A girlfriend's birthday cake

I bought two new cooking books recently. What's surprising is that:

1) I rarely ever buy cooking books, most of the time I borrow books from the library and scan the recipes I like to keep as jpeg files in my laptop.

2) The books are in Chinese! (Okay, one is fully in Chinese, the other is English/Chinese). Although I scored A1s for my O AND A levels (don't ask how I did it, I really have no idea), my Chinese is actually pretty sub-par and it's been so long since I last wrote any Chinese characters that most of the time, I find myself forgetting how to write even the most basic characters...(I'm always fearful that I'll forget how to write my own name in Chinese. Haha). I mean, I can read Chinese pretty okay, just don't ask me to write, so to buy the Chinese cookbooks is really a rarity indeed. It's just that I love layered cakes desserts and most of the pretty intricate looking entremets cookbooks are all in Chinese (or Japanese or French, which sadly I know neither). Thus, it can also be that reading the books I buy will allow me to brush up on my Chinese reading? :)

Anyway, exactly a month ago, it was one of my best girlfriend's birthday. Since I've been baking a cake for most of my besties this year for their birthdays, this was no exception. She, who doesn't like sweets stuff muchos, will probably suit a fruity cake yeah? And looking through one of my new books, I decided to make a grapefruit mousse cake.

Leftover miniature cakes...

Blood orange and grapefruit tart

Blood oranges. Doesn't that just sounds so good already? Scouring the Internet for recipes is sort of like a habitual daily routine for me. I love fruits. All sorts of fruits (most of the time). The citrus family are favourites - the lemons, the oranges, the limes. So when I kept seeing blood oranges in recipes, I was intrigued. Never before have I seen those red hued beauties. So when I read the papers on one weekend, reporting that blood oranges are in season and are available at selected grocery stores. Do I really need to say more?

In fact, I was so eager for a taste of these babies, that even though they cost a pretty penny, I bought two bags of them. The first was bought by the Sister, then several days later, after sampling the citrus fruit at home (wow), I got myself another bag (cos, who knows when they might come in season again...). Logical reasoning yes?

Bloody blood oranges

Grapefruit mandarin pomegranate white tea jelly

Singapore, being this hot humid tropical island, brings to mind ice-creams, chilled citrus drinks, and fresh fruits. Isn't it a great thing to have such things on hand on a typical hot day? Licking an ice-cream cone, sipping a cool beverage, or munching on refreshing fruits. Mmmmmm. Bliss.

Well, this dessert is splendid cos it contains citrus fruits (mandarins and grapefruits), is cold as it is refrigerated, and the best part is that I don't need to switch on the oven and make myself even hotter than I already was. It's also flat out easy to make, say, ten minutes top? Okay, maybe not ten minutes if you count the peeling fruits time and chilling time. It does take ten minutes to prepare with ready ingredients though!

 

Grapefruit mandarin pomegranate white tea jelly with strawberries

Grapefruit tarts and pumpkin apple muffins

Well, I've been lazy editing photos so I've a huge ton of photos left to do up. So far, I'm only touching on my food pictures cos I feel happy thinking about them. There's still pictures of friends and family to be posted. Perhaps on FB? Less editing to do thank god. (:

Here's some Grapefruit creme brulee tarts that were made when I was experimenting with dough and also, some pumpkin apple muffins that were made near Halloween, where pumpkins were in abundence. (:

Lost.

Oh my god. It's the end of April. In less than 2 months. I'm going to kiss QUT bye-bye. Graduation. I'm so not looking forward to it. I have so many choices I have no idea which to decide on. One thing I detest at this moment is anyone who ask the fatal question "So what are your plans after graduation?". The million dollar answer to the question is "I don't know, so stop asking me."

Pistachio paste is used for the pistachio buttercream.

Macarons from front to back - Coffee; Grapefruit; Pistachio.

Koko black chocolate is superb. I decided that since I like chocolates, and like muffins, I should just combine the two so I don't eat double the fats. snigger. Rough chunks of these in a muffin? Yummy.

Special two-in-one muffin. Nah. Actually it's leftover batter. (:

Fiona & Claudia's graduations + Ludwig's farewell. I baked green tea muffins and checkerboard cookies and dressed them up in the pretty packaging from where else but my fave store in Singapore...Daiso! (:

I tried my hand at baking other bread besides focaccia. Sweet buns dough, with various fillings.

I like the chocolate ones best. No surprise. ;)

Lemons lemons lemons. I love zesting the lemons and rubbing it in sugar. The smell oh the smell. I wish I could smell like lemon sugar. Someone should bottle the scent of lemon sugar seriously. (:

For Rick, Gerald & Esther's graduation, it's chocolate pie (tasted suspiciously brownie-like) and lemon almond oatmeal lace cookies.

Cravings for double dark chocolate cookies, so made some hugeass ones. A glass of cold milk with these is simply the best.

Finishing up used bits.

Everyone likes to start their day differently. My sister likes to start it off with some focaccia bread. I, on the other hand, am perfectly fine with eating cold cereal for breakfast. Not to say that I don't like focaccia, I do, just that I cannot eat it for consecutive days without getting a bit tired of the same fare.

Sister made me bake lots of foccacia so that she can eat roughly twice the portion she eat if eating store-bought foccacia. The store-bought loaf is roughly equivalent to four servings. One portion of the recipe yields two loaves. She made me do two portions. We had four loaves of bread in the house. In the end, she didn't even manage to finish all before the bread went moldy. Sigh. Sis, ah, Sis.


I made fruit tarts the other day just because I realised I havn't had the opportunity to make them in Singapore yet. To play safe, I reused the recipe I made the other time round, just makin additions to the dough by adding chopped pistachios. The taste was somewhat similar to the first time I made (sans nuts). But nuts seem to be a healthier addition so, I'll add them again next time, just that I'll chop them up finely cos this time round, there were a few chunks of pistachio visible in the dough...

As usual, my refrigerator was chock full of fruits. In addition to the grapes and mandarins we already have in stock, I got some blueberries and raspberries (a treat, considering their price!) as what is a tart without berries?

I love fruits. Especially berries. The reason being because they are expensive. As it is hard to obtain these fruits cheaply, whenever I actually get to eat them, I actually feel happy. Laugh at me if you must, but I get a cheap thrill just biting into a raspberry. It tastes especially sweeter somehow. ;)

It was a chore to segment mandarins. It didn't help that the mandarins used for the fruit tarts were of the mini variety. Big fingers need not apply.

I made six medium sized tarts and decorated them with a single fruit for each. The mandarin tart as you can see, consists of my hard work (segmenting...) so of cos, who best to eat it then yours truely. (:





I had a gathering with my girls two days ago. I had a pack of cream cheese left, and my sister had reminded me to use up whatever ingredients I've bought before head back to Brisbane, so what to do, but some sort of cheese cake? So, I decided to make something to bring along to share with the girls.

Again, I reused the recipe for the cheesecake pops I made a few months back. It helps that the portions are pretty small, so it's safe to pop one, or two of these small morsels without feeling overwhelmed by the cheesy-ness if compared to a whole slice of cheesecake.

I had bought a medium bag of pistachios some time bag, and just got around to using it just only. So it features alot in the goodies I'm making recently. Here, I melted chocolate, coat the chilled cheesepops with chocolate and chopped pistachios. It struck me halfway through coating that some people might not like nuts, and I only had a few sticks left - explains the few non-nuts sticks.

I made creme brulee today. Will be talking about it with pictures in the next post. Together with the macarons that I am going to make (on Tuesday hopefully!), in an effort to clear the bits and pieces of baking ingredients in the pantry...