melody.

Before I became obsessed with Pierre Herme's macaron book, I was infatuated with his dessert book. Since my supply of ground almonds has temporarily run out, I decided to turn back to making cakes for a while.

I call this Herme's recipe, but I've altered it so much that it's hardly recognizable when compared to the picture in the book. Melody is supposed to comprise of, from bottom up- a cinnamon tart base, genoise, twenty-hour apples, cinnamon-caramel bavarian cream, another tart crust and some finely sliced apples arranged in a concentric circle as decoration. What my version entails is a much simpler one- cinnamon tart base, hot milk sponge, sauteed poached pears and the bavarian cream. The sponge was a leftover from my swiss roll and the pears took only a few minutes rather than the twenty hours needed to prepare the apples.

I believe I let my caramel go darker than it was supposed to. My bavarian cream is a coffee-colored one while the one in the book appears to be custard-colored.

One of the things I like about Herme's recipes is that they don't add unnecessary sugar. So I can eat my dessert without spiraling into a hyperactive craze later on. And that's always a good thing because I eat a lot of desserts.

You know why I chose to use just 1 tart layer instead of the original 2? Because I want to use it in one of his other recipes which I will be making very soon! Stay tuned~    

berry surprise cake.

It's time to take a break from macarons and get my daily dose of sugar in the form of cake!

The recipe is from Dorie Greenspan and once I saw the title, I knew I had to try it. Originally, it's a sponge cake that's been hollowed out and filled with a refreshingly tangy cream cheese mousse and raspberries before being cleverly covered up with a sliced layer of cake and then christened with mounds of freshly whipped cream. Love.

I read about some serious sinkage problems with the sponge post-cooling so I decided to bake it in a chiffon pan to minimize the likelihood of a crater in the middle of the cake. And also because I didn't want to hollow out the cake and waste all that sponge. Baking the cake in a chiffon pan would already provide a convenient hole to pour all that delish cream cheese mousse in.

I realized that my hole was too small and narrow to store all that mousse so I used a 3 inch cutter to get a bigger storage area. I halved the recipe and baked it in a 6 inch chiffon pan, by the way. I took some of the cut out sponge and pressed it in the bottom of the hollow center just to create a base so that the mousse doesn't leak out.

Since we're talking about mousse now, I feel the need to point out that I increased the sugar as recommended by other bloggers. However, I think that's not entirely necessary unless you would prefer the mousse to be more sweet than tangy. I made it a little less guilt-inducing by using low fat cream cheese and swapping the cream that's supposed to be mixed in with the cream cheese for low fat milk. The best part is, it still tastes great!

For decoration, I used slightly less whipped cream than instructed in the recipe since I was only going to top the upper half of the cake and because I had to stuff as much mousse as I could in a limited amount of space, I left out the berries that were supposed to go inside the cake and used them to decorate the top instead. It looks much prettier anyway.

I think I need to cut myself another slice now...

Berry Surprise Cake
recipe taken from here

For the cake:
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
4 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled

For the syrup:
1/3 cup water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp kirsch, chambord, framboise or raspberry syrup (I didn't have so I omitted)

For the filling:
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature (I used low-fat and used it straight from the fridge)
1/2 cup (I subbed with milk) + 2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp sugar (extra tablespoon optional if you prefer it on the sweet side)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:
1 cup cold heavy cream
3 tbsp icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 to 1 1/2 pints fresh raspberries, for filling and topping (I used a mix of berries)

For the cake: Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and flour the insides of a 8 x 3 inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl of a mixer and whisk to blend. Put the bowl over a saucepan with simmering water and continue to whisk until the sugar dissolves completely and the mixture is just warm to touch, about 3 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and whisk in vanilla.

Using the stand mixer, whisk the egg mixture on medium speed until tripled in volume and forms a ribbon that holds its shape for about 10 seconds when the beater is lifted. Switch to a spatula and sift over half the dry ingredients and fold in gently. Fold in the cooled melted butter then sift over the remaining dry ingredients and fold that in too.

Bake for 30 to 33 minutes or until the top is springy to touch and the sides are starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. Let the cake cool for 5 minutes before unmolding and letting it cool completely. The cake will cut more easily if you let it stand overnight, wrapped and kept at room temperature.

For the syrup: Stir the water and sugar together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute. Pour the syrup into a heatproof bowl, stir in liqueur and let syrup come to room temperature.


