Vanilla bean icecream

People always seem to be divided between two choices when it comes down to basic icecream flavours. They either choose vanilla or chocolate. I wonder why, why can't they just choose both? ;) Anyway, I've made David Lebovitz's vanilla icecream recipe (from his book "The Perfect Scoop") like at least two times by now. It's simply yummy-licious from the addition of vanilla beans, and not to mention rich, from the all those egg yolks...

Vanilla beans; Mise en place

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...

Seckel Pear Tarts

Upon looking at this, I was so tempted to make something similar straight away. However, there was just this one tiny little problem. I couldnt find special pears in the supermart. All I could see were the normal plain old green Bartletts and the brown Korean/China pears.

Well. I was not that out of luck. It so happens that pears are seasonal (so are most fruits actually, you would say, and yes I know), and they are in season during the later part of the year. So when I actually saw a variety of USA pears in the supermart a month ago, boy was I delighted.

I was debating on which type to get, the Bosc? Green Anjou? Red Anjou? There was just no competition when my eyes found these...

Seckel pears

Black sesame macarons

I made black sesame macarons some time ago. Tastewise, they were great. Visually, I have something minor to gripe about - they aren't greyish black! They are more of a I don't know brownish black shade. That's what irks me the most, otherwise, everything about these were pretty good.

Vanilla salted caramel and chocolate mousse

I think I am more suited to making cake based desserts, I can't seem to succeed with the mousse (gelatine) types of desserts. The taste of these mousse, although good, were not moussey-like. They were more of a richer texture than the softer melt in the mouth texture I was seeking. I used the recipe from here, and managed to get six tiny shot glasses and three half-filled big glasses.

Lindt 70% dark chocolate; salted caramel; triple mousse verrines.