English Breakfast Milk Tea and Dark Chocolate Earl Grey Macarons

It had been three months since I baked my last batch of macarons. I was afraid that I lost the knack of making macarons with the cute little feet. "What if I can't do it anymore? What if my macarons turn out flat and cracked?" I overcame my fears and decided to bake a batch last weekend. To be on the safe side, I chose a flavor that I'd tried before: dark chocolate earl grey. I carefully folded the egg white into the almond flour mixture, making sure I didn't overmix them. Then, I meticulously piped the rounds and waited patiently until they formed a skin. Fhewww... so far so good.. Now, it was time to bake them. I said my prayer, put a pan into the preheated oven, and set the timer to 15 minutes. Ughhh, 15 minutes of complete agony.

Kriiiiiiinnggggg.... Time's up! I slowly opened the oven door and........ perfect macaron feet!!!!! Yeayyy!!! What a relief.. I was confident and overly excited, so I made another batch. This time, English breakfast milk tea :) They turned out perfect too :D I was ecstatic! I started making the ganache filling for the two flavors and yuummmm, were they good.. I love the English breakfast milk tea flavor, it was a tad bit sweet for my taste because I used white chocolate, but it was delicious and fragrant regardless. The dark chocolate earl grey was great too but I was not too excited about it because I'd made it. Anyhow, pictures are below as usual :)

Anniversary & Birthday: Pirouline Cake

It's my 4-year anniversary with my boyfriend tomorrow. When he was still here, I used to bake a cake for us every year. This year I'm not baking anything special since he's not here to celebrate our anniversary with me :( It's kind of sad, but thank God for Skype so I can still see him ^^

This morning, my friend suddenly texted me and requested a cake for our friend's birthday tomorrow. Well, I don't get to bake a cake for my anniversary, at least I can bake a pretty cake for someone's birthday. I can't make mousse cake because it takes too much time and eating it off a piece of paper towel (which is what we usually serve the cake on during birthday gatherings) is troublesome. Hence, I go with a simple chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting instead. Everyone likes chocolate and cream cheese, right? The cake part is easy, but what about decoration? It's for a guy's 20th birthday, so I can't put girly stuffs on the cake. Oh I know.. Pirouline cookies! I just make a fence-like structure around the cake with pirouline and decorate the top with pieces of chocolate and fruits.. Easy, sophisticated, and pretty :D

Looks good, no? Personally, I like it a lot :p I think it's one of the best cakes I've ever decorated. I don't care about the taste anymore, if it looks good I'm satisfied :D Oh well, here I am tooting my own horn, lol. Anw, I hope the birthday boy will enjoy this cake as much as I do looking at it.

And to my boyfriend who is thousands of miles away, it would say "Happy Anniversary" on the cake if only you were here -______-"

Another Summer Flavor: Peach Jasmine Tea

When it's really really hot outside and sweats are dripping down my forehead, the first thing I think of to quench my thirst is a jug full of iced peach tea. It's light, not too sweet, and wonderfully refreshing. Well, today was the day when I was in desperate need of my icy cold peach tea fix. The sun was shining so brightly and it was blistering hot outside. Just when I started boiling some water to steep my tea bags in, I got a wonderful idea. "What if I make a cake with the flavor of my favorite summer drink?" I started looking for recipes and drawing an image of the cake. Finally, I got it. Layers of white cake, peach mousse, jasmine tea peach gelee, and jasmine tea mousse. That's easy enough. After I went to the grocery store to buy a few missing ingredients, I began constructing my layered mousse cake. Making the individual components were the most complicated steps since I didn't have exact recipes for each component. Plus, my nose was a little bit stuffy so I couldn't really taste or smell the mousse and gelee. Oh well, I figured the cake would at least look good :D

Just as I suspected, the flavor of each component was not strong enough. Also, the cake was rather bland and not sweet at all. Ughhh, I hate stuffy nose -____-" I need to make this cake again when my nose is working normally. I have to increase the sugar and steep the tea bags longer to extract more jasmine flavor. If I were to present this to Food Network's Chopped judges, they would say "The idea was great, but the execution was not on point." :D Nvm, there's always next time ^^