Le Fraisier with lots of strawberries

The theme for this month's daring baker challenge is  ...  Le Fraisier! I couldn't be more excited about this! The cake was omg-ly delicious! It made me really happy for days. The happy feeling was like the day he told me he felt the same way as I did, except i was giggling to myself on the way to work after having the cake and not in my small bedroom holding the wired telephone many years ago. It was my first love back then, and now I just feel happily contented without the touch of embarrassment after we both disclosed. A big spoonful of the natural vanilla bean paste into the pastry cream, then wait for the vanilla kisses it brings.


Strawberry in French is "Fraise", so Fraisier is all about strawberry right?

Its the perfect season in the UK to make this, there are plenty of different kinds of berry around. Strawberry from Scotland is deliciously sweet. The long summer sunlight and the "not too warm" weather in the north allows the strawberry to mature slowly, giving its intense fragrant and juiciness.  The jubilee strawberries I got from M&S were full of flavour, beautifully petit and juicily sweet. Perfect for the Fraisier.

I adapted the recipe from Ladurée: Sucré: The Recipes. The recipes are really good, most importantly, very accurate! I could "always" produce something very nice from the book if I follow the recipe closely, mostly about the "temperature" and "time". If it says beat the egg and sugar mixture for 10 minutes and over a bowl of hot water, it really produced the fluffiest and silky pale base for the génoise. I halfed the recipe to make a smaller génoise base for my 6" Fraisier. The mixture was so fluffy that my normal mixing bowl was too small for it.

If making a 6 to 7" cake, half the Génoise recipe OR double the Crème mousseline recipe to make a large cake.Use a cake ring for assembling, that makes a huge difference to its look. Cake rings are inexpensive and I own difference sizes in the kitchen although they were difficult to get hold of in the UK.


for the recipe:

Raspberry Matcha Tart (recipe)

This is my favourite cake/tart to make! Its visually beautiful, simple to make and taste sooooo goooood! The matcha and raspberry combination is far more interesting than those typical matcha-red bean, matcha-black sesame seeds flavours. The cake-like tart base tastes even better over night!

Birthday Red Fruits Charlotte - 6.8.2011

This's the first recipe i wanted to make from the book "Sucre" from Laduree since i purchased it almost a year ago. It's one of the cutest photos from the book... although some of them dont look that great, im sure they taste very good. For my brother's birthday, I needed to make a cake thats visually stunning so i would be able to get several good shots out of it! I know he wont be able to eat it, but at least i could send him the cute pictures... and eat it for him!! hehehehe.... so i think of the charlotte cake, its such a cute name for a cake! Its two days of work!

Master Nogami's Milk Hearth Roll 野上師傅的牛奶哈斯麵包001

Its difficult to get hold of the French flour here in the UK. Strong bread flour which is typically used for bread makings have higher protein contains than the "bread" flour in France. 


Bread flour from the UK supermarket brands normally has the protein contains between 12 to 14%. For french breads, the two most used flour are T55 and T65. T55 contains 10 to 11% protein; T65 contains 11.5% protein. The small % difference in the flour makes a huge different in the bread outcome.. like the kneading time, proving time, the texture, the colour of the bread... arhhh


While I've been no luck with the french flour hunting, I still have a very good bread recipe that uses ordinary strong bread flour. The recipe's from the most famous Japanese Boulanger in Taiwan - 野上師傅 (Nogami), his book "名店麵包大公開：天然酵母、無人工添加物、100％健康" ---my bread bible! 


The Milk Hearth (牛奶哈斯) is a soft French bread that uses milk instead of water. This makes the dough silky soft to handle. All other ingredients are very simple like the other basic bread recipes.



After kneading and first proving. The dough's divided and shaped into long logs. Prove for 30 mins. 





The logs are rolled out and form into rolls. I love this dough, its very easy to handle. Soft and manageable.

Chocolatier: Chocolate-Caramel Truffles

Chocolate-Caramel Truffles adapted from Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Herme

Deeply in Love with Marshmallow

Im a softie when it comes to stuff that are pastel and dreamy.....

There might be more dreamy in one case...

And more pastel in the other.....

But when two comes together.... its just so Beautiful and so Marshmallow.

Matcha and Chestnut Mousse Joconde Entrement

“Joconde imprime is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds. A joconde batter is used because it bakes into a moist, flexible cake. The cake batter may be tinted or marbleized for a further decorative effect.”

“Entremets is an ornate dessert with many different layers of cake and pastry creams in a mold, usually served cold.”

When Joconde and Entrement come together, they mean a delicate and sophisticated cake that I wasnt prepare to make (in terms of technical skills and pastry equipment that I have in my kitchen). Couple days before I found out the theme of this month's DBs challenge, I had been admiring at pictures of Pierre Herme's "Elysee" which he created during his time at Fauchon. I found its simple and perfectly straight chocolate brown and cream white stripy pattern utterly elegant. I like things with simple patterns and usually with two tones. My second thought was..... some expensive professional equipments must be used. Thanks to this challenge, I was very surprised to know that a plastic “comb” could do the effect! I need to get one next time when I visit a big city. But for the challenge, I used a chopstick!

This was the first cake that I had to come up with a combination of flavours and fillings. It gave me a couple of sleepless night just thinking about how I could actually achieve the structure that I wanted with the limited pastry tools that I have - a small ring! I guess that was sufficient! The look was disappointing, but the flavours were very very very good!