I've handed in my 2 assignments due last Friday, with utmost relief. ;) Now all that's left is the assignment due this Friday, and the exam on the 12th. Phew.
Went for a movie How to Lose Friends and Alienate People today with Fiona and Ludwig. Movie was so-so. But the fun part was we had lunch at West End before that and cos we had time, we went St Vinnys! (For those in the dark, it's kinda Salvation Army kinda shop) My first time there. hoho I got a pink patterned bag for $4. ;)
Anyway, cos Therese had said she wanted my help in baking to do some shots for her photomedia, I decided to make Filbert (Hazelnut) Gateau with Praline Buttercream over the weekend. Literally over the weekend. Since the process of making the cake was a damn long list, I spread the job over a couple days. It made things way easier for sure. Then her hsemates, aka the two above, told me on Saturday Therese is not coming anymore. o.o Oh well, since I had already started the job, so might as well finish it right.
Some negative side effects that I had while making the cake were, I overwhipped the egg whites (trust me, you wouldn't want to know how it looks like), so I had to throw away the first batch and do up a second one (which I hand whipped instead of using the electric mixer) and the mountain of washing I had to do. -.- But the effort was worth it (kinda) since the praline buttercream was damn yummy haha.
It's great I halved the recipe so I ended up with lesser portions. One thing about baking so much is that you tend to not want to waste food, so I always cut back on the recipe to whatever proportions possible. I ended up with 6 mini cakes but I only used 5 of those since one of them kinda collapsed tsk tsk. I gave one to Woo as belated birthday, one to my ex-boss (oh did I mention I'm done with my intern thing? (: ), one to Pam who's coming back tomorrow from Bangkok! and one for myself! So there's still one more in the fridge...
hazelnut brittle process
praline paste process
praline buttercream process
assembling the cakes process
the caramalising hazelnuts process with the long long tips.
pouring ganache over cakes process
