i've been very inspired by all the beautiful eclairs i'm seeing on instagram, namely the ones at maitre choux by joakim prat as well as l'eclair de genie's by christophe adam. of course, how could i forget sadaharu aoki's? his are amazing as well. i don't think i've ever blogged much about eclairs coz i usually shy away from making them. like frosted cakes, they're not my forte. but i think i'm definitely getting better at this.



for this attempt, i used strawberry creme diplomat for the filling. i added strawberry puree into the creme patissiere, then folded in creme chantilly. so basically, creme diplomat is pastry cream lightened with whipped cream. and for the glaze, it was strawberry flavored white chocolate ganache. i don't fancy pouring fondant that much, so white chocolate glaze is the way to go. i also decorated some with a sprinkling of raspberry powder and fresh raspberries. they were soooo good.



in the past, i've always used dorie greenspan/pierre herme's pate a choux recipe. this time i decided to use chez shibata's recipe, i've had chef takeshi shibata's book for the longest time and it was only now that i'm beginning to look at it. chef shibata has pastry shops in japan as well as in places like shanghai and bangkok, and his salted caramel eclairs adorned with cubes of butter is one of the best sellers. i think his eclair recipe is far better compared to the others because it uses bread flour as well as baking them on low heat (150C for 55 mins). as opposed to those baked on high heat from the start, baking them on low heat for a long time ensures they're baked thoroughly so you get really crisp and hollow shells. whenever i try the other methods in the past, my choux would brown too quickly and i get soggy centers. not anymore! i also used a fluted piping tip (wilton 8B) for piping these. using tips like these ensure even baking. if you don't have such tip, you could get one, or use a fork to score lines after piping. i also like his creme patissiere recipe, it uses cake flour to thicken instead of corn starch. i think the texture is way better, not thick and gluey but smooth and glossy.



recipe is from a book, so i won't be posting it, as usual. the book シェ・シバタ スイーツのエスプリ can be found on amazon.co.jp.

i was supposed to make this entremet together with my friend A but due to conflicting schedules we were never able to make it. as you can probably tell, i hardly make entremets these days. everything seemed like a "been there, done that" for me. i mean, do i wanna make YET another berry entremet? nope. matcha, chocolate, hazelnut, pistachio? meh. right now, if i ever make one, i want to work with flavor combinations i've not tried before. this one is a good example. i have had pretty good results working with caramel (bergamote and hidemi sugino's bresilienne) so pear caramel seemed like a good flavor combination.


layers from bottom are hazelnut almond joconde sponge, caramel mousse, pear mousse, caramel liquid soaked pear compote. this one was really good, very light despite it has so much egg yolk in it. i always have tons of egg yolks left after macaron orders so this recipe is good for getting rid the leftovers.


this entremet is good because it doesn't require any seasonal ingredients. it uses canned pears so you can make it anytime. it also contains pear liqueur which i believe most of us will not have, so for the imbibage i just used the syrup from the can. this is also the 3rd recipe from chef koji yamamoto of patisserie planetes. i've tried making the fraise exotique and vanille rouge and they were awesome! recipe from cake chef.

wow ok, it must be eons ago (10 months, to be exact!) since i last made an entremet. i was afraid if i don't make one soon, i'll *really* forget how to do it. i was in a mood for something pink and pretty so i decided on a berry entremet. while no stranger to berry entremets (i've made countless - hidemi sugino's paradis, fruits rouges, sous bois etc), i've not made a sliced one like this so i was really looking forward to it.

the girlfriend went to taiwan again and gifted me with a box of chocorons from sadaharu AOKI, taipei! arent these gorgeous? chocorons are basically chocolate-coated macarons and we were discussing about aoki's desserts on whatsapp just before she went on her trip, didnt expect her to actually get me a box of these. don't i just have the awesomest girlfriends? they always bring me stuff from patisseries out of town :D

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.

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!!

rouge means red in french and its just in time for some sprucing up on my blog. somehow i've been doing lotsa brown/yellow bakes lately (unintentionally actually) and i kinda miss working with berries and roses. did my usual rounds of checking out new entremets on my favorite website cakechef and came across this vibrant looking entremet.

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.

this is the entremet i mentioned that it took me almost a month to complete. i usually complete my entremet within a day so this is the first (and hopefully the last time) i'm gonna do this. also, this is also the first time i'm using entremet recipe from a blog. when it comes to long and complicated recipes, i don't usually like taking them from blogs for fear that certain ingredients or steps would be missed out. i mean i'm guilty of it at times, not deliberately of course. sometimes i tend to overlook certain things, luckily it doesn't happen too often and my readers have always been kind (and forgiving) enough to point out my mistakes. anyway, i saw this recipe from dailydelicious' blog and it was so beautiful i just had to attempt it myself.

i was pretty excited about this entremet since i've never made entremets using half-sphere mold, neither have i tried red wine poached pears (i've only attempted poached pears with spices).

mother's day falls on the 13th which is just two days from now and i made this cake for the mothers in my maternal family (mom, grandma & aunt). i wanted something feminine and pretty hence i added some heart-shaped chocolate decor and tinted them pink. think it would be even better if i had some chocolate transfer sheets on hand.

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.

i hope you're not tired of seeing yet another entremet on my blog! it was my friend's birthday last weekend so i made her a cake. i chose a simple one from one of my japanese pastry books and this is basically a white chocolate vanilla entremet with strawberry syrup-soaked almond biscuit sponge and macerated strawberries in spices.

when i bought hidemi sugino's book, this was one of the first entremets i wanted to try out - a coffee and caramel mousse cake but i ended putting off coz i couldn't find the right mousse rings. and when i managed to find the right one, it was the wrong size. was pretty dismayed coz it looked less elegant than his original masterpiece but oh well, this would have to do until i go hunt for the right ones in japan.

pretty excited about this coz its the 1st time i'm using oval molds for my entremets, attempted caramel glaze and also dabbled with a new ingredient - the buddha's hand citron or bushukan in japanese. the citron is pretty similar to lemon in taste and texture, the only funny thing is there isn't any pulp or seeds in there, just peel & pith. tastewise i find it sweeter and more aromatic than lemon and its easily my favorite citrus now.

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.

i was elated that these two french bakeries have opened up back to back on our shores so i couldn't wait to check them out! i first knew about eric kayser through his 'sweet and savory tarts' book and as for PAUL, with over 400 franchises worldwide, its hard not to have seen this name. having experienced very bad service on my 1st trip to PAUL, i knew better than to sit-in at the restaurant again. so takeaway it was.

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.

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.

my 1st plated dessert! as you know, i've always been fascinated with the plated/molecular stuff and hv wanted to attempt making but i was too intimidated with the number of components as well as hard-to-find ingredients like microgreens as well as the various chemicals like xanthan gum and calcium chloride. this recipe is from johnny iuzzini's dessert fourplay, a book that had been so underutilized (i've only used it once) so i'm glad i was able to find something relatively simple from it that doesn't require the use of any chemical.