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. 

Read the rest of this post >>

Simple as it is – just chocolate and strawberries. Fresh strawberries are dipped in melted chocolate so that the chocolate makes a thin coat over the strawberries. Let the chocolate-coated strawberries stand in the fridge for just a few minutes, you will get a very impressive dessert. 

I hadn’t known about the chocolate-dipped fruits until I went to Oktoberfest in Germany where I, for the very first time, was introduced to a white chocolate-dipped strawberry. My exchange friends recommended me to try these dipped strawberries and I was amazed about the texture and the fascinating combination of the two classic things. 

Read the rest of this post >>

These tartlets are amazing and very simple to make. One reason is that the tart shells are indeed wonton skins. They are baked for a very short time in the oven, and after that they can be used as cups for these tartlets. 

Wonton skins are easily consumed from Asian supermarkets at a reasonable price. Rolling out tart crust in hot weather always troubles me a lot. However, with these wontons, I still could make an appealing dessert. The baked wonton skins cracked in your mouth and blended with the fillings, creating a fascinating experience in your mouth. 

The recipe calls for mascarpone. However, without having this expensive creamcheese on hands, I used normal creamcheese to make these tartlets. The tarts still tasted good. 

Read the rest of this post >>

Today is one of my friends’ birthday. We had a very funny party last weekend with some other friends to celebrate her birthday. And a week before that, her husband asked me to make a birthday cake as a surprise for her. 

I was thinking about what kind of cake I would use for this birthday cake. I thought that chiffon cake would be a good choice since the cake is very light, tender and the texture of a chiffon cake often makes people amazed and get excited. I have made an orange chiffon cake before using cake flour. This time I wanted to test another recipe with all-purpose flour to see if I still could handle it. So, after searching, I found a recipe for lemon chiffon from Taste of Home magazine that uses all-purpose flour. 

I haven’t had many occasions to make birthday cakes (this is my first time) and to practise decoring the cake with frosting. Thus, I have few experience with different kinds of cake icing and the decoration tools. It was also a risk to try the new recipe for the first time. Luckily, things turned out smoothy and I was very glad with the final product.

The recipe was suitable for one 10” tube pan, but I had only one 8” tube pan, which I used to make my tiny orange chiffon. So I wanted to try the chiffon cake with normal round springform pan to test the quality and the difference. So I still made with a full recipe and divided the batter into two pans and baking them together. The chiffon cake with the tube pan was perfect, whereas the cake with the springform didn’t rise to such perfect degree since the center of the cake was heavy without a tub for the batter to "lean" on for rising. So I got my answer. 

Therefore, I used the cake baked with tube pan to decorate this birthday cake. I cut the cake into two layers, and made lemon curd as the filling between them. I filled the central "hole" with strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, which made my friends surprised too. For the frosting, I only used whipping cream with icing sugar. I didn’t want the frosting to be too sweet, so I just add enough icing sugar, which made the frosting not too stiff and shiny and caused more difficulties for me when decorating the cake. This is always the problem for me when making cakes since I always look for less-sugar in everything I want to eat. However, I was willing to sacrifice this for the better taste of the cake, which I knew that it would be much more welcomed by my friends. 

We had a very good time at the party. We also recorded what was going on and made into a clip. What a memorable friends-gathering to me.

  Read the rest of this post >>