Choux with Hazelnut Praline Cream

Attetiooooooon, everyone!!

This is one of the best cakes I've ever had, and by far the best cream puffs I've ever tasted in my life!

...Ok..., sorry about my over excitement and praising myself this much, but seriously, you've got to try this Hazelnut Praline Cream!

Andy kept telling me how great the cream puff he had the other day was. He told me that some sort of hazelnut butter cream thing was in a big choux pastry... Hummm, sounds yummy...

So, I decided to recreate this amazing sounding dessert.

First I made the hazelnut praline paste. It's very simple.

Ingredients:

Hazelnut (roasted and shelled) 200g

Sugar 200g

Salt pinch

1. Heat up sugar on a low-medium heat until it's golden.

2. Take the pan off the heat, add hazelnuts to coat them well with the sugar.

3. Pour 2 onto a baking sheet and leave to cool down.

4. Blitz the sugar coated nuts in a food processor until it's smooth.

Here is my step-by-step choux pastry recipe.

I mixed this hazelnut praline paste with my favourite double cream (custard and whipped fresh cream). I filled the choux pastry with the hazelnut cream until the cream was oozing out. ;D

Looooook at that!

The light choux pastry is a perfect match to this sweet rich cream.

One thing was I made only three of them and that was NOT enough!

Happy Birthday, Andy!

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Haaapy birthday dear Andy,

Haaaapy birthday to you!!

It's my dear husband's birthday today. Happy birthday, Andy ;D xxx

Last Saturday we had Andy's birthday lunch, and I made this "Ultimate cream slice" as Andy requested.

It's made of three layers of puff pastry, a mixture of vanilla cream and custard cream and strawberries in between each layer, then topped with a layer of icing, pistachio meringues, sugar coated strawberries, and roasted mixed nuts brittle,... yes, now you know why it's called "Ultimate" cream slice!


Cream slice may sound an unusual cake for a birthday (I initially thought that too...), but it's one of Andy's favourite cakes, so I thought why not treat him with a very special cream slice.

The cake was a serious cream and sugar heaven. I probably enjoyed it as much as or more than the birthday boy...

Happy Birthday, Andy! xxxxx

Orange custard cream

The other day I made orange custard cream... well, I was going to make orange curd but as I didn't have specific recipe in mind and I was kind of going with the flow, I ended up making more like an orange custard than curd, which turned out to be rather tasty! ;D

So the recipe goes like this...
Ingredients:

Orange 2

Sugar 50g

Butter 25g

Cornflour 1 tbs

Egg 1

Egg yolk 1

1. Squeeze the juice out of oranges. Keep 1 tbsp of the juice aside and combine the rest of the juice with sugar and butter in a pot.

2. Bring the pot to boil and strain the liquid.

3. Mix cornflour and 1 tbsp of orange juice.

4. Add 3 into 2 and mix well.

5. Beat the egg and egg yolk and mix into 4. Put the pot back on a low heat.

6. Stir constantly until the liquid thickens.

I'm not a big fan of orange skin so I don't add zest of orange but if you want more punch, then please go for it.

After squeezing the juice, I boiled the remaining of oranges with water, and then pureed in the food processor. I cooked the pureed oranges again with some ginger syrup (approximately 4 tbsp) and strained the liquid to make orange and ginger jam-sauce type thing (it wan't as thick as jam...)

This by-product was also very nice! I used it in the bread and cake, both of which had really nice refreshing orange flavour. :)

I used the orange custard cream as a filling of my Match macarons. And oh yes! Holly molly, the combination of match and orange tasted amazing...

Recipes for the gluten- free cake and brioche I made with the orange cream and 'jam-sauce thing' will be coming soon! Don't miss them;D

Three tier cream cake

For dessert at Steve's party, I made a super creamy vanilla sponge cake. I wanted the cake to be simple but also look a bit special, so I did three tiers. :)

I baked two sheets of sponge cake (the same sponge as the Swiss roll sponge), and made big Swiss rolls for the bottom and middle tiers. I put vanilla flavoured whipped cream in the middle and decorated also with a generous amount of cream.

