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.