12 hours ago, oli said:For the cake. I thought, since your cutting, you must partake. To be so talented, you practice quite a bit and have to do tasting of everything you do.
Aha. No, that's not me - that's my colleague, the birthday girl. Imagine someone who looks the exact diametrical opposite - very, very short black spiky hair, skin pale as paper, masses of eyeliner, rotund in the all the wrong places - THAT'S me. 
Anyway, today's effort: because it's Monday and I bloody LOVE Mondays (not kidding, not sarcastic) - ginger and pear cupcakes. But not just any old ginger and pear cupcakes! These have a base of Fever Tree ginger beer (the gingeriest I've ever found) reduced to an intense syrup, chopped candied stem ginger, crystallised ginger, dried powdered ginger and grated fresh ginger.
And roasted pear that I then pureed in pear nectar, a dash of Poire William eau de vie, and freeze-dried pear and mascarpone buttercream topped with candied pear wafers.
I'm very into improving my baking to make ingredients/flavours (the ginger, the pear) taste the most OF themselves that I possibly can without being overwhelming, and layering them in texture and intensity so you hopefully go, "Wow, I have never tasted anything more pear-y. Even the last pear I ate was not as pear-y as this."
(See also: that time I spent 2 days pureeing and reducing a whole watermelon, injecting fresh slices of another watermelon with the resulting watermelon reduction, and vacuum packing the lot overnight to produce a watermelon slice that SLAMMED YOU IN YOUR MOTHERFLIPPING FACE with watermelon.)