It was creamy! Super über creamy! Cream with a nice and light sponge, just how I like it! I love cream...I am a cream monster. I must have had a quarter of the bottom tier...  It did definitely fill my cake hole.

Thanks to Steve for a lovely eveing and awsome fireworks!

Happy Birthday to my sister and me...

In the beginning of spring, a bit chill day like today, my sister was born and shortly after her arrival, another little one was pushed to this world... that was me...
It was a big surprise to everyone, even to my mum and dad because no one knew that the big monster baby that everyone had thought my mum was carrying were actually twins.

It's been 26 years since then. Although we don't live in the same house anymore, don't share the same sir name anymore (oh, my sis even has a baby now!), I'm very grateful that we can still share the birthday treat together:)

This year, it's a three tier creamy mousse. The smooth little white mountain was destroyed by us in seconds! Happy birthday to my sister & me :D And specially, thanks to my mum and dad.

Tres leches cake

So, here she comes. Tres leches. It's a perfect cake for someone like me who loves milk products.

The sponge (yep, the one I made earlier. Beautiful Sponge Cake 2.) is soaked in a milky liquid which is a mixture of condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream. To be honest, when I licked the mixture I was already satisfied with the taste. It was sweet and a little creamy but not to heavy.
I let it rest in the fridge. When I came back to it, all the liquid was soaked up, which has given the sponge a unique almost pudding like texture... humm lovely:)
Whip whip whip, decorate the cake and done. Thanks cows for giving me your milk...

To see the recipe, visit The World of Sweets Recipes, Venezuela.

Pavlova

Beautiful contrast of white meringue, whipped cream and different types of berries..., Pavlova named after a legendary Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova, who was as pretty and delicate as this dessert.

There seem to be a lot of argument where this dessert originally came from. Some say Australia, the other say New Zealand. However, the World of Sweets is going to put this one in New Zealand since our Kiwi friend told me it is theirs....

To all the Aussies, please don't be angry...
Anyway wherever it's from, this is really tasty:)

Ingredients;

Egg white 2

Sugar 120g

Vanilla extract 1/2 tsp

White Vinegar a few drops

Cream of tartar 1/3 tsp

1. Pre-heat the oven to 120º.

2. Beat the egg white with an electric mixer to make a meringue.

3. Add sugar, cream of tartar, vanilla, vinegar to 2, and mix well.

4. Scoop up the mixture with a spatula and place it on the baking sheet to make a oval shape.

5. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 1 hour.

6. When it's done, turn the oven off and leave it in the oven for another hour.

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Decorate with whipped cream and fruits you like.

Andy's birthday cake

It was Andy's birthday yesterday. We went to a pub and restaurant called HUB in Osaka.

I made a Strawberry Tea flavoured Swiss roll and brought that to the pub ;b

The soft sponge, and strawberry marshmallows in the middle of the cream might not be a classic birthday cake, but it was easy to cut and serve... It was important for me to serve it quickly since I brought the cake in secretly in order not to be noticed by the pub staffs... Cheeky...;)

When we go back to the UK and have Andy's 30th birthday party properly again, I'll make a bigger and more sparkly cake and put 30 candles on it... huh, just an excuse to make another cake..?

Leftover hard rock cakes

Whiteorangecreamcheese...

Racheal brought us suger supply at work. Those were the ones that unfortunately (to me fortunately) left by the monkeys who care about their calorie intake, so of course, I volunteered to take them back home. I kept them in the fridge to enjoy after dinner.

When I got them out from the fridge and put a fork in... it was blocked....

I was like 'Nooo"... my lovey soft sponge's gone rock... the cream wasn't really creamy anymore.. more like butter... though the orage jelly top was sort of ... ok...

They still tasted like cake though and actually quite a nice treat after a hard day.

Next time I will make sure just to eat them immediately without putting them in the fridge.