Jump to content

rarerollingobject

participating member
  • Posts

    1,237
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by rarerollingobject

  1. 40 minutes ago, jmacnaughtan said:

     

    Why is it called a love cake?  Even with me at the table, that's a lot of cake for two people...

     

    Are you flirting with me? ;)

     

    The apocryphal story goes:  a Persian woman was madly in love with a prince. To have him fall in love with her, she baked him a cake, filled with sweet cardamom, pistachios and rose petals. The cake was said to have magical love powers. Etc, and so on and so forth.

    • Like 8
  2. 18 minutes ago, joiei said:

    I'm sorry, I do not get this.  Too many conflicting flavors.  Definitely interesting but not something I would look forward to tasting.  Definitely interesting flavors.  But all at once, how do you keep them from competing against each other.  The slice looks inviting.  How well does the smoked fit into the profile?   You are challenging me.  

     

    Well, the unexamined life is not worth living! ;)

     

    • Like 6
    • Haha 2
  3. 5 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:


    Sounds good to me. I'm curious about the green curry buttercream. Were you able to get a good balance with it? I'm asking because several years ago, just as an idea test, I made a Thai red curry sweet potato ice cream and all of my attempts to get a result I was happy with were thwarted by my wish that I couldn't taste the fish sauce and shrimp paste in the curry paste. The idea to make a curry paste sans or greatly reduced in fish sauce and shrimp paste did occur to me... but never happened.

     

    I specifically searched out a brand with no shrimp paste - Maesri. Ingredients: 

    Fresh Chilli, Garlic, Fingerroot, Shallot, Lemongrass, Salt, Sweet Basil, Kaffir Lime, Sugar, Spices, Galangal.

    • Like 1
  4. I am mega stressed lately, so I do things like get out of bed and bake at 3am to try to chillax -  this is a three layer devil’s food chocolate cake, glazed in ginger syrup, filled with dark chocolate ganache into which I’d steeped 8 Kaffir lime leaves and 4 Thai birdseye chillies, coated the cake in Italian meringue buttercream spiked with a tablespoonful of Thai green curry paste (gasp!), and garnished with pistachios candied with white pepper and smoked salt, and Thai rose petals.

     

    Strange flavour cake; strangely compelling.

     

    22729125_10155825799154122_8914047285680253349_n.thumb.jpg.b4b07c679c437987536d0ab5f0aeac6f.jpg

    22789068_10155825799159122_1369701184966963175_n.thumb.jpg.9618a9a35ad267d8d41d3334855eddf4.jpg

    22853119_10155825799169122_8164200441385557751_n.thumb.jpg.5549b02ad993c789cbe0e7c71d4182b5.jpg

    • Like 9
    • Thanks 1
    • Delicious 2
  5. On holiday in an oyster-growing region, so....the biggest oyster I’ve ever had - twice the size of my hand - the red is Tabasco.

     

    35FC370F-0054-4C8F-A3E7-8A4793045CBE.thumb.jpeg.87fc3196728f053ebb801214d9e9cd69.jpeg

    AAA714A8-1C0F-402A-B8FF-93DCF4A79731.thumb.jpeg.ad13c48c829015786c3768a30c13dd81.jpeg

     

     

    And then three dozen Sydney Rock oysters. YES, BY MYSELF. 

     

    29610270-1F6A-4345-B13A-0F585645246F.thumb.jpeg.431114f938d7c2c3973d876dd4cfc818.jpeg

    • Like 14
    • Delicious 3
  6. Things I've made lately;

     

    Strawberry mascarpone meringue trifle; which involved four layers of chewy coconut meringue, six punnets of fresh strawberries, an entire bag of freeze-dried strawberries, 1.5kg of mascarpone, 15 eggs, an entire jar of vanilla bean paste, a whole lotta sugar, and a trifle dish. Office morning teas; I rule em. 

