Festive seasons

It's so quiet during the holiday season and work has whined down a lot and started to clear my vacation days.. after the complaints by my mom that i rarely spend time in the kitchen nowadays, i decided to go on a mission to slave myself in the baking section during the idle time.

For my friend's christmas party, we made a festive buche de noel together the night before.
The "sophisticated" look *wink does give people the delusion that it is a time consuming cake... but actually quiet the opposite. I started off preparing the meringue mushrooms which are hassel free decoration, just whip up the meringue and pipe out the shapes and let them sit in the oven for 2 hr. Baking and making the log and decoration only took us for less than 3 hours.

The fluffy chocolate flavor cake wrapped around hazelnut praline flavor buttercream, with chocolate buttercream as coating, exclusive for the chocoholics. I was very happy with the result and it was actually nice to look at.

I've made another cake for the winter festival earlier. It is an apple caramel mousse cake that i recited from multiple cookbooks. As I am practicing more now, I find that it is actually easier not to follow every steps and recipes meticulously, the trick to reduce chances of failure is to recite the successful attempts in the past, combining the experience and invent something on our own. cookbooks can give me the inspiration and teach me how to decorate a cake... but the recipes are oftentime too complicated and hard to follow.

Blueberry muffins for bb chu. Not the american kind of muffins that are dense, solid, heavy and pack with multiple ingredients, sometimes you don't know whether you are eating a cake or loaf of bread... Mine is simple, crunchy in surface, soft inside, milky creamy muffin with slightest sweetiness. bb chu loves blueberry, we are training him to have a meticulous and sensitive taste buds.

Poached pear tart. I should have glaze it with napage beforehand. I loaded the tart with poached pears which were nicely done with dry white wine and vanilla beans... added almond cream on a almond flavor tart base. just right as a winter time dessert... 

For our family gathering christmas dinner, sis ordered a buche de noel from la maison du chocolat (my most favorite chocolate store). I had my frist crush when I had my last day in paris after a 5 weeks backpacking trip in EU, I bumped into a chocolate store that looked like an extravagent jewelry shop and I bought my first bar of cuana. the experience was mindblowing bc the chocolate was nothing that i have tried before. I still declare this the best after many years of chocolate experience.