Durian Puffs

Last weekend, after dinner at my parents' place, we had some durians that my dad bought. Although it was the durian seasons now, some durians just don't taste good after a couple of days. The ones that we had at his place didn't taste good unfortunately. So I told him to give me those durians so that I can bake cakes with it, and won't let it go to waste since all of us didn't want to eat it anymore. He said he wanted to have puff instead. So I made durian puffs for him (since he sponsored me the durians). I hope he likes it! :)

Recipe for Choux pastry is from Aunt Yochana, Chocolate Cream Cheese Eclair. For the durian filling, I didn't want to use gelatine as I dislike gelatine taste. So I modified the recipe from Zu's kitchen.

Durian Fillings:
582g Durian pulps (from two plastic take away boxes)
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp honey
130g Diary whipping cream

Method
1. Whisk whipping cream till soft peaked, put aside.
2. Add durian meat, milk and honey into another bowl and mix till smooth using a wooden spoon.
3.Combine cream and durian mixture together till well blended and put in fridge till ready to fill the puffs.

Tarts Again!

I did tarts again as I was still left with tart doughs and pastry creams. I wanted to finish up the pastry creams, so I bake tart crusts. My fillings include pastry cream mixed with some orange juice & zest, chocolate ganache with Valrhona crunchy pearls and chocolate ganache with Bailey's Creme Caramel.

Banana Chocolate Chiffon II

My spouse bought a bunch of bananas over the weekend. Although he likes to eat bananas, he doesn't buy it every week as he was afraid the children might get too much phlegm if they eat too much. Whenever I see a bunch of bananas, I will get very tempted to use it to bake cakes. I don't really eat bananas, but I will eat a banana cake though! So I decided to bake the usual banana chocolate chiffon cake. :)

Cheese Earthquake Bread

It was really quite a while since I last baked breads. I thought I should bake often so that I do not lose touch with the process. So I decided on baking the cheese earthquake bread loaf since I don't have to roll them individually and baked separately.

One of my colleague, who loves baking like me, told me that she usually use her hands to knead the dough. I was quite skeptical as I thought it will probably take a long time to knead the dough until it's not sticky anymore. So I decided to try this morning. It really took me about 50mins just to knead the dough! It's about the same time if I use the mixer too! After kneading, I felt that the dough was really hard. I thought to myself, gee, this bread will be pretty hard again! :<

Fortunately, it didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought. Lucky for me!

*This is my 100th Post!*

Thank you, Strangers!

Since I started my baking blog months ago, I've been referencing to other veteran baking bloggers. Whenever I faced any problems or difficulties in baking, I will usually put my query in their comments, and they will respond in one way or the other. These bloggers are very unreserved, and unselfish. They shared their experiences and give suggestions, and even helped to analyse why I "failed". I'm very grateful to these bloggers- Aunt Yochana, Florence, Angie, and lately Happy Home Baking.

(censored)in Oct '2008

Thank you, Strangers, for making this world a much better place to live in! This post is specially dedicated to you.

More Frosted Cupcakes

My sister ordered frosted cupcakes for her event tomorrow. So I started preparing the cupcakes on Thursday, did the frosting on Friday night so that I can bring them for her on Saturday afternoon since I will be busy in the morning. Just hope that she likes them. I did a few for my children too!

Blueberry Tarts

I did my tart dough the day before, so yesterday I baked my tarts! Initially, I thought of using fresh cream for the tarts, but I thought it will taste better with the pastry cream, and can keep longer in the fridge, so I cooked up the pastry cream too! I yearned for fruit tarts quite often, so I made my blueberry tarts to satisfy my cravings!

Coffee Butter Cake

I bought a few slabs of butters over the weekend. Thought of baking butter cake to eat. So did a quick coffee butter cake, and topped it with some walnuts. The coffee butter cake turned out to be a bit too soft. I probably could have creamed the butter and sugar for too long! The coffee taste wasn't strong enough. *sigh*

Sweet Tart Dough

Preparing my tart dough for future use. Just bought a packet of blueberries and thinking of making blueberry tart in a day's time.

Cheesecake Pops!

I noticed that during the June's Bakers' Daring Challenge, they baked Cheesecake Pops. It was so interesting and looks so yummy. I decided to try it since I didn't think it was difficult. However, preparation was done over a couple of days! I didn't do it as well as them, but at least it didn't look too bad!

I used the dark couverture chocolate and tried to temper it. But somehow, I wasn't very successful in doing that. Fortunately, I managed to coat the frozen cheesecake pops with them. *Whew!* I just hope my family members will like them! I called it the Cheesecake Lollipops! :)

Recipe extracted from Simply Anne's, Mini Delights. There is another similar recipe, maybe easier to follow: Vanilla Cheesecake Lollipops.