Oh So Productive Weekend

It's been a while since my last post because I'm busy taking care of my bacteria minions as usual -__-" Last weekend was really satisfying though. I was so productive that I made 5 desserts in 2 days :D 3 different macaron flavors: pumpkin pie, pistachio, and rose lychee; pumpkin cupcakes and mung bean ice cream. It was very very relaxing to finally be able to work in my kitchen and not in the lab during the weekend. Here are the the results of my baking frenzy..

Happy Halloween :)

I saw dead people walking on the street. Dragging their feet from one place to the next. Hand in hand with..... Mario Bros? Obviously, it's Halloween!! Time for scary costumes, exaggerated make-up, and sweets :p I was going to bake a pumpkin cake for this year's Halloween, but none of my friends really like pumpkin. I thought, "Cupcakes? Pies? Tarts? What should I make??" I looked for ideas online as always, but nothing popped. It was all same old same old. And then, one day I was watching Food Network and Ina Garten's show (Barefoot Contessa) was on. She was making rum raisin chocolate truffles and I thought "It will be a fabulous macaron filling!". Okay, was excited about that, but I still didn't know how to make them more Halloween-y. Again, I turned to other bloggers' posts on decorating macaron and I found this post by Macaron Fetish. Basically, she showed how you can draw on macaron shells. So I got an idea, Jack Skellington!! Just make white macaron shells and draw Jack Skellington faces on top of them with black macaron batter, awesome :D My first batch was a little bit too stiff due to not enough macaronage and my second batch worked out better. Two tips, make sure you mix the white-colored batter until you reach that shiny liquid magma stage and don't mix the black-colored batter too much because then it will not hold its shape as well and your drawings will spread out. They were sooo cute! And the rum raisin ganache tasted good too, but I couldn't taste the raisin in it, maybe because I used semisweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate. Okay then, here are the pictures and happy Halloween everyone ^o^v

Diva Red Velvet Cake

When I looked through my "My Creations" album on Facebook, I realized that I'd never baked a red velvet cake ever! I was surprised, because it is one of the most famous cakes ever created. So, for my weekend project this week I made red velvet cake from scratch (I used this recipe). As I was thinking how to decorate the cake, I thought of someone. During my internship at General Mills, I met someone who's very fun and interesting. She calls herself "Diva Peaches" and she loveeesss red velvet cake. I dedicated this cake to her by making her face out of fondant to decorate the cake :D

The cake itself was OK because I personally prefer sponge cake to butter cake. However, I had a lot of fun decorating it. Trying to mimic her hair was the most difficult part. I had to make each curl one by one using strands of fondant and it was very time-consuming. I really really loved the result though. The hair looked 3D :p I wanted to make more curls so her hair could be bigger, but as usual I wasn't patient enough. What did I do with all the fondant decorations after I took pictures of them? Threw them away, because they melted into the frosting in a matter of minutes -___-" Next time, I will cover the cake in fondant to prevent this from happening again. Well, to Diva Peaches, I hope you like it, sorry if you think it doesn't really look like you :D