can be kept for a long time, so they can be picked off the cupcakes and be kept as a memento  As long as they’re away from too much sunlight, the colours will also fade slower.

The insides are made of Almond and Lyle’s Maple Golden Syrup Cupcakes, and frosted with whipped chocolate ganache. It’s a pretty nice combination, and one of the new recipes that I’m experimenting with.

Backbreaking work, these fondants @_@

Some fond moments often occur on birthdays, and in anticipation of that, I made these to be served and celebrated today. Mangoes and myself have come a long way in the walk down memory lane,  but the fondest of memories with these juicy fruits has got to be the ones to do with my parents. As simple as it is, they both  loved mangoes. Mum still does, of course, but she gets the tummy bugs when she eats too much of it so she has to settle with only a slice or two nowadays. A fond and funny story is when my dad used to just throw mango seeds out into the backyard like it’s nobody’s business and they’d grow healthily as if planted with care. Green thumbs indeed, and one that I’ve never been able to inherit. So our family home is dotted with lots of random mango trees of various types and sizes sprouting mainly at the back, and strewn randomly around outside the house. Mangoes seemed to have invaded my life, growing up

Last night at 12 am I officially joined the ranks of those who are at the dusk of their twenties (boohoo).  Yes, I was actually born at 12 am (it says so in my birth certificate!) so I’m both an Aries and a Taurus, if you’re into that sort of thing. I finished making all the components of this birthday dessert for today at about 10pm and let me tell you.. I am smittened by the pistachio joconde layer! Husby also practically gobbled up some leftovers of it after I shaped them into the circular discs.

Pistachio Joconde (adapted from Aran)

55g almond flour
56g pistachio flour
80g icing sugar
30g all purpose flour
130g eggs
100g egg whites
40g sugar
20g butter, melted
Pinch of salt

Whip almond, pistachio, icing sugar, flour, and eggs in an electric mixer until a thick ribbon forms (about 5 minutes). In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt until a light meringue forms. Slowly add the sugar one tspn at a time whilst whipping the egg whites. Continue until you get an almost stiff peak consistency.

Now mix a third of the meringue into the first mixture. Fold in the rest gently and finally incorporate the melted butter into the whole batter. Slowly now! Pour the batter into a sheetpan lined with parchment and bake at 375F (about 190.2C) for about 10 to 12 minutes. Watch it at the last few minutes, as you should be aiming to get a lightly browned top.  Let cool, wrapped in greaseprof paper and foil until ready to use.

The joconde is the bottom cake layer and fourth layer from the top. I’d probably want it a bit greener than it is appearing here, but the taste far offsets any shortcomings. The entremet is then layered with a Mango Bavarian Cream, and topped with a layer of Mango Gelee and White Chocolate Chantilly.

Mango Bavarian Cream

3 Tbsp gelatin
1 and 1/2 C strained mango puree (about 5-6 Thai mangoes)
5 egg yolks
2/3 C sugar
1 and 1/2 C milk
1Tbsp lemon juice
Several drops of yellow food colouring
1 and 3/4 C whipping cream

Sprinkle the gelatin over the puree and set aside until spongy. Combine egg yolks and sugar in a mixer bowl and beat until light. Boil milk in a saucepan and pour into the egg mixture, while stirring with a wooden spoon. Return this mixture into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, whilst constantly watching and stirring. It is done when your finger leaves a clear trail in the sauce when drawn across the back of the wooden spoon. If you overcook this mixture, chuck it in the bin because you would have produced curdled, finely scrambled eggs remove immediately from the heat and stir in the softened gelatin/puree. Get a bowl of ice ready with some water, and immerse the mixture into this bowl and let it cool. It will stiffen up as it cools, so stir occassionally as it thickens with time. Whilst you are doing this, prepare your mixer bowl and beat the whipping cream until it holds soft peaks. Add food colouring at this point. When the gelatin/puree mixture is ready and resembles softly whipped cream, fold the whipped cream carefully into the gelatin/puree mixture.

Mango Gelee

After you’ve pureed your mangoes for the Bavarian cream, you will obtain a nice thick mango nectar which you can then sprinkle with about 2Tbsp of gelatin. Add a tspn of lemon juice and some yellow food colouring. Let sit. It might take a while to thicken.

White Chocolate Chantilly (adapted from Aran)

This is my next favourite component! I could just eat this as dip for fresh mangoes!

100g heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks
50g white chocolate, melted and cooled slightly

Add a third of the whipped cream into the chocolate and whisk vigorously. Then add in the remaining cream and fold gently with a spatula.

