抹茶クリームパン (Matcha Cream Pan)

I have a looooooooooooooon backlog of baking posts to upload (since I've only been posting about my travelogues). I actually made these buns last year. Like waaaaaaaay last year. Heh.

 抹茶クリームパン (Matcha Cream Pan)

Matcha Tofu Cheesecake 豆腐チーズケーキ

This was yet another cake I made for another friend's birthday last year. My BFF's birthday actually.

 Matcha Tofu Cheesecake 豆腐チーズケーキ

Japanese-styled Matcha Granola

I spotted a delivery man at the office lobby today. This is a normal sight isn't it? A delivery man, during office hours, at a work place. However, he was a lil different from the usual delivery man. I noticed him primarily because of what he was delivering.

Matcha granola

Matcha Vanilla Swirled Pound Cake

My favourite bakes for the past few months have been easy bakes. Stuff such as pound cakes, banana loafs or breads that I used to pass over for the more complicated entremets. Speaking of which, it's been like a year (?!?!?!) or so since my last entremet. I really need to make one like soon before I forget how to.

Not too sure why the direction of my cravings have turned around so. But I'm certainly not complaining when I have a loaf of this dense, tightly crumbed, moist matcha vanilla swirled pound cake in front of me.

Matcha Vanilla Swirled Pound Cake

Matcha Hotcakes (抹茶ホットケーキ)

It's November. The time of the year where birthdays are aplenty. Family and friends alike. Have I ever mentioned about a tiny little awesome quirky fact about my family? Psst. Our birthdays are all in November. My Mom's birthday was on the 6th. My Dad's birthday is today. Mine's on the 12th. And my Sis's on the 30th. Have you notice something interesting about the dates? They are all in multiples of three! And aside from my Sis (the oddball *whoops haha), our birthdays are all in sequence! If only her birthday was on the 15th...Then it'll really be uber cool.

Anyway, for Dad's birthday this year, I know I had said that I'll prob give the strawberry shortcake a miss after three consecutive years of making it. I guess it's sorta become a "tradition" now cos the other day, the Sis was just asking, "So when are you making the strawberry cake?" It's been a busy week, so while I havn't actually finished it, I'm in the process of making it! I actually baked the sponge last night, and as we are heading out for a dinner buffet tonight for the Dad's birthday, I thought that I'll assemble it after we head home from dinner and we can cut it tomorrow (since I reckon we'll all be stuffed silly with food anyway). The sponge looks promising. It felt soft and spongy when I was clingwrapping it last night, so I hope it will taste soft and spongy as well.

Anyway, moving on to the hotcakes. I love pancakes. Yet, I rarely make my own at home cos my guinea pig, aka the Sis, is not a fan of pancakes in general. So, in order to satisfy my pancakes urge, I decided to make matcha pancakes to lure her into eating some too cos like me, she's quite the matcha fan.

Matcha Hotcakes (抹茶ホットケーキ)

Matcha goma entremet

I was itching to make an entremet again after a long pause from my last one. I've been eyeing this particular recipe for the longest time ever, and knew that I should not procrastinate any longer and just do it (as Nike says). :)

 Matcha goma entremet

Matcha strawberry shortcake

I decided yet again to make a strawberry cake for Dad's birthday. That's three times in three consecutive years already.

Matcha strawberry shortcake

Matcha chocolate loaf

Whoops, the half written post got posted last night before I could actually finish with it. I was going to finish it up yesterday night and post it accordingly. As it was so, I spent the whole day out yesterday.

I woke up and we were all ready to head out furniture shopping  at Ikea for the new house. After an awesome lunch of Ikea meatballs, fried chicken and Diam cake, we continued walking around a bit before heading to the Furniture Mall. Then after a whole day of walking, we went for an early dinner at Da Paolo at Rochester (and ordered the super yums mushroom truffles pizza again...).

And my day didn't end there. I had plans for the night too. It was Beerfest 2011 - it was effin' hot and super packed but I had a mad rockin' time there, and then got persuaded by my girlfriend to head out clubbing afterwards. But in the meantime, I had to head home for a quick shower cos I was so sticky from the Beerfest. The final cab I took home from the club got me home at around 4 in the morning. Mad tired.

Thus, do pardon me for my half-completed post prior to this. :)

Matcha chocolate loaf

Matcha chestnut macarons

I had leftover chestnut puree that I had froze when I made the chestnut mont blanc. As I don't like to hoard things in the freezer for too long, I was thinking hard on how to use the chestnut puree...

Matcha macarons with chestnut buttercream

Matcha azuki entremet

Come to think of it, I've been in love with entremets for a year or so. Or should I say, I've only discovered the existence of entremets since a year ago. (Yeah, apparently for a dessert lover, I'm kinda a slow learner.) In common everyday language (to those who might be wondering), in the dessert world, an "entremet" actually refer to the "sweet course" which is always served after the "cheese course" in France. To me, an entremet represents a beautiful multi-layered cake. The allure of such a lovely concoction makes me want to produce such dainty looking pieces on my own.

