even though i hardly eat desserts these days, i still get the urge to bake every now and then. i've been wanting to recreate this coffee tart for quite sometime since i wasn't very satisfied with the infiniment vanille tart i made 2 years ago. the tart was too thick and the top was bigger than the bottom and looked really unbalanced. couldn't believe i actually went ahead with that. all in all, it was not refined enough by my current standard so i wanted to see if i could do a better job this time round.

i was at the bookstore the other day and came across this book called the cook's book by jill norman. its almost encyclopedia-ish and is very informative. the book covers a wide range of topics on cooking, from step by step instructions on making various sauces to deboning a chicken to making roast lamb and gutting fish. its an amazing book, plus each chapter is written by different chefs, all famous! there's ferran adria on foams & sauces, charlie trotter on meat, rick bayless on mexican cooking, ken hom on chinese, dan lepard on bread etc. i couldn't decide if i should buy the book since i don't do much cooking, but when i came across the chapter on desserts written by pierre hermé, i was sold! the desserts are mostly rustic and is nothing like his ph10, but this lemon tart caught my eye and i especially love the decor so i just had to try it out. plus when was the last time i made a tart? it was eons ago.

i have always wanted to incorporate popcorn into my macarons coz i think the flavor would be so awesome when paired with a salted caramel filling and it really is! all along i've been sticking to one caramel fleur de sel recipe for my macarons which i think is pretty good, but the salted butter caramel cream that pierre herme uses in his macaron book got me really curious. i mean, one that doesn't use fleur de sel, vanilla bean nor glucose/corn syrup, would it be good? i just had to try.

ahh, just in time for some valentines day baking! i recently acquired yet another pierre herme's cookbook 'le livre des fours secs et moelleux de pierre herme'. its a chinese-translated japanese book which features some of the baked goods like madeleines, financiers and gateaux de voyages. of course, being a fan of the lychee, raspberry and rose combo, it goes without saying this would be the 1st thing i was gonna make from the book.

finally, the english version of the much-awaited pierre hermé's macaron book has hit the shelves and i was elated to get my hands on a copy. it features many of his classic and signature macaron recipes like mogador, infiniment vanille, montebello, olive oil vanilla and ispahan as well as the customized ones he did for his clients like jasmine, oolong and carrot orange. there's also a section where he uses exceptional ingredients like foie gras, black and white truffles and 25-year old balsamic vinegar to incorporate into his macarons so its really fantastic.

elated about the book aside, i was actually more excited to dabble with the italian meringue method, my FIRST after all these years of macaron making. macarons are known to be finicky therefore i just shyed away from anything that would make them even more complicated.

plaisir sucré, or sweet pleasure, is one of the many pierre hermé's masterpieces that i adore. apart from the ispahan, this is another well-known creation using a lovely combination of milk choc & hazelnuts. making this again certainly brought back lotsa memories as this was one of the earliest entremets i started out attempting and it reminded me of how intimidated i was with chocolate tempering and multi-component desserts then. and now, years later, it was nice revisiting just to see how i fared.

what comes to mind when you think of eclairs? are they just vanilla custard choux puffs with a hastily applied chocolate glaze which look ugly rustic at best? to me, they're far from that boring ol' combination of vanilla and chocolate. when i think eclairs, i think fauchon, the hyperluxe gourmet food shop in paris. fauchon is definitely synonymous with eclairs and here's why. decked in all sorts of flavors and designs imaginable, from the mona lisa eyes to garden peas to leopard prints on the icing, you'll never look at eclairs the same way again. even without all these adornments i feel that an eclair should be elegant looking - long and thin and topped with a shiny fondant glaze. therefore i started by trying out a relatively safe coffee flavor and pairing them with coffee creme patissiere, coffee fondant glaze + cocoa nibs for that extra crunch.

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.

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.

i've put off making this tart long enough and i'm finally glad i made it. having bookmarked this recipe for almost a year, each time i look at it i just feel like i don't hv the courage to go ahead coz i don't hv so many of the ingredients called for, things like titanium dioxide, tahitian and mexican vanilla beans as well as trimoline (inverted sugar) used for the biscuit cuillere (sponge fingers). in the end i decided to make do with whatever i hv and cut corners whenever possible and luckily for me, the tart turned out glorious still. so far i've used a couple of pierre herme's recipes, from the complicated ones like the emotion ispahan verrines and this vanilla tart to some of the basic recipes like candied citrus peel, pate sablee tart crust, choux pastry, passionfruit milk choc ganache for the mogador macaron etc, i must say his recipes are nothing short of amazing. it really makes me wonder - if my homemade renditions could be this good, what more for those coming out of his own hands, the picasso of pastry himself?

tarte aux fruits rouges, or red fruit tart is a simple summer berry tart thats hard to go wrong with. while i'm not sure if there's a fixed recipe to it but i think the most common version would be to use a pâte sucrée (sweet crust pastry) and crème pâtissière (pastry cream) or custard. in here though, i used pierre herme's pâte sablée crust, a really nice, rich and buttery crust with ground almonds hence the name 'sandy dough'. i then filled the tarts, or rather tartlets with creme d'amandes, a baked almond cream traditionally used in frangipane tarts and brushed with a generous a layer of raspberry jam before adorning them with berries.

i am one lucky girl. i so am. barely two weeks into trying macarons from pierre hermé tokyo which the gf vickii so generously shared them with me, i received a msg in my facebook inbox from another gf, daphne. she went on her honeymoon to europe and got me macarons from pierre hermé paris and some from ladurée as well! i tell ya, ecstasy is an understatement. when she told me she got me a 12-pc box, i literally went over the moon!

it was a dream come true to finally be able to taste pierre hermé's macarons, thx to my lovely friend vickii who so generously shared them with me. of coz, i must also thank vickii's BFF who got them for her from tokyo. since i only wanted ONE BITE, i was elated to see a pretty row of exquisite looking gems that i almost squealed in excitement :p definitely a bonus to be able to try so many flavors. flavors as seen : mogador, macha marron, rose, chocolat, montebello & cafe.

last week saw me through a wedding order and some insane dessert attempts. i made lots of desserts in a span of one week or so, and i dunno where i got the energy & stamina from, consider that i was pretty much shut off few months ago. remember what i said about bringing butter or cream cheese to room temp only to put it back later? i was THAT lazy. then suddenly, i find myself churning out dessert after dessert, never feeling tired at all. basically i think i just wanna challenge myself in creating all these. and everytime i succeed on my first attempt, i get a real sense of satisfaction!

mont blanc