Black sesame orange choux puffs

I've been on a black sesame desserts spiel lately. This is just going to be the first of a couple of black sesame desserts to come. I've always loved Japanese flavours such as matcha and black sesame (kuro goma 黒ごま) and somehow I've not yet baked as much black sesame goodies as matcha ones as I felt that the key to good black sesame flavour always start with black sesame paste (instead of just plain black sesame seeds, or powder). And I rarely have black sesame paste in my pantry, compared to say, black sesame seeds. So armed with a bottle of black sesame paste, i set about to rectify that!

 Black sesame orange choux puffs (黒ゴマオレンジ シュークリーム)

Hidemi Sugino's B-Caraibe

This is my first attempt at using a recipe from Hidemi Sugino's book, Le Goût Authentique Retrouvé.

 Hidemi Sugino's B-Caraibe

Birthday cupcakes

Time is sneaky. Sometimes it goes by so slowly you reckon that it is unmoving, still as the air. Yet, you look at the clock and see the minutes ticking away ever so slowly. Then again, at other times, it gallops past you, almost akin to a sprinter racing the way to the finishing line. You bat an eyelash and a whole day is gone.

Just like today, time FLEW by so much today. I blink and it's lunch hour. I blink again and lunch is over. The next time I blinked, it's already 4pm. Then  I blink again, it's 6pm, time to knock off but I don't cos you know, whenever it's nearing end of the day, suddenly there's like a multitude of tasks to complete. I leave at 7pm instead. It feels like today, I blinked and blinked, like I'm blinking in terms of hours. pffft.

Time comes and goes as it pleases, not caring if anyone wants it to go slow or hurry. And we all blow the candles once a year every single year - which reminds us that we are stealthily growing older and older. pui. Anyway, speaking of birthdays, I made these cupcakes in November for an aunt's birthday.

I wanted contrasting colours and flavours. No boring plain old (but scrumptious of course) chocolate. I decided to remake the ispahan (minus the lychee as it was a last minute decision and I used what I had on hand). To complement the colour tone of the pinkish ispahan, I wanted something citrusy bright. Lemon was akin to chocolate, yummy but just a tad overdone. So I decided on orange cupcakes (I secretly clapped my hands in joy as you know, I do have a bottle of Grand Marnier...that really really goes well with orange-anything.).

Piped cupcakes. I know how ugly they look. I mean, I did try my best...