If you love mangoes, this is definitely a must try/must make. The mousse-like effect can be a tad overwhelming for this one though.. but I think the joconde did the trick with a dimension of texture. The macaron shells (orangey round domed discs you see in the picture) also lay a hand in providing a nice crunch and some sweetness. The gelee is rather sour, but like I said, the macaron does the job well. All in all, I love this birthday ‘cake’ for myself and I will probably start developing a taste for fancy entremets from now on! (Read carefully as: signs of ageing). hehe.

April is officially making my fingers cramped. This month, I’ve made birthday cakes for my brother, my best friend, my niece, cupcakes for my nephew, entremet for myself (auto-post will be up!), and some more coming up for my cousin’s son. Oh did I also forget to mention? I am also making macarons for Senor Pablo’s charity do, the Foodie Bloggers event next Sunday (26th Avril). So if you’ve been wanting to make an intellectual and palatial comparison between my macarons and those of *koff* Fleur de Lys (the only ‘other’ macaron that you can possibly find in Brunei), do ask Pablo how you can attend the event

You know when I went to Hua Ho to get this Barbie doll, I did NOT anticipate to stay at the toys section for half an hour. Care to consider the very phrase “like a kid in a candy store”? The truth of the matter is that I used to play all things Barbie when I was small; I used to dress her up and I used to have her kitchen set and some other. Non of my sisters played with Barbie… but then I am the youngest and most possibly the loneliest as everybody grew up and left home. Poor sod I was! haha… (long sigh). Anyhoo. Yes, it was quite fun being there, browsing about the different types and looks that Barbie could possibly be. She has absolutely changed I tell you, never have I seen so many different Barbie faces, and some were actually quite fugly to be honest! Anyway, I settled for the ‘kinder’, prettier one for my niece. Don’t want her getting nightmares now do we Barbie plays leading roles in several animated films, I’ve come to understand. And one of them is this one: she plays Odette, the girl who was cursed to become a swan, falls in love with a prince (hah!), somehow got turned back to a human/doll, married, and lived happily ever after. Or so that’s what I think anyway. Maybe I’m wrong but they all have the same soppy storylines, oui ??

The skirt is made from lemon Victoria sponge cake, and layered with Italian Meringue Buttercream. Barbie is donning a handmade fondant swan dress (ok I missed out on her sleeves), and piped with royal icing. Her clothes were packed in her original box, and yes, Barbie nowadays wears an undetachable pair of white knickers. Hoorah for that.

Have you ever heard of the infamous book called French Women Don’t Get Fat? Apparently this is a bestseller and has caused much hoohaa when it was released. Recently I purchased its sequel, French Women for All Seasons. I may indulge in telling you what I think of the book in another post in the future, especially if/when I try its most celebrated recipe-slash-detox-weekend-sole-nourishment, the Magical Leek Soup. (I know right?! Sounds gross indeed). Anyway, as I was wading through the monographic lengthiness/waffle of the French insider, I skimmed past the bit on alcoholic intakes, and set my eyes on the advice on pasta. She says that a person ought to have only 120 gm of pasta per serving, and the French woman is to not eat this too frequently (once a week is fine). But then there was also a long-winded bit on how Italians can stay well-shaped eating pasta everyday. Zut alors.

Seeing that I have not eaten pasta for about three weeks now (hehe), and when it comes to carbs I am not a fan of rice, I settled the business of lunch by getting us a bag of penne. You may try this recipe with other meats (cured or otherwise), and sliced pieces of black-pepper steak seems much warranted for a good din-din too. This isn’t an exclusive recipe either, pasta is possibly the most flexible and most-used carb base for any meat-pairing… so you may have actually seen something similar somewhere else, or have a recipe of your own (can we trade??); in essence you can tweak much of this one.

Penne with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Beef (2 servings)

160g Penne, boiled according to packet instructions
1 medium Red Onion (Bombay), diced
dash of extra virgin olive oil OR knob of butter
Diced green capsicum/bell pepper
1 packet of smoked beef
1 medium tomato, seeded & diced
Chopped leeks
Coarse black pepper to taste

Boil the penne and drain. Heat oil or butter, and cook the onions on medium heat till they are caramelized and fragrant. Add tomato, capsicum and beef slices. Stir in pasta, add leeks and pepper to taste.

