I always have a thing for chestnut, especially during winter time. I guess one of the most sweet childhood memories would be getting roast chestnuts from the street carts: glistering chestnuts in brown bag with rising steam, air was filled with that sweet nutty aroma that you’d smell from blocks away. Not sure from when, vacuum packed cooked peeled chestnuts replaced the ones from the street…yes, they are convenient and you don’t have to come across those bad ones in shell, but they are just different.

I particularly like Italian or French chestnut, they’re more starchy and yummier and nuttier when roasted. I’ve enjoyed loads of roasted French chestnuts this year…of course at home=) And the leftovers were gone into this delicious cake. Oh, what’s better than the marriage between my favourite chestnut and bittersweet chocolate?

So finally, after quite a while, there’s a recipe here=) The recipe’s adapted and modified from Gordon Ramsey’s ‘Sunday Lunch’ cook book. I added some Sauternes poached French Bosc pear in the batter…so there are three of my favorite things in one, and a bit less sugar was used.

Chestnut and bittersweet chocolate truffle cake Recipe:

Ingredients:

250 bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

250 organic unsalted butter, plus extra to grease the cake tin

250 cooked, peeled chestnuts

125 ml whole milk

125 cream

4 large organic eggs, seperated

105 g caster sugar

How to:

Preheat the oven to 350F (170C) and grease the 10″ springform cake tin with softened butter.

Melt the bittersweet chocolate and butter together over a pot of barely simmering water. Take off the heat and cool slightly.

In another heavy-based pan, heat the chestnuts , milk and cream until just boiling, then use a hand immersion blender to whiz it to a rough puree.

Beat the egg yolks and caster sugar till pale in color and creamy. Stir in the melted chocolate and chocolate puree, you’ll have a smooth and well blended mixture.

Whisk the egg whites in a grease free  metal bowl until stiff. Carefully fold 1/3 of the whites to the chocolate mixture to loosen the texture a bit, then gently fold in the rest until just combined. Then gently fold in the poached pear cubes. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin, bake for 25-35 minutes. You might want to cover the top of the cake loosely with foil to prevent the cake getting too browned. Don’t worry about the cracks formed on top during baking, it’s totally normal and adds to it’s character.

The cake could be served warm or cold. When it’s warm, it’s light, soft, moosse-y, almost souffle like. Alan is definitely a fan of the warm version, 1/6 of the cake was gone right after freshly out of the oven. I like it cold though: completely set and perfectly dense. You don’t need any fancy embellishment for this cake, with just a dollop of softly whipped cream, it’s devive.

The uplifting bright color of winter.

The eight-course Christmas dinner on the table:

-Parma ham, fig, mache salad with hazelnut, pomegranate seed and 15 year Balsamic vinegar

-Iberico ham, Parmigiano Reggiano

-Smoked salmon fillet on blini, chived creme fraiche

-Foie gras, toasted brioche, spiced peach jam

-White sea bass, parsnip puree with vanilla-saffron cream

-Iberico pork chop, golden Chanterelle, fingerling potato mash, sour cherry with port reduction

-Dry aged black Angus rib-eye,  thyme roasted young potato, Bordelaise sauce

-fresh fruits

There are still tons of pictures waiting to be sorted, edited and posted, I definitely left so much behind schedule..and I seriously need to devote a bit more time in this place meant to share every single bit of my cooking life.

These are the wedding favors made for one of my dearest friends. One hundred and twenty macarons in two flavors: chestnut with chestnut cream, and hazelnut with Earl Grey tea ganache. I have to admit that I’m not yet an expert in making macarons as you probably know I got into these little treats just a little while ago, but I’m actually pretty proud of what I came up with at the end of the day, although I put way too many hours into them, including couple batches in failure.

So here’s the ultimate tip that i think would yield a perfect macaron, you know those macarons with clean raised edge, the perfectly thin crispy skin which cracks into almost crumbs once you bite into it, and the nicely chewy moist inner layer separates from the outer crispness with a gap of air pocket. It’s just amazing that a batter could bake into these magical three layers, the heat, the air trapped in the meringue, the skin formed on the surface of the batter…transformed into the delicate goodness–that we call macarons. Ok, back to the tips: the most essential point is that you have to be patient enough to leave the piped macarons at room temperature until it really dries out and there’s a skin formed on the surface–this is crutial! If it still sticks to your finger when you touch it by the time you slide the baking tray into the oven, the air would expand to any crack it would find…which mostly would lead to puffing up from the top other than the formation of the foot with a lifted cap. Having said that, of course the consistency of the batter also largely determines the success of the final product–too much of folding leads to runny batter, and you will end up with flat macarons; but being too scared of the risk of over folding, will result in thick batter baked into footless ones. So for this particular pastry, I will say, practice makes perfection. You do have to go through failure to really get the click.

