I felt in love with red velvet cake the first time I made it, which was more than a year ago. So far I’ve re-made it several times, following the recipe on Joy of Baking website, for my home parties. Most my friends loved it as I did.

This time, I used the same recipe for making red velvet cake, but I made them into cake balls dipped into melted chocolate, and I seemed to get double joyfulness from eating these cake balls. They are delicious as the same red velvet cake plus the bitter-sweetness of chocolate. The chocolate coating, after being chilled in the fridge, became hard and they made cracking sound in the mouth. I love that experience when eating these cute cake balls. I just thought they were now more perfect to invite friends who visit our home, offering some interesting surprise with these cake balls.

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A new birthday cake I made for my mother’s friend’s daughter – which was on November 9th.

I made a Japanese cotton cheesecake the day before that special day, and I intended to decorate the cake on that day. Unfortunately, I was not feeling so well, but I had promised to make her a birthday cake and bring over to her home, I thought maybe I had better use fresh flowers to decorate the cake, which meant less decorating work I need to do and the cake might still look lovely.

Just as I thought, these white and red roses made my cake look so lively. This time I was quite pleased with the combination of colors I’d chosen. All the other works I did were to whip the cream, cover the cake with whipped cream as frosting, pipe cake borders, write some words and lastly, insert the roses onto the cake. It was simple and I could finish the cake on time, still spared few minutes to take pictures of this cake before I brought it to her house.

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I made these eclairs the same way I made mini cream puffs the other day. It was still choux pastry piped into the eclair shapes using a plain tip. However, I only had a plain tip of small round tip, so it took more effort to pipe the dough into the right shapes. And the result was that my eclairs were too thin to cut into two halves, so I had to use two single eclairs and filled the whipped cream between them, like making sandwiches. One piece of eclair was dipped in melted chocolate. The eclairs were very flavorful and tasty. All are tender and seem to melt in your mouth.

These mini cream puffs are great to invite friends visiting our home. They look so cute and can be eaten whole at a time They are made with choux pastry, filled with cream and some berries. I used whipped cream as this is what I often have in my fridge.

Drizzling the puffs with some melted chocolate made them more flavorful to eat.

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I made the "King of cakes" for the first time. I was curious about this cake when I first saw them in the book "professional baking". I was first introduced to cakes with lots of thin layers by my Indonesian friend who gave us a box of "kueh lapis" – a traditional cake to Indonesian Chinese during Chinese New Year. That kueh lapis is more moist and softer than this baumkuchen. What is amazing about these two multi-layer cakes is that I can "peel" one by one layer easily. It is very interesting to do that, of course when you have some time to spare while chitchatting with friends.

It takes lots of time and patience to make this cake. I had to stand by the oven all of the baking time until I finished the last batch of the batter- each batch was only 30g. The method of baking this cake is very new to me, so I over-baked some layers, that’s why my cake didn’t have a uniform color. Still, I felt happy with this first trial as the cake looked more natural. How time consuming and complicated the baking process is, it is not comparable with the traditional way of making this tree cake with the turning spit.

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This year I can spend the mid-autumn festival with my family. I didn’t have a true meaning of mid-autumn fest for four years when I was studying abroad. 

A month before mid-autumn, mooncakes are already available out there in the market. However, once you like baking, you will want to make your own mooncakes for your family, relatives and friends. I’ve just returned home for neary two years. With many other things I need to take care of, I tried as best as I could to make some mooncakes (for me, they were quite a lot, I made about 40 mooncakes and they all have been finished, so I am going to make some more). 

There are some stories to share with the mooncakes I made this year. As the manufactured mooncakes are too sweet, most adults don’t like them, but they still have to buy home at least a pair for the pass-away ancesters as a tradition. I don’t like manufactured mooncakes either, though I like the flavor of mooncakes. So, one reason I made mooncakes was to make them less sweet, less oily, and so healthier. 

…with taro and sesame seeds filling 

…with mungbeans and sesame seeds filling

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It’s my fiance’s brother’s birthday. So I made this birthday cake to complete a warm family party at his house with his grandparents and parents. 

I was thinking of what cake I should make as this was not for the kids or childrens, but for all adults to enjoy it, and more importantly it was for old generations. The cake should be neither too fat or too sweet, and should be soft, moist. 

In the end, I decided to make this cake, though it was quite troublesome for me as I had to make the chocolate syrup myself, and I had only one round pan, so I had to make the cake batter  twice and baked the cake twice. 

I was also responsible for cooking all the dishes for the dinner party, and I had only around 6 hours to do everything. Fortunately, my fiance helped me a lot in the kitchen, as he is always willing to. 

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It’s my first time making and eating pavlova. I got the recipe from Joy of Baking. Generally speaking, I liked the new experience of making a new kind of cake with egg whites, seeing how a crisp crust is formed outside to keep the soft mashmallow layer inside. I am always inspired by trying new things. 

However, though I reduced sugar amount by one third, the cake was still very sweet to my liking. But I was afraid to reduce more sugar as I scared that the cake would not keep shape and right texture. It was the first trial, so I didn’t prefer to make many changes. Joy of baking is a relaiable source of recipes to me, so I often make changes to sugar and cream amount only. 

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