Pasta dishes are very easy and quick… kind of an obvious thing to say really. Another thing to note is don’t eat breads with pasta or you’ll soon find yourself dozing off too bed, or working off a sweat at the gym

In case you were wondering (though I’m sure nobody was, as I am just perasaan that I have lurking readers out there apart from bots who spam me), I am still obsessed with macarons. I still get thrills out of staring at the rise of their dainty little collar (a.k.a “feet”) in the first 7 minutes of baking in the oven. Yes, I still do sit on a tiny stool in front of my Ariston and stare at the macarons in their process of either blooming to wondrous joy, or exploding/cracking much to my utter demoralization. When the latter happens, and believe you me, they do (even after a year of *ehem* ‘cracking’ my way to finally be able to make them), I get quite a bit of loss. Let me indulge you in the following: Almond meals are not precisely cheap. They are $20 for a kilo. Meanwhile, icing sugar vary in prices, some shops sell them for nearly $2 for 500g, while others, selling the less-than-pure mixture of icing sugar + corn flour (= confectionary sugar), will cost less than a dollar. Next, the eggs. Eggs are fine but their prices do fluctuate as any home-economist will know.  The loss really, is in terms of wastage of the egg whites in which had to be separated from yolks. Subsequently I never know what to do with the tonnes of yolks I get as a result of macaronventuring. Not that I have an ice cream truck in which I could churn ice cream and sell them to kids. Or maybe that’s an investment worth looking into, one wonders?

In the next post I will show you what I did attempt with some leftover egg yolks, though. But let me move on with more macaron stories. I had made quite a bit in the past weeks, and the Italian meringue (au sucre cuit) method seemed to please. Perhaps it was the weather that day or maybe I macaronaged (folded) the batter with near-precision (*koff koff*), which led to nicely domed shells and no cracking at all. But when I tried this method again the next day, it all went down the bin. I still don’t know what it was  that went wrong, and I can’t even bother to speculate anymore other than the fact that sometimes you get plain jinxed for being so kambang (joyous, over the moon). They all failed miserably. So later, on I went with the au blanc monte method, or also known as the simple meringue, or French method. I concede to this: the simpler method is better. (As with all simple things, I suppose). *eye roll*

It is quite ironic though, because in all my research and reading, everybody seems to say that the Italian method will produce more consistent and reliable yields! ARGH! I know I have delved into this subject before, and some of you may find this a bit too repetitive on my side. But you see, I am at an utter loss as to why I can’t seem to master “the more reliable recipe”! *Pulling hair* The thing is yea, I would be more than happy to resort to only using the French method if it weren’t much sweeter than the Italian method. For some God-given reason, that’s the way it is. Some clients don’t mind it, but others cringe with a full glass of water on their other hand. Upon wallowing to some of my favourite bloggers who make beautiful macarons to no end (tartelette; madbaker; mercotte; veron) , I have been adviced (1) to take no heed to such complaints,  (2) learn and educate the fact that the French really do eat only one of these at a time, and (3) that Americans, at least, love things sweet. Now I know we are not USA, or Paris, but the one thing I do want to share with everyone is that like in all things in pastry, there is much chemistry between ingredients to be respected. No, I cannot tweak

I do try to balance the sweetness with fillings that aren’t designed “for the kill” though. But still, I suppose this petit four still remains a foreign culture to many who have really yet to taste the real deal in the likes of Pierre Herme, Laduree, or Cristophe Michalak (yummy bloke, by the way). Till then, I remain your humble purveyor of macarons, who will use the French method for as long they don’t jinx me instead (in which if they do, I will proabably retire from this obsession at last).

The French Method macaron recipe:

100g almond meal
90g aged egg whites
190g icing sugar
25g castor sugar
Pinch of salt
A few drops of food colouring

Sift your almond meal and icing sugar together twice until you get a fine powder. In a clean mixer bowl, beat egg whites with salt till foamy. Then add castor sugar a little at a time. Continue to beat till glossy/satiny and the meringue should hold soft peaks. Add about 1/4 of this meringue into the dry mixture and beat rapidly to break the mass. Add food colouring at this point if you like. Then incorporate all of the meringue into the mixture and fold gently without deflating too much of the batter. Do not overfold (or over-macaronage). You should aim to achieve a texture that is often called ‘flowing like magma’. Though I have never really been to a live volcano spewing hot magma, I will tell you that what you need to look for is a batter that holds a little beak, when picked with a finger, and that which will then fall back to the batter with little reluctance. Spoon into a piping bag attached with a round tip, and pipe onto a baking parchment. If you can find a silicon baking parchment, that is even better. Let sit for a while for the macarons to form skin on the surface (around 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the humidity level of that day), then proceed to bake at a temperature that best suits your oven type. That means you have to experiment (gasp!) Mine works best at 165C for about 12 minutes. Some people will bake at 170C, then go down to 160C after 5 minutes. If your batter was macaronaged with care, they should form nicely domed shells with a collar around it, called ‘feet’. Let cool, and do not pry the shells off the parchment! They should come off easily after cooling. Then, pipe in a filling of your choice, which includes jams, buttercreams, mousses, and ganaches. Enjoy, and bonne chance!

