My fridge is overflowing with a huge giraffe cake (more about that in a later post) and you’ve guessed it, macarons! Some of these miniature confections were my own, but some were from various famed pâtisseries around Europe, brought back by very generous friends who’d travelled there recently.

3 weeks ago, my husband and I met up with a friend at a party. He mentioned that he was leaving for Zurich on a work-related trip the following week. We suggested that he visit Sprüngli in his spare time there and try at least one of their popular luxemburgerlis. 2 weeks went by and I’d completely forgotten about the conversation that we’d had about Sprüngli, which was why I was completely surprised to receive a message from him last week, telling me that he’d got us a box of (close to 40) luxemburgerlis! Thank you, CR! We really enjoyed them.

Today, I met up with another friend for lunch. She’d just got back from Paris on a work trip last week and had bought me a box of beautifully packaged macarons from Ladurée! I was really touched that she’d gone out of her way to get me these “cookies”. Thank you so much, HL, for the macarons and for everything else that we’ve shared in the last few months!

I feel really blessed to have such wonderful friends! Wouldn’t you?

This post is a little late, but here it is anyway:

Mad Baker was featured in an article about “online bakeshops” in the weekend edition of a local newspaper, Today, on 22 - 23 September 2007.

I didn’t have time to make macarons for Audrey (Phoon), the really sweet executive writer from Today who interviewed me, but I did manage to whip up a few blueberry muffins for her. I’m really glad that the review was good.

I’ve received more orders for muffins (and macarons) since the article was published. Many thanks to Audrey’s friend who told her about my blog!

Ladyfinger sponges, also known as Savoiardi, are a staple in my pantry. I love having these light and sweet sponges on hand, so I can whip up a tiramisu on short notice. But more importantly, I love how gorgeous they look on the side of a cake, large or small. Add on a satin ribbon and the cake takes on a regal look!

This birthday cake (made for a client’s friend) looks like a Charlotte Russe on the outside, but it’s really 3 layers of sponge cake, sandwiched with 2 layers of homemade strawberry compote and cream.

I wasn’t sure how to completely cover the top with strawberries as requested. Initially, I’d thought of placing whole strawberries with their bottoms up, but changed my mind when I realised that it would look terrible because the berries were of vastly different sizes.

I’m really glad I went with the sliced version on this cake. I’ll definitely be using this layout again. I only hope WL and her dinner guests were as pleased with the cake as I was!

I really wasn’t going to make more sugar paste cakes so soon, but the beautiful photos of sugar paste roses in Peggy Porschen’s Romantic Cakes were so inspiring that I couldn’t help myself.

Sadly, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t tease the rose petals to take on the life-like frilly edges (no amount of rolling or pressing with the bone tool produced the desired result) and I finally settled for smaller blooms.

While the roses here are a far cry from the gorgeous ones in the book, I was so delighted with how the cakes turned out that I might just attempt a small 2-tiered cake next.

When I took a break from macarons last month, the plan was to use the spare time to experiment with the inspiring royal icing and sugar paste decorating ideas from Peggy Porschen’s beautiful book, Romantic Cakes. But procrastination got the upperhand and the month went by without any form of sugar crafting. It was only early this week that I finally went to the store and bought some sugar crafting supplies.

These miniature cakes are 3″ across and 2″ tall, made up of Victoria sponge sandwiched with raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream, covered with a thin layer of marzipan and another thin layer of white sugar paste.

The royal icing butterflies and sugar paste flowers were attached to the cakes with royal icing and the tiny royal icing green leaves piped on last.

The butterflies were made 4 days ahead of time and the roses 2 days in advance since these had to dry before they could be used.

The wet and humid weather we’ve been having here this week did not help the drying process at all. I’ve found that sugar paste dries fine with air-conditioning, but once it’s brought back to a non air-conditioned environment, the paste starts to absorb moisture and turn slightly soft again. I’m beginning to think that the humid climate here is not suitable for sugar crafting unless one works and keeps the end product in an air-conditioned space. (Update: The sugar paste has finally dried after 3 days.)

While the cake, buttercream and marzipan tasted really good, I don’t think I’ll be making sugar paste cakes on a regular basis. It seems such an awful waste to chuck away all the pretty decorations, which had been so painstakingly made, just to get to the cake beneath.

Just a photo teaser for now. The plan is to use these pretty butterflies on miniature cakes covered with sugar paste when I finally find some time to bake.

