my mom turns 50 on the 30th so i took this opportunity to make her a cake, and this is probably also one of the rare gateaux and entremets that i'm making these days. planning started some days back coz i wanted something that would be well received, so exotic flavors like cassis or ispahan was totally out. i decided on this, the orange chocolate cake and began making the chocolate curl decor and orange seches (thinly sliced oranges that hv been soaked in a sugar syrup overnight and then oven-dried on very low heat for 2 hrs) a day before.
just a random post. don't you just love pastel & soft shades like these? i'm adore them! clockwise from top left : strawberry yogurt smoothie, strawberry shortcake, matcha souffle roll cake, berries.
nothing much going on lately but i think i won't be baking as often. am trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle by cutting down on sugar, simple carbs (white flour/rice etc), processed food & meat. shall spare you the boring health talk but i'll wanna see how far i can go with this. wish me luck.
remember quite sometime back, 10 months ago to be exact i blogged about embarking on a little project to make my own vanilla extract? well its finally ready and i started decanting it about a month ago.
the reason why it took me so long was due to an unreliable recipe. ok maybe i shouldn't call it unreliable since there might just be some people who succeeded with the recipe and got their extract ready in 6 weeks, which i highly doubt so. i followed this recipe from the traveler's lunchbox and i did what was required - poured in a bottle of nielsen massey's vanilla extract (118ml) into one liter of vodka & added in 6 newly scraped vanilla bean seeds + pods and gave it a little shake every few days and it should be ready in about 6 weeks. but 6 weeks later the color was still extremely light and reeked very strongly of alcohol so i knew it wasn't ready yet. another 3 months passed (i did throw in somemore used ones along the way) and i was getting impatient.
was rather hesitant to post this at first coz i think its really nothing special. well, its just cupcakes! but this recipe is so good i just hv to share.