Pretty little favors in lacy bags

This is definitely a month filled with excitement, tension, chaos and joy. Weddings, Christmas fairs, charity fair…all cranked in the same month, same week. Working around the clock for straight 18 hours without sleep is definitely (seriously) not something too enjoyable, especially when there’s two consecutive events and almost 300 cupcakes need to be done in a home kitchen–I guess, it’s more of a physical challenge, and of course, mentally, in a way. But the result is always the sweetest fruit you could ever savor from your own hard work and dedication–people’s smile and appreciation, kids’ naive responses with a simple word like ‘delicious’ while wandering around my cakes longing for more…and all the sudden, it’s reassured that all the efforts are so worthwhile, and I feel like back in the kitchen cooking up another storm again.

The wedding cupcake tower, made for lovely Miranda turned out absolutely beautiful, cupcakes looked dreamy with the pastel colored buttercream and the whole cupcake tower looked so chic and elegant with rose petals in creamy white and pink, and the subtle pinky purple and green from the hydrangea. The baby pink one with specks of red is strawberry’n cream, the pale yellow one is lemon cream, with bit’s of candied lemon zest.

The Cedan Chair Bazaar took place right after the wedding event, with probably the worst weather condition over the last decade in HK–it was freezing cold up on the Peak, wind was so strong trying to blow everything off the table, heavy fog made everything wet and soggy in no time…it was definitely a hard day. But again, like I just said, I was glad I was there and made it through. (what a shame though! Everything happened in such a rush, didn’t get any shot of the mad mass home production of the cupcakes!)

Another fair’s just around the corner…better to get more sleep before that.

Persimmon’s in season…a fruit that I absolutely adore since I was little girl. The jelly like flesh, the intense sweetness, the color of fall and harvest, and oh, the dear old memories eating them. Not sure what to do with them yet…persimmon pudding would be nice…or another creation with my cupcake–spiced chiffon with persimmon Bavarian? Yup, check it out later!

Rhubarb is one of my favorute ingredients to cook with, too bad that I don’t often come across them here in Hong Kong. They’re so lovely when baked with orange juice, a little sugar and a touch of aged Balsamic vinegar, served with old custard and British shortbread crumble, which came out so wonderful with the buttery aroma from sweet butter and an incredible texture.  And the leftover baked rhubarb is pureed in a food processor and turned into the bavarian for the cupcakes. Brilliant!

British short bread

It’s another busy day in the kitchen developing new flavors, and for the first time, I got four different kinds of cupcakes in one day! Such a happy thing!

On top of  that, a little experiment doing sugar iced flower petals too, they went beautifully on those airy delights!

French vanilla chiffon with strawberry and cream bavarian

Passion fruit chiffon with orange-passion fruit poached apricot bavarian

Passion fruit chiffon with rhubarb bavarian

French vanilla chiffon with milk poached banana bavarian

It was meant to be a little gift made along with some other treats for a friend of mine, who’s leaving HK.  But by the time she got to taste it, it’s already not as good as it just come out of oven with that warm flaky pastry. She’s one of the few here share the great passion and love for food. I’m gonna miss her.

I usually make this kind of galette with just a mixed variety of apples: honey crisp or Fuji for flavor, and granny smith for some tartness. This time, I made three petite ones with two different flavors instead of one fat round: Japanese yellow flesh peach galette and another with apple and rhubarb. And frankly, I admit that using Japanese peach in this might have been a bit waste, I still prefer to savor its delicately aromatic flesh on its own, with the skin on.  I guess nectarine would be perfect for this tart as it’s got stronger flavor plus  much more reasonable  in price. But the rhubarb does add a very nice depth and the right amount of tartness to the apple galette, not to mention that vivid deep red scattering around the apple slices with rosy edge. I adore the irregular shape of a galette: rustic and homey. Always finish your galette off with a light wash of heated, strained apricot jam, or in this case, I used warmed honey with a drop of water, to give the galette an irresistable sheen.

Macaron is another thing that I’m never particularly fond of, reason being that they are often times nothing more than sugar loaded egg whites. But after having tried macarons from Robouchon, my perception towards those tiny desserts completely changed. And I made my first move creating my own flavor. Of course, first try with passion fruit! And some with Earl Grey tea. Are they still authentic?…I wouldn’t say, but they’re definitely delicious!

Should I apologize first for the endless chiffon cupcake posts? The cupcake thing’s been taking up all my brain space…flavor combination, topping variations, different ways making bavarois…there’s so much planing involved for a business from scratch. I want something new, something not ordinary, something that ’s gonna make people remember the taste an come back [...]