Made a cake for the yearly cheese fondue party 🙂

Base: Genoise & Caramel Syrup
Filing: Swiss Butter Cream mixed with Nutella
Frosting: Dark Chocolate Ganache
Decoration: Nougatine

New bread. This time with 25% wheat flour, 80% bread flour + sunflower, chia, sesame, and flax seeds + some organic bulgur wheat

One of my favorite pastry chef just turned 30 so I figure it would be a good opportunity for me to bake something for the party. I believe she was pleased.
The stripes on the side are a bit more subtle than I wanted though.

Lemon zest genoise filled with a mix of lemon buttercream and lemon cream.
Top with yellow almond paste and orange tuiles.

I also made some meringue, sugar work and other tuile cookies but ended up not using any of that really.

Orange Tuiles:

Thin 3 inch tall sides made of genoise + tuiles dough (up side down here)

After filling, placing the side around the cake and topping with almond paste:

Final touch with lemon drops and some orange tuiles 

– May 6, 2018
Making Croissants for the first time in a while…

Not spending too much time on cooking / baking but I survive somehow…

• White / Milk chocolate fudge with rum raisins
• Chicken liver paté with basil
• Onion Soup with bread & cheese

Poach Pears, Blueberries & Walnuts Pie

Lemon Tart with Swiss Meringue

Pears poached in red wine with orange, lemon zest & cinnamon

Pastry Cream with Nocello liquor and Walnuts

Sweet dough (recipe: Pierre Hermé)

Apparently “Friendsgiving” is a thing.
Baking “Date & Pecan” Pie & Lemon Meringue Pie.

I followed this recipe which is pretty good: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/brown-butter-pecan-pie-espresso-dates

As always for the Lemon Pie I used Pierre Hermé’  sweet dough & lemon cream recipe and added Swiss meringue on top.

Trying out Christophe Adam’s recipe for Choux Pastry.  Cooked at 350F for 30 minutes.

Milk – 320ml
Water – 320ml
Salt – 8g
Sugar – 24g
Butter – 320g
Vanilla – 8g
Flour – 320g
Eggs – 560g (10)

I’ll try a slightly softer dough next time (either more milk or more eggs) – Also need to crack the oven door open after maybe 20 minutes to remove the steam and see how it goes…

Some cooking from last week…

Upping my game a notch (date night) – The original recipe is from Food & Wine under “Striped Bass Crudo with Popcorn Crema and Shishito Vinaigrette”.

I found some Wahoo fish instead and thought I’d spice things up (literally) by swapping the Shishito pepper with Serrano…

Also made some Lentil Purée with Cilantro (Bon Appétit mag) and Flatbread and a nice Salted Caramel / Chocolate tart for desert.

The wine pairing was Maipe Torrontes from Mendoza, Argentina. Pretty happy about my selection on that note.

Note: The food was the highlight of the evening really 😉

Also, more Cannelés. This time I added some raisins & rum.

Baking a lot of Cannelés these days. Trying to perfect this specialty from Bordeaux, France.
Bought both copper and aluminum molds and used melted beeswax instead of butter to coat the molds.
So far my recipe looks like this but I’m modifying it at every try.
Next step? Buy more molds 🙂

1L Milk
300g Flour
400g Confectioner Sugar
100g Sugar (mixed with the milk)
100g Butter (browned and filtered gives 80g really)
80g Rum
8g Vanilla Extract
(for about 20 Cannelés)

Chocolate Cake with Coffee Meringue

(Dark Chocolate Ganache + Salted Milk Chocolate Glaze)
#baking

Potluck at work. Thought I’d make something 🙂
Pralines buttercream cake with chocolate glaze, spicy tuiles, and nougatine.

I wanted to do something bright and fiery for my next cake 🙂

Vanilla Genoise, & Butter Cream with homemade Blueberry preserve filling. Mirror Glaze & Sugar Rocks