For the filling: Beat the cream cheese until soft, smooth and fluffy. While beating, gradually add the 1/2 cup cream, sugar and vanilla and continue to beat until the cream is absorbed and the cheese is smooth. Scrape the mixture into a medium bowl. Pour the remaining 2/3 cup cream into the same bowl and whip until it holds form peaks. Stir about one quarter of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture then fold in the rest. There's no need to wash the bowl- you'll be using it for the topping.


For the topping: Just before you are ready to assemble the cake, whip the cream to medium peaks. Add the sugar and vanilla and continue to whip until stiff. Cover the cream and refrigerate.


Assembly: Using a serrated knife, slice off the top 1/2 inch of the cake and set aside. With the knife, cut a circle that's 1/2 inch away from the edges of the cake, stopping between 1/4 and 1/2 inch from the bottom. Carefully pull out the cake within this circle. Transfer the cake to a platter or cardboard round.

Brush the inside of the cake with syrup and spoon a thin layer of filling over the bottom. Toss in 1/2 pint of the berries and cover with the remaining filling. Lift the reserved top layer onto the cake and press it down gently.

Frost the top and sides of the cake with the whipped cream. Finish with some raspberries and refrigerate the cake for at least 1 hour (or for up to 6 hours) before serving.

pierre herme's macarons- tout paris.

This is my what, third, macaron post in a row already. I'm telling ya, they're addictive.

These tout paris macarons have a chocolate caramel ganache and a chocolaty rice krispie square sandwiched between each pair.

The chocolate caramel ganache was such a pain. After stirring the caramel into the chocolate, it started to seize up and turn grainy. I put more elbow grease in it and horror of horrors, the caramel started to separate from the ganache. I tried to work it in again as best as I could, including reheating the mixture but nope. Nada. Nothing worked. Finally, I thought of using a blender but even that failed me.

The ganache ended up being something more like a chocolate taffy- pliable and shiny. I was seriously doubtful that something that can be used as play dough would taste good. But hey, surprise! It wasn't chewy at all and the caramel gave a nice depth to the ganache. I adored the crunchy chunk of rice krispies in the middle. The only problem is, I had to let the macarons mature longer due to the low moisture content in the ganache, 2 days instead of 1.

And it's worth every minute.

pierre herme's macarons- balsamic.

I like weird and funky creations because it's always a surprise when you taste them. Like these balsamic macarons. Some of you may wrinkle your nose in disgust and wonder what on earth is it doing inside a macaron but the moment I saw the recipe, it was already bookmarked in my head.

But you need not worry- these macarons aren't the experiment-gone-wrong kind of funky. In fact, I really like them. The pairing of chocolate macaron and white chocolate balsamic ganache is somewhat similar to the dark chocolate and raspberry combination. In other words, delish.

When I made the ganache on day one, I honestly thought that it would be horrible. The balsamic smell was quite strong, and although the book stated that ideally, we should use a special 25 year old one from Modena, I forged on because I'd never get that fancy balsamic vinegar anyway and I really wanted to try this macaron.

Luckily, the overpowering vinegary smell faded the next day, probably because the ganache was chilled. When I bit into it, it was the perfect tartness with a lingering hint of balsamic. This just might vie for first place with the pistachio macarons.

So, ketchup macarons next time? 

pierre herme's macarons- vanilla bean and strawberry and vanilla.

2012 is here! And I made some macarons to celebrate!

There are two kinds but both are using the same shell so it wasn't much of hassle. I even cheated with the strawberry and vanilla macarons. I was supposed to make a strawberry gelee of sorts but because I would have to make such a small quantity, I just used strawberry jam in its stead. But I don't know how it worked out because all of them were gone before I got to one. So I guess the jam replacement worked out well!

Besides the strawberry gelee, the S & V macarons also had a layer of vanilla bean ganache, which is the same as the vanilla bean macarons'. So you see, really no trouble at all making two kinds.

Being such a vanilla junkie, I thought I would worship the vanilla bean macaron but nope, not really. It was good, but vanilla and almonds doesn't go together as well as say... raspberry and almonds.

Still, I'm really happy with the vanilla bean batch because they look beautiful! If you would allow me to say so. I finally figured out the reason why my macarons didn't succeed in the past- temperature. My oven was way too hot even at 150C for these little babies so the temperature that works best is 140C. And I used to follow recipes that said to bake at 160~170C... no wonder they failed.

There's still a bit of air pocket inside the shells but I think that's because I overbeat the egg whites- way to much air. Or maybe because I don't mix the almond meal, icing sugar and first portion of egg whites together first. But the book didn't say to do that! I think... Almost everyone does that too though... Hmm...

Alright! Next batch~ Oh by the way, if you're interested in the shell recipe, there's one here. Just omit the colorings for a plain one.