*In the pictures above, the flavours are my signature whipped chocolat (with the cocoa dust), and coffee ganache. Bonne chance!

After attending a cousin’s wedding yesterday, it reminded me of my own  just a little over two years ago.  What can I say about the man who I can, at the very least, best describe as my best bud? He gives me such support that often I sit back and think, ‘can I not live on my own anymore?!’ or, ‘where’s that independent woman that I used to know?!’ That’s when red alert sirens go honking about in my head But for that matter also, I never fail to silently thank the Almighty for the love he gives me through my husband. Marriages are a true blessing; even in their darkest, more dramatic hues, they epitomize our will and ability to brave through any storm and emerge as wiser beings.  And for that we grow, we become sensitized to other people around us, and we offer our empathies to show that we too, can support. For the love and laughters that we all hope to last to eternity, a wedding truly only marks the beginning of a completely new and different life. Maybe it doesn’t for some, but it does beg the whole question of how much we reflect on each day, and to what extent our personal evaluations (Muhasabah) can come to any form of positive materialization. I do not think that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage or even a perfect couple, but I do believe that there are people who will go all their way out just to inch closer to that utopic notion. After all, perfection is only characterised and reserved for the eternal hereafter. And we strive to live for that.

This life, at least and so far for me, has been a sweet one, but never a life that is not punctuated with bits of drama You’d need that occassionally, I think. Let me indulge in a bit of metaphor: I like my omelletes with colourful tones of tomato, spinach, onion, cheese, mushroom… the works. You may call me a drama queen; and in fact at some point in the past, a colleague made sure she told my then future husband, that I was a lot to ‘maintain’. I wouldn’t so far as to go there, but I do know that some men enjoy ‘maintaining’ women. Whatever it is, and for whatever reason that that judgment was made pre-emptively  by an almost complete stranger to me, a marriage itself is often about maintenance work. You strive to uphold its  preciousness;  and I realise maybe that sentiment is a bit naive on my part. But when I silently watch my siblings’ marriages sometimes; the utter respect I pay to them who have lasted so long, is so tremendous that I can only hope to measure up. Let’s not even forget to mention our parents now, shall we? It is very possible that we learn from them, or from parents of others… of their mistakes and triumphs in many a challenge in life. Whether they faltered or not, I know that at least for my parents, they never lacked fogiveness and the hopes for better days. Marriage, my dear cousins and friends, is a little easier if both individuals make it that way And because we weren’t born with a “marriage manual” embedded in our heads, it also means that that new life after your wedding is all about learning, compromising and giving it your best shot. Cliche? I’d like to think not.

Anyhow, weddings are a downright joy and yesterday’s was no less. My cousin married a man from Tutong, a district in Brunei whose wedding culture is slightly more unique than others because of the feet-washing ceremony. It was quite exciting because this is the time when people who would pour water on the couples’ feet will hand some money to them. The amount received can be quite staggering at times ^_^  And whilst I was peering about amongst the many photographers trying to snap a decent picture of this ceremony, I got my shoes wet from stepping on the resulting splashes and puddles! No matter though, for the couple received quite a hefty amount yesterday despite being drenched on the feet I was happy for them (but felt quite small next to the heavy artilleries of the professional photographers!) haha.

I hear the bride absolutely loved the cake I made for them, and didn’t want to cut it. The cake itself was spot on with the colours of the dias, which was white with bits of green foliage (and golden hues). I especially enjoyed the fact that my intended lone red flowers on the top that was meant to represent the bride and groom became a literal manifestation as they were indeed wearing red/white. Although, I was told by the bride’s sister that the theme for the family was brown and cream for yesterday’s ceremony, but all I could dare to use was cream for the cake’s ribbon and flower centres. Perhaps I’d be more comfortable to marry pink with brown, like Peggy Porschen’s signature cakes; which is much to the effect of utter girlishness ^_^ I also wanted to try the stems-all-over effect, and boy did that take the whole night to make! Quite satisfying at the end though, especially when everyone liked the overall look

Have a great week ahead!

p/s. And thank you to my sisters who gave a lot of constructive criticisms and suggestions with regards to the colours and pricing of my cakes, which I will of course, take on board ^_^

xoxo
nikkita