French Pastry

Pate de Fruits Cassis – Cassis Fruit Jelly Candy

May 30, 2011

My parents were strict with us when we were growing up. I don’t recall ever vehemently demanding for anything when we were young. We would gladly take whatever my parents would give us, be it sweet treats, stationery, books or clothes. If anything we set our eyes on were deemed expensive by our parents, we [...]

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Pierre Herme’s Sable Viennois – Danish Butter Cookies?

May 21, 2011

Still reeling from the light and airy texture of the Viennese Chocolate Sable I had made last week, I found another Sable Viennois recipe in another Pierre Herme pastry cookbook which I had just bought at Page One in Hong Kong last week. Published in Chinese Le Livre des fours sees et melleux de Pierre Herme, cost me less [...]

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Pierre Herme’s Vienesse Chocolate Sables – Chocolate Cookies Simple & Sophisticated

May 17, 2011

I first started to read about Pierre Herme when I went through my macaron obsession phase many years ago. That was the time when macarons were still not readily available in Singapore – before Bakerzinn and Canele Patisserie became the rave of the town. It was a time when very few would attempt to bake macarons at home [...]

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Petit Fours : Lemon Meringue Tart

February 22, 2011

Psst… I am cheating with this one. Put together haphazardly before I left for Shanghai last week with the intention of finishing up my lemon curd from the Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. I then realised that it didn’t quite help to clean out the clutter in my fridge because to get this, I found myself making up a [...]

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Mandarin Friands – 金吉蛋糕

February 4, 2011

春到堂前添瑞气日临庭上增吉祥To all those who are celebrating the Lunar New Year, (and that includes all Chinese in China, Taiwan, SE Asia, the rest of the world and not forgetting the Koreans) here’s wishing every one a very prosperous and successful Rabbit year ahead. ( And I learnt that for the Vietnamese, it is the year [...]

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Pandan Kaya Souffle – A Failed Experiment

November 12, 2010

A failed experiment that needs further tweaking and I am not suprised nor discouraged by the outcome. It is normally easier to modify a savoury dish but baking calls for better precision. So when it occured to me to use the Pandan Coconut Custard to make this souffle dish, I was already deliberating about the [...]

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Banana Macadamia Nuts & Chocolate Souffle

October 20, 2010

Once in a rare rare while, all the forces come together and make everything gel together so effortlessly that you are tempted to believe that you could possibly be a genius… At the risk of sounding shameless, that was exactly how I felt last night when I made this as a last minute push to [...]

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Lemon, Lime, Orange Soufflé

September 16, 2010

The soufflé is widely considered as the most initmidating dessert to bake. This is the second time I am making the soufflé, the first was a number of years ago when naivete had led me to experiment with my first chocolate soufflé with ignorant fearlessness. Yes, ignorance can be bliss. As eccentric cook James Beard once said [...]

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Madeleine Medley – Ispahan Madeleine

May 24, 2010

” ‘Ispahan’, also known as ‘Pompon des Princes’, is a clear pink, half-open kind of Damask rose (an early type, introduced from the Middle east in European breeding during the crusading XIIIth century).” – WikipediaI have always associated Ispahan with Pierre Hermes – I am full of admiration for the Picasso of Pastry for dreaming up such [...]

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Madeleine Medley Episode 2 – Kumquat Madeleine

May 17, 2010

Continuing from Madeleine Medley Episode 1… ” And suddenly the memory appeared. That taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because that day I did not go out before it was time for Mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, [...]