Earl Grey, Hazelnut & Chocolate Yule Log... Happy New Year 2015!

This was the first time I had prepared a dessert for a Christmas meal.

It was usually Jenny’s job to do it, ever since she’s working as a professional patisserie, she doesn’t bake much at home.

This cake consists of 4 components:

Earl grey creme

Hazelnut mousse

Chocolate sponge cake

Chocolate chantilly cream

I quite enjoyed preparing the yule log & I'm sure I’ll be making this from time to time as I really like the combo.

A rich chocolate cake with a smooth nutty mousse & a sophisticated note of earl grey tea, all combine every well. 

Everyone loved it & commented that it’s very nice.

This has been a great year for me in completing my Ph.D.

Thank you all for your patience & re-joining me this year & the coming years.

Wishing you all the best & happy new year.

Caramel & Pear...

I went to Venice with my family as a celebration of passing my PhD viva.

These are the scenes from Venice, it’s a pretty city.

I baked a Japanese cotton cake before going to Venice & immediately fall in love with the light & spongy texture.

I baked it again when I got back to England but a plain & simple sponge cake wouldn’t satisfy my obsessions with photo & food styling.

I poached some pears with white wine then I whipped some cream with salted caramel I made from last time.

My decorating skills become worse… Luckily I bought some shimmer sprays last time when I visited a supermarket.

Shook the can & sprayed on, the cake was covered with a gold shimmer, the photo couldn’t really show the shimmering effect but it does look much prettier.

Cake Roll with Earl Grey Poached Asian Pear

After reading the newspaper on pear desserts, I was craving for pear mousse dessert.

My sister has been making cake rolls & chiffon cakes, so I wanted to make something different but ended up making cake roll as well because of its simplicity.

Cake roll can be simple filled with some whipped cream but I wanted something more & it ended up with a caramel mousse & some poached pears as the filling.

The recipe for the cake base is from a chinese website.

It’s called japanese cotton cake, as the name said it’s indeed very spongy & light.

For the choice of pears, I prefer Asian pear as it’s juicy & crunchy with a refreshing fragrant.

I’ve used oolong tea to poach Asian pear for the oriental theme, this time I used earl grey tea instead. 

Everything goes wonderfully together & the caramel mousse doesn’t overtake the delicate note from the earl grey tea & the Asian pear.

Milestone in Life... Blueberry Cheesecake

I’m absolutely excited to say that I passed my PhD viva last week & now I’m a doctor, well, not official until I receive a confirmation letter from my university.

So, what next? (I got asked so many times)

The first thing I did was baking cakes from my kitchen, blueberry cheesecake & japanese cotton cake roll.

The plan afterwards is taking a break & slowing down for a bit, well, until Christmas then I’ll start looking for jobs in research & development.

I do miss all the fun of baking, food styling & photography.

I can’t wait to start baking, blogging & travelling.

The recipe I’m sharing is a chilled blueberry cheesecake, which I’ve made several times.

I finally managed to take some photos before it’s all gone :)

Blueberry cheesecake is my sister, Jenny’s best make, she is now busy working as a pastry chef in a hotel so I recreated the recipe for my family.

Don’t miss out the jelly layer, it’s absolutely delicious with the tangy cream cheese mousse & the nutty crust.

Finally...... Raspberry & Passionfruit Tarts

Finally submitted my thesis yesterday night, though it’s not completely over, awaiting viva in a few weeks.

I have no ideas what to do for the rest of the week apart from all those writing & editing.

My mind is still about writing thesis, need something to divert my mind & focus.

I think it’s a great time to start baking again & updating my blog.

The recipe I’m sharing now is from a while back in summer.

A request from my sister, I’d asked her what she’d like to have for desserts the day before we went picking raspberries.

Cheesecake was on the list but passionfruit & raspberry tart sounded wonderful, plus it wasn't difficult to make at all.

We’ve had tart passion framboise from Laduree, it’s amazingly delicious.

Although my sister has the cookbook, it’s not at hand so I simply googled the recipe for it & found a recipe from Bertha’s blog.

Crunchy tart crust, rich yet exotic passionfruit cream & tangy raspberries, just a wonderful combination.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

Hello readers, I come back for another quick update!

As a little breakup from my writing up, I baked some chocolate cupcakes the other day.

It had been a long time since there was a nice smell of cakes from my kitchen & it’s just great to do a bit of baking.

So, I took some photographs & decided to have a quick update for the blog here.

This recipe uses about 300 g of chocolate, so you can tell it really is ultra rich.

As I like my chocolate cakes to be bittersweet, I reduced the sugar.

I hope you would like it, bon appétit :)

Just to say hi.... with a recipe

 Hello readers.

I’ve been away from baking & blogging for a while as I’m writing up my thesis for my Ph.D.

I'm not even halfway yet with my writing…

Writing up is such a long & boring process, sometimes I wish someone can write it up for me, which is totally impossible...

To break it from my boring writing, I thought I should update the blog & let you know that I haven’t abandoned this site.

Just that I can only focus at my thesis, it’s probably one of the most important piece of writing in my life.

I hope next time when I blog, I would already submit my thesis :)

Also a quick update of the recipe, I baked this for my niece’s 1st birthday in early February.

It’s gorgeous yet simple & easy to bake.