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.

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.