Dessert Archives - - Page 3 of 7

Pantry Basics: How to make shortbread at home

Sometimes, less is truly more. When I’m pressed for time but would like to be able to offer a homemade treat, I remind myself to keep things super simple. After all, a distracted mind tends to make mistakes. I’d rather be able to present a small, unembellished morsel successfully executed rather than an overambitious, spectacular flop. This shortbread recipe from Claire Clark, who was head pastry chef at The French Laundry, fits the bill perfectly. Continue Reading →

Pantry Basics: The Ultimate Lemon Curd – Pierre Hermé’s Lemon Cream

In all honesty, this post was prompted by the fact that I’ve finally found Meyer lemons in Singapore. For years, the Meyer lemon was one of those elusive culinary treasures that I’d read so much about but never tasted. And I never would’ve recognized the lemons as Meyers (given that they were only labeled with their country of origin, Australia) if I hadn’t happened to taste my first one just weeks before at the Noosa International Food and Wine Festival.

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Checking out Berkeley’s most famous breakfast cafe, Rick and Ann’s

One Saturday morning in late January, while visiting friends in San Francisco, we decided to take a day trip to Berkeley. While we had several reasons for going there, one of the most important was to check out some of that area’s most highly-regarded eating places. I asked my friends, some of whom knew the area well, for recommendations on where we should go to — after all, I was the tourist and they were the locals. While there were a lot of options thrown around for lunch, dinner and snacks in between, everyone agreed on where we should have breakfast. They all said Rick and Ann’s. Continue Reading →

Making your first classic pound cake

When I was a kid, my family rarely shopped at the supermarket. If we did, I would always beg my parents to get me a box of Sara Lee’s pound cake. To me, Sara Lee’s pound cake was the best cake in the world. If I was having a bad day in school, I would open the fridge, cut a slice and eat it, and everything instantly seems brighter. Continue Reading →

A food truck in New York City: Wafels & Dinges yummy Belgian waffles

Food trucks have been gaining in popularity throughout the US and New York City has many of them. They tend to be priced lower than most sit-down places and even though some of them have long lines, you still get your food pretty quickly as people in the trucks typically prepare food from a limited menu. There are even many Smartphone apps that follow the movement of trucks and update their locations so it’s now easier than ever to find the truck you’re looking for! Continue Reading →

Friday food porn: Sakura Swiss Roll

S made this amazing Swiss Roll for me. White chocolate cream filling. The cake itself was vanilla with sakura blossoms baked into it. Inspired by one she saw on the awesome Evan’s Kitchen Ramblings blog.

An entremets primer: Japanese cult pastry chef Hidemi Sugino’s Fruits Rouges

I first discovered Japanese mousse cake savant, Hidemi Sugino (along with many of his other fans within the blogosphere, it seems) through Keiko’s gorgeous blog. I found myself repeatedly returning to her beautifully precise renditions of his recipes in Le goût authentique retrouvé. And when I finally had the opportunity to taste the master’s work in Tokyo, I was enthralled by the lightness of his creations, as well as the subtle and sophisticated layering of complementary and contrasting flavours. They were simply the best mousse cakes I’d ever tasted (here’s Nick’s superb dissection of some of Sugino’s entremets). I promptly bought a copy of Le goût authentique retrouvé on that fateful first visit in 2007—disregarding the fact that the recipes were all in Japanese. I somehow figured that I would be able to decipher them based upon the ingredients listed in French despite the fact that I don’t speak French either! Continue Reading →

Pierre Herme’s Sweet Tart Dough

Pierre Herme needs no introduction. He is one of France’s preeminent pastry chefs and possibly one of the most recognized names in the business. I wouldn’t imagine myself ever coming close to replicating the lovely creations he stocks his eponymous boutiques with, but when we plan our dinner party menus, I frequently find myself dipping into Desserts by Pierre Herme and Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, the two books he co-authored with Dorie Greenspan. The recipes range from simple to elaborate, with flavours that are accessible, yet sophisticated. But what I love most is the fact that the recipes are detailed and precise. They work. They reflect Pierre Herme’s innovations, tweaks and personal preferences as a pastry chef. Personally, they exhibit a flavour profile that also appeals to me. The bitterness of chocolate (Pierre prefers Valrhona) isn’t masked with too much sugar. His pastry dough celebrates the glorious flavour of good butter. His simple lemon cream is irresistible when paired with his sweet tart dough. Yet, he doesn’t take himself so seriously as to eschew the use of Nutella in a tart.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working my way through a series of his tarts. Each successful attempt has made me an ever bigger fan. Most recently, for a group of chocolate lovers (including a friend who retails the stuff himself), I picked the Tarte Grenobloise. Pierre’s rethinking of this classic, as Dorie explains it, is influenced by the all-American pecan pie. A chocolate-almond pate sable tart shell is filled with chocolate ganache and topped with pecans enrobed with caramel. It was rich and heavy, but I certainly relished the tiny, cold wedge of leftovers I polished off the following day! It actually benefitted from chilling and would’ve been perfect washed down with a cold glass of milk. (Keep reading)

