i made this for the family dinner on christmas and here's whats left of it. totally didn't get a chance to take any photos until after, and only posted it up 3 days after christmas as i'm still up to my neck with macaron orders. but i decided to share this afterall coz its really good and could be made into any shape and not just a log. the family really liked it and were all praises! took a while to do so many components but it was all worth it.

this is hidemi sugino's miss albion, a chocolate and mint mousse cake which i've made recently and clean forgotten about it. i've been really busy the past few weeks and before i knew it, i've neglected my blog for almost a month. got a few emails asking if i've decided to stop blogging. of course not!!

for my mom's birthday this year, i made her a cheesecake. i was already researching on the entremet i wanted to make, only to hear her say "actually, i love cheesecakes" at the last minute and that really put me in a panic mode. in my 7+ years of baking i don't think i attempted much cheesecakes and i didn't wanna make something i hadn't made before. baking for occasions is just not the time for experimenting. hence i turned to something i made before in my very early days of when i started baking and had good results from it.

this is one of my favorite breads from the japanese bakeries and i had been very intrigued with the swirly pattern. as i read the step-by-step instructions, i realized this is pretty similar to making croissants hence i felt this would be a good opportunity to experience the folding first. truth be told, it wasn't easy at all since along the way i lost count of the total number of folds i did and had the chocolate insert oozing out everywhere - on the countertop, rolling pin and all over my hands. it was messy indeed and i felt that i would have an even bigger problem making croissants since butter would be so much more difficult to handle, but this is such a fantastic recipe it made every effort worthwhile. i had my kitchen smelling like a bakery and the aroma was intoxicating! it was so good i made them twice in a span of one week and the second time was much better after making some minor adjustments.

frankly, i would not have thought of making chocolate bonbons and pralines until a girlfriend got me a box from la maison du chocolat on her holiday. they were so good that i felt i should give it a try sometime. previously i had been pretty intimidated with chocolate tempering and even after i succeeded i just stuck with making decor coz they're easier to handle. this time i worked with a larger batch of chocolate so they're not so easily overheated.

having bought a jar of griottes cherries recently, i have been waiting for an opportunity to make this, hidemi sugino's beautiful rendition of the forêt noire (black forest). i decided to do it for my birthday, which fell on the 7th. whenever it comes to making cakes for the extended family, i'll end up choosing chocolate since this is the most readily accepted one and i don't hv to worry whether they'll find matcha too weird or berries too tart if i were to make those flavors. everyone loves chocolate. having macaron orders back-to-back during my birthday week also meant there was just this much time to churn out a cake and this recipe is really one of the easier ones from sugino's book.

this is the 5th hidemi sugino's recipe that i've attempted and i think i've put this off long enough. being too time consuming to make is one thing (it has 8 components in total including the decor) but i must say that glazing cakes hasn't been my forte and it still isn't. then again, this is the entremet that won mr. sugino the 1991 world pastry cup (coupe du monde de la pâtisserie) so could i possibly miss it? no i couldn't.

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.

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.

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.

i really haven't been baking much lately. apart from the orders i had, the ovens (yes plural, i hv two ovens now) were basically left untouched. i'm not sure why but i seem 2b suffering from a "baking burnout", if such term exists. things are so bad that i'll leave butter or cream cheese at room temperature and then return them to the fridge afterwards without baking anything LOL. i guess going out for desserts with the kakis might also a contributing factor. i wouldn't wanna make more desserts since i'm already going out so often to hv them.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti

my 2nd attempt at biscotti, the first was really long ago, like 2006 or something. was craving for something chocolatey and at the same time captivated by the biscotti over at elyn of e's joie, so i decided to go for it. found out that she's a fan of anna olsen's program called sugar on afc (asian food channel), so am i! and this recipe is adapted from her program so i'm pretty sure it'll be good.