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.

crêpe suzette is a traditional french dessert consisting of a crêpe with an orange sauce, topped with orange liqueur then serve flambéed. though a dessert, i made these for breakfast this morning (without the flambé of course) and it was really good.

its always nice to revisit old recipes. i remember this being the best out of so many panna cottas i've attempted and is also my hubby's favorite but ironically i always make the mango version far more frequently and only made this once. and despite the fact that december is not the strawberry season, i managed to snag a really sweet and aromatic punnet. rare consider that the berries we get are usually pretty sucky.

to those who are celebrating - wishing you a prosperous dragon year, my dear readers! have a wonderful time with your family and friends!

새해 복 많이 받으세요! 가족함께 친구들과 좋은시간 보내세요!

hi guys, i'm back! for now at least :p today's my hubby's birthday and he really loves tropical flavors so i decided to make him something i came across a taiwanese pastry book. this is actually the 1st time i've made an entremet using something other than japanese and french books so i wasn't very confident about the outcome. true enough, i spotted quite a few mistakes along the way and this cake is a result of some major tweaking.

i just realized i don't make tarts or cookies as often as i would like mainly due to the weather. the dough gets soft and sticky really easily and i simply don't like going through the hassle of re-freezing & re-rolling the dough, but i decided i want some variety in the stuff i bake so i forsee i'll be making stuff like cookies, tarts & bread more often from now on.

i don't think there was ever once i would polish off a whole punnet of strawberries in one sitting but ever since i discovered eating them with balsamic vinegar & sugar, it was all too effortless to do so. basically i think the strawberries we get in singapore are pretty sucky so they need some dressing up. macerating makes the berries extra juicy as the process draws out the juices and enhances its natural sweetness.

i'm kinda clueless when it comes to choosing grapefruits. i don't know how to determine which ones hv got ruby red flesh and which are the ones with yellow flesh. so the other day while randomly picking up grapefruits and then later on discovered that i've got some really beautiful ones with flesh almost as deeply colored as that of blood oranges, the 1st thing that came to mind was to make grapefruit marmalade!

i bought a tub of cassis puree almost a year ago and it was basically left untouched. frankly there really aren't many dessert recipes that use cassis so when i saw this from hidemi sugino's book, i jumped at the chance.

i'm not sure if anyone has tried this combination before but the moment i did i was hooked! i think its even better than nutella & banana. i hadn't then coz i really couldn't visualize how the combination would work, since i've always associated apples with cinnamon at most.

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.

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.