Hail Mary Pot de Creme

There are some times, no matter how prepared you think you are, no matter how carefully you’ve planned your time and prepped your ingredients, that things just don’t work out. I’m sure many have you been in this situation. It’s often not even your fault. You’ve been fastidious in making sure your mise en place is perfect and that you’ve followed every recipe you’re using to the letter. There could be one of a dozen reasons. Maybe your oven temperature is not as accurate as the manufacturer would lead you to believe? Or the cookbook author’s recipes simply don’t work? Or, at the extreme end of possibilities, your tap water is too hard or soft for the pasta recipe you’re trying to use? Or the humidity where you live simply won’t allow the gnocchi you are working on to set? Who knows? At the end of the day, though, you’re stuck with friends on the way over and in need of a quick fix.

For me, my kitchen kryptonite is dessert. Which is why I tend to often engineer dinner parties so that my darlin’ wife S is the one making the last course of the meal. But there are some occasions when either I’ve promised to take care of the whole meal or she’s simply too busy to make dessert. And on these occasions, I’d say my success rate has been about 70/30. Meaning that 70% of the time, whatever I try (which is, mind you, not too elaborate) actually turns out pretty tasty and not too visually unappealing. But that also means that 30% of the time, I have to chuck dessert and start fresh. Starting fresh though is usually difficult because by the time I discover that dessert #1 didn’t quite work out, there’s probably just an hour or two before friends start to arrive. Which means that whatever I throw together has to (1) come together pretty frakkin’ quickly and (2) also taste pretty frakkin’ great. My current favourite Hail Mary dessert is a chocolate pot de creme. (keep reading)

How to use up bananas

For the past few weeks, S has been testing banana cake recipes for two reasons. The first was part of our quest, mentioned in my previous post, for the perfect house cake. The second was because she had been recently asked to contribute a recipe that reminded her of home to a new cookbook and she had chosen the banana cake. Now, while I love her banana cake, there are sometimes when too much of a good thing can make you go, well, a little bananas.

In order to have enough ripe fruit (key word here being ripe) for her cakes, S had been stockpiling bananas like a gorrila about to face a harsh winter. And after tasting the sixth or seventh version of her cake, and having determined that, yes, she had indeed improved upon the original recipe, I had to say something. Well, actually, it was more of a cross between a whimper and whine. I asked her, as gently as possible, since she had now perfected her cake recipe, if perhaps there was something else we could do to the bananas because I really couldn’t look at another banana cake, let alone have a slice for breakfast. (Keep reading…)

The house cake

Over the past few years, as S and I have been travelling, visiting and sometimes staying with friends, we’ve noticed a very interesting shift. Not too long ago, we would have been offered a foldaway couch, or some uncomfortable cot in a friend’s living room. Most recently, though, friends have pleasantly surprised us with very well-appointed guest rooms. Not only have they been clean, comfy and functional, there has also been ample closet space and fine linens. Some have even come stocked with a wide range of toiletries to choose from. Obviously, we’ve all been getting older — which is something we usually complain about. But one of the nice by-products of getting older (and hopefully more successful) is we all eventually move into larger and nicer homes.

One of the things that S wanted to do when we built our new home was create a really nice guest room. Ours is on the ground floor of the house. It’s done up in neutral colors and planned very much the way a hotel room would be set up. In addition to the comfy queen-size bed, there’s a nice wood desk, two vintage chairs, a small flatscreen TV, and loads of closet space. S has also kitted out the bathroom with a full range of… well, whatever someone might need, be it toothbrushes, band-aids, even contact lens solution. Overall, we felt that the room was pretty darned stylish and we’ve been eagerly awaiting our first house guests. (Keep reading…)