cheese & tomato melt

Recently I've been hesitating whether or not to buy a jar of dill pickles. Although I like dill pickles, I'm not sure if I can finish them before they go mouldy. But now I don't have to buy them at all. By chance I have found myself a sandwich combination that tastes very similar to a dill pickle! Best sandwich combination ever!

I've had this for two days in a row and I think I'll have this for lunch again tomorrow. All you have to do is assemble (reconstituted garlic,) sliced medley tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, black pepper, dill and melted tasty cheese on a toasted butter slice of bread.

chocolate raspberry

Multi-component desserts is a lot of work, but it is also very fun since there are many basic techniques required in the recipe itself. I was scrolling through cakechef the other day and decided that Koji Yamamoto's IMPEC would be easy to make. Initially, I was going to make half and finish the rest the next day, but I finished the first bit earlier than expected so I made the rest. Taste wise, I liked the chocolate almond sponge and the chocolate creme, but I'm unsure of the vanilla diplomat cream. My mum thought the raspberry gelee was too sour and ruined the cake, but it was kind of bland and lacking in flavour to me. I would have liked more raspberry kick.

Things I did different was straining out the seeds for the raspberry gelee (maybe that's why the gelee was bland?), making a chocolate ganache glaze instead of the chocolate glacage and garnished with cocoa nibs instead. It was fun experience though and I took lots away from it. I need more work with the glazing though.

I scaled down certain parts of the recipe (half portion of the: gelee framboise pepin, diplomate vanille, creme chocolat; 1:1 ratio of sugar and water for the syrup) and made a 18x18cm cake. 

Components in composition order:

Chocolate almond sponge, sugar syrup, raspberry gelee, vanilla diplomat cream, chocolate almond sponge, sugar syrup, chocolate cream (mousse?), dark chocolate ganache, cocoa nibs (garnish).

Edit: It tastes so much better when left in the fridge for 24 hours!

dreaming of butter

Feels like forever since I've baked a cake, but it was just last week since I baked an assam tea chiffon cake. But to justify, it's been ages since I've used an entire block of butter for something. These days it's bread and some other things. When dreaming of having slices of butter cake during class, it was time to whip out the butter again.

I've been receiving some homegrown lemons from my uncle's aunt's tree these days. Not to waste the peel and juice, I've been making lemon curd and lemon curd muffins for tea. This time some lemon drizzle cake, adapted from my auntie's butter cake. Instead of adding more sugar into the syrup, I added some homemade citrus cordial we bought from the Morrisons of Glenrowan during summer. Moist, buttery and full of lemon. Mmm.

Oh ya, we got a labrador puppy. His name is Bobby and you can read the antics he gets up to over here. He nips at my shoes and pajamas too much.