Some might call me crazy, but I jumped straight into my first entremet almost a year ago, without any basic knowledge on how to assemble such a dessert. Prior to my first Matcha Opera, I rarely ever bake cakes, mostly sticking to simpler goodies like cookies and cupcakes. I wonder what made me so adventurous to explore the complicated world of french patisserie. Hmmm. Madness perhaps? :)

Once I got started, well, my interest in french patisserie styled cakes increased. Like tenfolds. I am constantly thinking of making entremets. For me, I enjoy the process of baking more than the products I make. Not to say I dislike eating the sweets I make, but it's just that the actual baking is much more interesting than just stuffing your face with the dessert. I wish I can make entremets everyday...but then again, who's gonna eat them up for me? Sigh.

Matcha azuki entremet

Matcha brioches

I have several food blogs that I love perusing periodically. Fanny from Foodbeam being one them. She has a really gorgeous food blog, and lately, I saw her repost her matcha brioches recipe. I think I had bookmarked them some time back, but never got around to making them. It's been a while since I've baked any breads, so I decided to try my hand at these pretty buns.

 Matcha brioches

Matcha macarons

Macarons are sly and finicky creatures. They slowly creep into your life, eventually overtaking it even, and before you know it, from feeling indifferent towards them, you become addicted to them. However, churning out these devious lil things are not 100 per cent fool-proof. Though from my very first attempt, I've mostly encountered success, lately, the macaron baking fairy seemed to have shun me for others.

These stupid matcha flavoured macs? Took me not one, not two but three attempts to see something remotely resembling macs. The first two batches were disasters that looked severely disfigured beyond words, best buried in the deep recess of soon-to-be-forgotten memories (hey, I've got a very short memory span, which works well in such times). I suspected that they failed because the egg whites weren't beaten properly, so for this fortunate third batch, I made sure to whip the whites longer...

And hey yo, they finally passed the visual test (barely), and though they have really flat feet, as least they resemble macs yeah. I was going to seriously cry and stomp my feet if they failed, cos you know, matcha powder is not cheap. Ha.

Matcha macarons with red bean paste filling

Matcha Opera

For no reason whatever, I made a cake. That's rare. Me thinks. I mostly venture to cakes only when there's something on, like a meeting with friends, a birthday or you know, something. But for this, this is just purely for the sake that this recipe has been in my bookmarks for almost close to two years. And it never strayed far from my mind. It was always there, a sly one, teasing and taunting me to make it. And so, I decided to make it. Just because.

Matcha Opera; the seductress.

Old friends and some matcha sablés

Minhua, otherwise affectionately known as "Mua" and Tze Siew, otherwise termed "Siew" or "Siew Siew" have been friends with me for a very very long time. I can proudly say I've known Mua for 17 years, and Siew for 15 years, with us being the ripe ol' age of 23 this year. My my. That's a pretty amazing feat.

The last time Mua was back, it was during the summer hols, and in between her jetting off to other places for holidays, we did managed to catch up a coupla times for Korean food, ice-cream at Udders, and not forgetting a steamboat session during the CNY period at Siew's place.

It was our last meeting before she flew back to Canberra, and I wanted to make her something green tea-ish as she mentioned before that she liked matcha. But due to time constraint, I couldn't do anything nicer like a green tea cake, or green tea macarons. So I settled on a matcha recipe I saw previously on one of my favourite food blog, for matcha sablés.

Matcha powder; Matcha sablés

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.

Baking frenzy.

It was a baking week this week. Eclairs and macarons. The fridge is full of sweet goods - my baked goods, cakes and petit fours (Sister's birthday was just over, and she received quite a few of these) and tubs of ice-cream. It gives me a sugar rush just thinking about the amount of stuff in the refrigerator. Hoho!

I decided on trying out new flavours for the eclairs - earl grey and matcha. Earl Grey cos I know my sister likes earl grey, and matcha for Mua. (:

I didn't really like the earl grey flavour in the end as I felt the overall taste was just weird. Maybe the quality of the earl grey used wasn't good enough (I thought we had Twinings at home, but apparantly not.). My sister also said the earl grey flavour wasn't strong enough and she preferred the matcha ones comparatively.

I made enough to pack some for Mua and Siew and dropped them off at their place that night. Unfortunately for Mua, the box apparantly went "missing" when she reached home and she didn't get to taste any. Awww. Never mind, I'll do some other green tea goodie for you next time dear!

My first attempt at french macarons on 9/12/08. The main motive was to use up the egg whites left over from the pastry cream I made for the eclairs above.

I still had some egg whites lying around, and lots of leftover ganache I made yesterday for the macarons. What should I do? More macarons. ;)

The macarons I made yesterday were pretty pale in colour, I wanted vibrant hues so I added more colouring/powder to the macarons mixture I made today.

I sifted some cocoa powder on the second batch of chocolate macarons, hoping that there would be a nice speckle effect. But alas, I added too much cocoa powder into the macaron mixture itself, so the macarons turned out really dark, and the sprinkling effect was not really obvious.

A few more drops of red colouring turned the macarons into a richer pink hue. Can you spot a vague letter 'M' on the upturned macaron on the right image? I find it so cool - M for Michelle! Haha.

These are actually really really tiny macarons. About the size of a ten-cent coin perhaps. I piped different sizes macarons - mostly tiny/medium ones and a few big ones. I heard that macarons are really sweet bites, so I made them bite-sized so sampling all the different flavours won't leave anyone feeling as though they overindulged in sugar.