     

    IMG_9948.thumb.JPG.534323fc9b7fffcbb7c81fe83b1aa5b2.JPG

    IMG_9949.thumb.JPG.d6dbc2b86909b241d291c6a0066bf126.JPG

     

    Vanilla eclairs, also for office people:

     

    IMG_9488.thumb.JPG.662161114cb9798eb5da496a68325a22.JPG

     

    Concrete cake, which is just layers of vanilla butter cake and French raspberry buttercream. I gifted it to my friend, look how happy she is! :x

     

    IMG_9910.thumb.JPG.cebbeab32673c925fae2b5574196b70a.JPG

    IMG_9909.thumb.JPG.f220752d5b12b5839a246dfe36b0636f.JPG

    IMG_9922.thumb.JPG.eeb8e74dcaa855114a64d996839945e8.JPG

     

    • Like 19
  7. And round 2; vanilla bean cupcakes, with fresh pear baked into the mix, the centers cored out and filled with pear caramel, feuilletine and pistachio praline, topped with that roasted and reduced pear buttercream, and decorated with a candied pear wafer.

     

    But the impressive part of all that is that even despite losing a significant portion of my fingertip to the mandoline when slicing the pears and bleeding non stop for five hours and eventually requiring proper medical attention, I still managed to get my eyeliner on more or less straight the next day, bloodied stump notwithstanding. This is my bandaged mandoline stump. :(

     

    Is a serious mandoline injury the sign of a TRUE eGulleter?

     

    IMG_8376.thumb.JPG.1b872219dcbf02f04f3f6277ab211774.JPG

     

    IMG_8369.thumb.JPG.2bfaa4ac09b11c9889abd734fda28db3.JPG

     

     

    • Like 4
    • Sad 5
  8. More experiments in flavour layering; a cake involving 28 pears.

     

    Spiced pear layer cake, filled with pear curd and a caramel made out of reduced pear juice (the juice I squeezed out of the pears I shredded for the cake layers), cream and butter, and frosted with roasted pear and mascarpone buttercream. And then I poached pears in pear nectar and swirled that through the buttercream, and decorated the frosted cake with candied pear wafers (dipped paper-thin slices of whole pear in sugar and dehydrated until they’re toffee). And also pistachio praline in the filling (no pears in that.)

     

    Office people were very happy.

     

    IMG_8322.thumb.JPG.bd5312651723540953df2d80590f4651.JPG

    IMG_8345.thumb.JPG.b8b5141c55f791c10d1f208b6e2ad807.JPG

    • Like 17
  9. I always have a lot of left over egg shells from all my baking, so I've started experimenting with things I can turn them into; first, I painted their insides dusty rose pink and amethyst, and gold/copper leafed their outsides.

     

    I figure I can use them as some kind of cake decoration.

     

    IMG_8044.thumb.JPG.df63ab66fc226f028b0c952e98b825c7.JPG

    IMG_8045.JPG.3ff72eff9fd7067eb7ea8fd605b55a04.JPG

    IMG_8046.thumb.JPG.10825445270d412a8b4b73bfe5022944.JPG

     

    And part 2 of said experiments; cutting a small hole in the bottom of an egg, draining the yolk and white and washing it out, letting it dry completely for a few days; piping the shell full with liquid praline, sealing the hole, letting it set and painting the egg gold.

     

    Ergo, sum; gilded praline hard-boiled eggs.

     

    IMG_8042.thumb.JPG.d977f71b4273e912d43235cbb606e66d.JPG

    IMG_8041.thumb.JPG.0ec16fd8ba1078bf65fbcd20c19ef92d.JPG

    • Like 12
    • Thanks 1
  10. Frosted pistachio experiments, for a cake I'm making for work tomorrow. All flavours involve first crystallizing the roasted pistachios in melted sugar and water, but the flavours I've made today include:

     

    * Cardamom, white pepper and fleur de sel

     

    * Freeze-dried apricot powder and Murray River soft pink salt flakes 

     

    * Orange blossom water, star anise, sea salt and a dash of espelette pepper

     

    * Sichuan pepper, freeze-dried strawberry powder and crushed black salt

     

    * Melted down pralines de roses from Lyon, almond kernel extract and fleur de sel 

     

    * Kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, ground dried Kashmiri chilli and crystallised, dried fish sauce granules for the salt (that I made myself by drying fish sauce in the sun and waiting for the neighbours to complain about the smell)

     

    And my personal favourite - cinnamon, ginger, cubeb pepper and smoked salt.

     

    IMG_7879.thumb.JPG.a18116398398c823525e7365a2db34fd.JPG

    • Like 12
×
×
  • Create New...