something i tried from a new chiffon cake book i bought last week. i realize i don't look at chiffon cakes like the way i used to in the past coz they're made in so many exotic flavors like earl grey, black sesame, yuzu, purple sweet potato, rose, matcha etc these days. no longer are they just limited to boring flavors like pandan and chocolate. decided on this cake coz i wanted to put my really expensive $60/kg sevarome pistachio paste into good use. the cake turned out really soft and fluffy and is probably the softest chiffon cake i've ever tasted. was really good! and chiffon cakes aren't exactly the most photogenic subjects around so i only hv this pic.

*recipe removed due to copyright restrictions.

i seriously cant think of anything more delicious, pretty and feminine than this, the ispahan. unless you dislike rose, it would be a crime to skip this. with some red rose petals and raspberries leftover from the weekend, i just HAD to make these again.

i can't believe i've not heard of rose petal jam, or jelly until i saw this as one of the components of a verrine i intend to make. given my love for rose there was no way i could miss this out so i went ahead and bought the reddest rosiest red roses i could lay my hands on. i knew the color was gonna turn out pretty and striking and true enough, it was a blood red hue not unlike raspberry jam.

i had macaron orders for two consecutive days. first one was a wedding order, from the bride to her bridesmaids as thank-you gifts. flavors are rose, pistachio & dark choc.

second one - birthday gifts. flavors are matcha adzuki, passionfruit milk choc, caramel fleur de sel & dark choc.

** edited to add : one more last minute order. rose, caramel fleur de sel, black sesame.

i made 200 macarons these two days and the aftermath is extreme dark circles under eyes and aching back, hands & feet. so so tired and desperately need some sleep now *yawns*

apart from sadaharu aoki & hidemi sugino, i was told that toshi yoroizuka (鎧塚 俊彦) is another prominent pastry chef in japan and if i were to go to japan i must visit his boutique at midtown tokyo. frankly, i've not heard of him so i googled and found out that this has quite alot of his recipes (i think its his official site). the only thing is they're in japanese and apart from ingredients used, the method & steps are not stated at all. this is actually not surprising consider that if you can attempt professional level cakes and entremets, you should hv already memorized the steps by heart. i wouldn't say i was very confident but i was up for the challenge. imagine, i had to rely solely on google translate to translate the text from japanese to english + make this without any written steps, its a little like playing with fire.

i never knew i would hv craving for a simple vanilla cake with a glass of cold milk since i've always thought i had "complex tastebuds" but i did so i went hunting for a recipe in the middle of the night. i didn't wanna spend an hour baking a cake therefore i opted for cupcakes instead. i had really good results with magnolia bakery's red velvet cupcakes sometime back so i just wanted to try their famous vanilla cupcake recipe this time round.

my collection of chinese cookbooks, mostly on french patisserie and translated from japanese. i hv alot more chinese than english ones coz its really difficult to find english books on french/japanese patisserie and entremets. most french or japanese books would usually be translated to chinese, seldom are they translated to english so i'm really glad i can read them. i spent a small fortune on these but its still much cheaper than going to pastry school :p

as i was browsing through my chinese cookbook collection, i came across this cake recipe which i found very enticing. a weekend cake, or gateau de voyage is a traditional french pound cake thats rich and buttery. i don't fancy butter/pound cakes much coz i find they use wayyyyy too much butter and take wayyyyy to long to bake. plus they're just too rustic for my liking. but perhaps its the lovely combination of spices, rum, nuts and candied peel in this one that makes me wanna go ahead... and there's just something really christmassy about it too.