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.

happy new year, guys! as you can see, i made this during christmas so its an overdue post. i wasn't planning on making something christmassy like a buche but i thought this looked like a tree so it was quite apt too! i also had these slanted-side tart tins for sometime now which i wanted to use for hidemi sugino's fig tart but i couldn't find any figs but i'm glad these had been put into good use.

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.

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.

last weekend, i had a dessert order for a wedding. i was really happy coz its been almost a month or so since i made anything decent. it was macarons after macarons after macarons, i missed my desserts! my customer requested some of the items she seen on my blog so here's what i did :

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.

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.

what comes to mind when you think of eclairs? are they just vanilla custard choux puffs with a hastily applied chocolate glaze which look ugly rustic at best? to me, they're far from that boring ol' combination of vanilla and chocolate. when i think eclairs, i think fauchon, the hyperluxe gourmet food shop in paris. fauchon is definitely synonymous with eclairs and here's why. decked in all sorts of flavors and designs imaginable, from the mona lisa eyes to garden peas to leopard prints on the icing, you'll never look at eclairs the same way again. even without all these adornments i feel that an eclair should be elegant looking - long and thin and topped with a shiny fondant glaze. therefore i started by trying out a relatively safe coffee flavor and pairing them with coffee creme patissiere, coffee fondant glaze + cocoa nibs for that extra crunch.

i've put off making this tart long enough and i'm finally glad i made it. having bookmarked this recipe for almost a year, each time i look at it i just feel like i don't hv the courage to go ahead coz i don't hv so many of the ingredients called for, things like titanium dioxide, tahitian and mexican vanilla beans as well as trimoline (inverted sugar) used for the biscuit cuillere (sponge fingers). in the end i decided to make do with whatever i hv and cut corners whenever possible and luckily for me, the tart turned out glorious still. so far i've used a couple of pierre herme's recipes, from the complicated ones like the emotion ispahan verrines and this vanilla tart to some of the basic recipes like candied citrus peel, pate sablee tart crust, choux pastry, passionfruit milk choc ganache for the mogador macaron etc, i must say his recipes are nothing short of amazing. it really makes me wonder - if my homemade renditions could be this good, what more for those coming out of his own hands, the picasso of pastry himself?

tarte aux fruits rouges, or red fruit tart is a simple summer berry tart thats hard to go wrong with. while i'm not sure if there's a fixed recipe to it but i think the most common version would be to use a pâte sucrée (sweet crust pastry) and crème pâtissière (pastry cream) or custard. in here though, i used pierre herme's pâte sablée crust, a really nice, rich and buttery crust with ground almonds hence the name 'sandy dough'. i then filled the tarts, or rather tartlets with creme d'amandes, a baked almond cream traditionally used in frangipane tarts and brushed with a generous a layer of raspberry jam before adorning them with berries.