My Nikon D40 has been acting up lately, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to take some photos when I’m done with the cakes.

Outlines.

Filled wings.

Finished butterflies.

I’ve been busy with other non-baking/cooking related matters these last couple of weeks and haven’t been baking as much as I’d have liked. This particular order had been placed several weeks in advance and I was glad to have an excuse to fire up my oven. Since I’d made this particular cake only once prior to this, I thought it would be prudent to get some practice in first.

Both cakes here have 3 layers of sponge cake (instead of 4) and were sandwiched with strawberries and cream. The one above is the trial version.

I’d toyed with the idea of using non-dairy whipped cream since it’s supposed to hold up better in our warm climate, but decided against it once I’d read the ingredient list. Dairy cream might contain fat, not give as smooth a finish and be difficult to pipe, but at least it doesn’t contain a whole list of chemicals whose names I can barely pronounce.

Available for Purchase: 9-inch French Strawberry Cake @ a Price of S$50. Variation with Ladyfinger Sponges around the Cake @ S$55.

Today I delivered my last macaron order for the next 4 weeks or so. Thank you all for your very generous support! While I do have a lot of fun baking and sandwiching macarons, sometimes it does get a tad stressful, especially when there are back-to-back orders on consecutive days. My apartment is also in need of some tidying up - a chore that I’ve barely found time for in the last month. This is why I’m taking a short break from taking macaron orders.

I’ll continue baking during the break, of course. In fact, I still have a couple of cake and muffin orders for August. Just no macarons for sale for the next month or so. I intend to use this time to try out new cake decorating techniques (specifically, royal icing and sugar gum paste) and maybe dream up new macaron flavours.

I couldn’t have found a better way to end my macaron baking frenzy this week than with a special request for Ispahans. I don’t usually make them for sale, but I really couldn’t say no to a really nice customer who put in a request for macarons as well an Ispahan macaron as a wedding gift for a friend who loves “anything Ispahan”. This time, I even made tiny sugar droplets for the rose petals. Sadly, these don’t hold up too well in our humid climate.

Inspired by the Ispahan order, I decided to make a few more Ispahans yesterday and made another trip to the supermarket. There, I found Indonesian raspberries on the shelves! I had no idea that it was possible to cultivate raspberries in Indonesia’s tropical climate.

I also found some time this weekend to experiment with new colour combinations. I liked the combination so much that the white shells and pink filling colour combination will be the new look for raspberry macarons from now on, instead of the old pink on pink.

I’ll still be baking, so do stay tuned, especially if you’re hoping to read about something other than macarons here!

I’m on some sort of “breakfast food” roll at the moment. These were made using my favourite blueberry muffin recipe. In an attempt to make a more healthful version, I tried these with wholemeal flour once, but ended up with really dense muffins. So this time, I stuck to the original tried-and-tested version.

I like these muffins best fresh out of the oven because of their crusty tops and moist insides. But the best thing about them is that they are still fluffy and moist after 3 days, even if stored in a not-so-air-tight container - that is if they make it to the 3 day mark.

Today is the first free day I’ve had in a long while to try something new. I’d bought some Israeli white peaches a week ago, but found them to be sadly lacking in flavour. I decided to poach them first before they went bad and consider what to do with them later since I was short on time last week.

Having spent way too much time in the kitchen the last few weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to embark on another time-consuming project and decided to make danishes with the poached peaches and store bought puff pastry.

The puff pastry looked pretty enough, but was slightly undercooked on the bottom, even though I’d baked it longer than the duration recommended on the packaging. Still, the peaches were tender and full of cinnamon flavour. I think I’ll try them with some Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream tomorrow!

Poached Peaches

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks (use 1 stick if you prefer a milder cinnamon flavour)
5 cloves
5 pepper corns

Fresh peaches, halved and pitted (there is no need to peel the peaches)

Directions
1. Place the water, sugar, cinnamon sticks, cloves and pepper corns in a large sauce pan. Make sure that the pan is large enough so that all the peach halves can be immersed in the sugar syrup.
2. Bring the sugar syrup to boil. Reduce the heat and bring to a gentle simmer.
3. Poach the peaches in the simmering sugar syrup for approximately 10 - 15 minutes, until the peaches are tender and translucent.
4. Remove the peaches from the sauce pan with a slotted spoon.
5. Remove the skin from the poached peaches. The skins should slide off very easily.