Given that I hadn”t baked in a while, there was no way I was going to let a 3-day weekend go by without firing up my oven. A quick flip through a couple of newly acquired books and I settled on an orange hazelnut praliné bûche.

All right, so it’’s not Christmas yet, but one shouldn”t need to wait till Christmas to bake a log cake, no? Especially not when said cake consists of orange compote and hazelnut praline, both made from scratch. I was sold just at the thought of these two components, although I did have some doubts about how the overall taste would be when eaten together in a cake.

Orange Compote
The orange compote was made by simmering whole oranges (preferably organic, for obvious reasons) in water for 3 hours, cutting the boiled oranges in small pieces, sauteeing the orange pieces in butter and sugar and then reducing the entire concoction. The resulting compote was further chopped to achieve a chunky and thick jam consistency.

Hazelnut Praliné
The praliné looked simple enough to make: make a sugar syrup, pour toasted hazelnuts into the syrup and stir until hazelnuts are coated with crystallised sugar. Continue to cook hazelnuts and sugar until sugar melts and caramelizes to a dark brown colour. This deceptively simple process took me a good 45 minutes, so imagine my dismay when the caramelized nuts began to turn slightly sticky, courtesy of the lovely humid weather here in Singapore.

Fortunately, most of the praliné was to be ground and used as ingredients for the cake and buttercream. In the end, I was happy with how the bûche turned out (although I could have used a little less buttercream when covering the cake). Who”d have thought that hazelnuts and orange would go so well together?

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Tart with Cocoa Nib Croustillant

Emboldened by my sucess, I went on to try another recipe from the same book - a raspberry chocolate dessert built on a sturdy sable breton base. It was actually the almond croustillant decoration in the recipe that I was more interested in than the tart itself. But since I didn”t have almond nibs on hand, I decided to go with an alternative cocoa nib croustillant recipe I”d found in another book.

The end result was not bad, but again, the humidity wasn”t very suitable for croustillant making; the decorative pieces which had set firm at room temperature quickly softened when taken out of the refrigerator. I might try cutting down on the amount of butter the next time or go with almond nibs instead. My poor Silpat did not take kindly to the copious amount of butter in the crousillant!

This particular ice cream journey began with a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit Island Creamery after a less-than-satisfactory dinner. I was particularly impressed by the burnt caramel and apple pie ice cream that my brother had chosen and wondered if I could reproduce those same delicious flavours at home.

I was a little apprehensive since I”d made ice cream only twice previously, both attempts which produced less-than-ideal results. My very first attempt was made without an ice cream maker. On top of that, I didn”t freeze-then-churn the custard sufficiently. resulting in a slightly icy texture and vanilla specks that sunk to the bottom of the tub. My second atttempt saw a custard recipe that called for double cream. While the ice cream wasn”t as icy as before, it wasn”t sweet enough and left an unpleasant coating on the tongue, presumably from too high a fat content. It was a pretty disappointing waste of very expensive dairy ingredients.

I was determined to make my third attempt a success.

Burnt Caramel Ice Cream

I turned to Michael Recchiuti’’s Chocolate Obsession for the burnt caramel ice cream recipe. Having read his instructions very carefully, especially the part about turning on a kitchen fan if I had one, I had this vision of my kitchen filling up with acrid smoke while caramel turned black in my pot. Fortunately, it was nothing like that. Yes, there was some smoking, but just a few wisps and the caramel wasn”t ebony black, but a very dark amber instead.

The truth be told, I began to have doubts about the chosen flavour when I tasted the burnt caramel base on its own; it was bitter and tasted … well, burnt. But once dissolved into the creamy custard, the taste was absolutely fantastic and even better after churning and ripening! The ice cream had a deep caramel taste with mild burnt overtones. The best part was that it was completely smooth and the vanilla specks stayed happily suspended in the frozen ice cream.

Cocoa Nib Ice Cream with Caramelised Cocoa Nibs

Emboldened by my success with this ice cream recipe, I moved on to another from the same book. The 1-kg bag of Valrhona cocoa nibs, delivered right to my doorstep a couple months ago, was still untouched. The second I”d cut the bag open, the most wonderful chocolate fragrance filled the air. It was just like opening up a bag of roasted coffee beans, except that the smell was that of pure chocolate heaven.

Oh, how I regret not having ripped open the package the moment it arrived! All this time a heavenly culinary moment was just sitting in a corner of my kitchen, waiting to happen! I had no idea that cocoa nibs smelt this good. I”m not entirely sure how to describe it; somehow I keep thinking the words “pure” and “clean”, certainly not adjectives one usually associates with chocolate, but that was exactly what I felt it was: a very pure and clean chocolate aroma.

The cocoa nib ice cream reminded me very vaguely of Milo and Ovaltine, but there was something different about it. I don”t think it’’s a taste I can describe acurately. You”ll just have to try it yourself to find out!

The caramelised nibs mixed into the churned custard tasted slightly bitter as I”d messed up the caramelising process and ended up with small chunks of unmelted sugar and some burnt nibs in the mix. I”ll probably leave the caramelised nibs out of the custard in the future and just sprinkle it over the ice cream.

I”m thinking apple pie ice cream next!

Old School Blackforest Cake

The photograph here is of the blackforest cake I”d made for my brother’’s 30th birthday. It was a little daunting to make since this was the most frequently requested cake in my mum’’s cake business while we were growing up. Fortunately, I had my mum’’s recipe on hand and some carefully written notes on the side. Still, I wasn”t sure if the cake I”d made would live up to our memories of what it”d tasted like before.

But I”m glad to report that the cake turned out well and mum actually thought it tasted fine, just that I”d been a little too generous cream-wise!

After having the cake, my brother confessed that he”d never really liked blackforest cake (and I”d thought it was his favourite!) and to be completely honest, neither had I! But I was glad that I gave my mum’’s recipe a shot because my dad and hubby thoroughly enjoyed it.

So, I wasn”t supposed to bake any more before the next birthday, but the last cake I made (last section of this post) tasted so disappointing (based on feedback from my family) that I just HAD to redeem myself.

What better way to do that than with a chocolate cake? After all, there’’s nothing like a generous slice of good chocolate cake to make things right!

I went with devil’’s food cake, sandwiched and frosted with whipped dark chocolate ganache, made with my very last stash of Valrhona 66% Caraibe.

The cake turned out so delightfully moist and soft that I had to stop myself from eating the cake fresh from the oven. Although it turned firm in the fridge, letting it sit for 20 minutes at room temperature before serving brought back that wonderful texture.

I was also happy to put my recently acquired Wilton decorating tips to use. The drop flowers didn”t turn out too well; ganache probably isn”t the best medium for pretty drop flowers. I absolutely prefer the version without the flowers. Note to self: stick to simple shell borders and lines when working with ganache.

The rose cream cake pictured above was made with vanilla victoria sponge layers I had leftover from this cake. I was anxious to try piping roses with whipped cream instead of royal icing, since my joints didn”t take too kindly to the latter.

While the roses turned out fine, although extremely tedious to pipe because of the really warm weather on that particular day, I suspect the cake had dried up somewhat from being refrigerated for 2 days (despite my best cling wrap efforts). I believe my brother actually used the term “biscuit” when describing the cake! That’’s definitely a word I NEVER want to hear again in association with any cake that I bake.

In any case, I”ve never really fancied the texture of victoria sponges, using it only when I need a cake with sufficient structure to hold up heavier decoration. I”m going with a sturdy, but still delicious carrot cake next time!