just to showcase some of the things i did for the past two weeks.


a feeble attempt to go black - bamboo charcoal macarons with black sesame ganache. i don't think its black enough so back to the drawing board!


rainbow roll cake. amidst all that striped roll cakes i did, this one is my fav!


an order from my best girlfriend, E, for her mom in law's birthday.

the haze has been really bad these few weeks, sometimes even dipping into hazardous levels. friends in singapore/malaysia/indonesia who're affected by it, please take care!

the first half of 2014 went by in a blur. i felt that i haven't been baking much but looking back, i actually made tons of stuff. some of them were uploaded on flickr and forgotten but most of the time, i didn't bother using my DSLR so i just took some shots with my phone and uploaded them on instagram. here are some of the stuff i made + orders i took as well.


i had a couple of orders for japanese-inspired macarons. this is my first year making sakura ones and according to my customers, they were pretty well received. i guess the saltiness of the sakura flowers and leaves offset the sweetness of the macarons. i also experimented with jasmine flavored macarons. jasmine tea is dirt cheap so i had no qualms in dumping a whole lot of leaves in the cream. yay to pronounced jasmine flavor!

you know how much i love junko's roll cake and among so many roll cake recipes i've tried, hers is still the best in terms of taste, texture and flexibility in rolling. like a good basic macaron batter, all you need is just one to experiment with other endless flavor possibilities. i'm not usually a fan of instant coffee from grocery stores since most are too acidic for my liking but i went to isetan last weekend and chanced upon this UCC one from japan which is really really good. its not acidic at all and is pretty strong and full-bodied so i decided to add it into my favorite recipe to make a coffee roll cake. also jazzed it up a little by adding cocoa powder to part of the batter to make the dots. turned out fab!

i was really inspired by this roll cake i saw on a japanese blog recently. it was so pretty i wanted to do the same. i've always thought about making a roll cake like this and felt it would also look great to use it to line the sides of an entremet, like hidemi sugino's fruits rouges. it would look far better if i had just used this instead of a joconde piped with jam as it resulted in deep unsightly gashes after baking.

something to share for a start! my matcha madeleines entry was mentioned on huffington post! and a while back in spring, my sakura roll cake was mentioned on oprah's website. super elated and thankful for the mentions. and now, back to this :)


i think the japanese must be one of the most creative people around. sometime last year i bought two japanese books on patterned roll cakes by junko. while the french may have invented the joconde imprimé, the japanese often take existing creations to new heights. there are lotsa cute and pretty decorated roll cakes in there - strawberry, rilakkuma, pokemon and even koinobori patterned one to commemorate children's day in japan. i set my eyes on this one coz i really like how the pastel dots look on the cake, plus piping dots is not any more different than piping macaron batter, hence i think its safe for a first attempt.

"you eat with your eyes first" is my belief when it comes to baking so i always aim to make pretty looking (of coz delicious) desserts and cakes. ever since knowing the existence of pickled cherry blossoms and how the japanese use it extensively in their beautiful wagashi and sweets, that came top of my most-wanted baking ingredient. so when i made the shiro-an white bean paste, i actually had this in mind already. this sakura roll uses the shiro-an both in the sponge and mousseline filling which i find it a really novel idea. having made sponges which require the use of almond or pistachio paste, i really liked the taste so i wonder what it'll be like to use white bean paste instead.

i've never really been much of a tea drinker but i still find myself buying lotsa tea for baking nevertheless coz i think they taste better in cakes and desserts than just drinking them alone. i've been eyeing on this recipe for quite sometime but i wasn't sure how it would turn out coz this is actually a fatless sponge as it doesn't require the use of oil or butter. i was pretty doubtful intially coz i've not made cakes that didn't require butter but ever since i made the butterless biscuit joconde from hidemi sugino's fruits rouges entremet i realize it actually tasted pretty good. the original recipe uses sencha (i think) but i decided to be adventurous and use gryphon's pearl of the orient instead. its actually jasmine tea infused with rose and its really really nice!

yesterday i went over to my friend vickii's place and we had a little nice baking session. being matcha fanatics lovers it was only natural we bake something matcha so we decided on this. while i've made roll cake (i refuse to call them swiss rolls) before, i've always used the genoise or biscuit sponge method but i hadn't been really happy with the outcome. the cake always turn out dense and somewhat dry. i usually soak biscuit sponges with syrup when i make cakes so the denseness doesn't affect that much. but since roll cakes cannot be soaked, the dry texture is rather apparent. making soufflé sponge adopts an almost different method as the steps are more like making choux pastry, it promises a soft texture so i was rather keen to try it.