The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours.

WARNING – Not for the Faint Hearted.

You know the saying, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’? Well I think I just disproved that with my durian cheesecake.

You would think that after my last encounter with an Adriano Zumbo cake, I would know enough to make it my final try. However, I’m not one to shy away from challenges and I decided to go one step further this time tackling the V8 Cake.

Weeks of researching, planning, organising and countless sleepless nights later, now it’s all over. The Food Bloggers dinner hosted by Merivale was held on Wednesday night. I’ll give you a run down of my experiences working in a commercial kitchen and an overview of the initial planning process down to plating up our courses.

The description of the cake is something I think the whole family will appreciate, so I decided to give the cake a go. However, to spice it up a bit, I added a middle layer of caramel mousse and fresh strawberries, topped with freshly whipped cream, caramel web, more fresh strawberries and torched meringue.

Due to my current obsession with masterchef, it was only natural that the next thing I bake was another masterchef recipe. A couple of weeks back, we saw how by missing out two layers of Gary’s Black forest cake costs Dom his place in the competition. I’m not a huge fan of black forest cake, [...]

Yay Masterchef is back! With the return of masterchef, means the return of baking crazy desserts, desserts which takes way too long to bake and complete, but tastes so damn good that it made all the blood sweat and tears worthwhile. Last week’s Celebrity chef challenge saw 20 year old Callum, pitted against one of Australia’s most popular pastry chef, Phillipa Silby Head Pasty chef of Circa the Prince in Melbourne.

I have to admit, I’m a little bit obsessed with the DBC, these days my favourite day of the month is the 1st. It is on the 1st of every month, a new challenge is revealed. The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding.

After tasting the lemon sabayon tart, I now understand why Thomas Keller is reviered as the chef that he is. How could someone turn soemthing as simple as a lemon tart into something so light and fancy. I found that the addition of the pine nut, rounded the tart as a whole off well.

Since my last blog, besides the monthly Daring Baker’s Challenges, I’ve been quite busy with work, going overseas, spending time with friends before they move overseas, and playing/teaching my puppy new tricks. I purchased Max as a Birthday gift for myself, I know it’s quite strange, but just within the week that I’ve had him, he has filled my days with so much joy and happiness. On a side note, here is a Pecan pie recipe with a twist.

There’s something so childishly appealing about green food. All my life I’ve been drawn to the green stuff, be it food colouring or natural vegetables I’ll eat it all. That said, it’s not really surprising that Green Tea is my favourite drink and flavour, so when I kept seeing recipes for Matcha Sables (or Diamants) I decided to roll up my sleeves and give them a go.

My first experience which soon developed to an obsession with Cannoli started precisely 4 years ago. It was 4 years ago, that I started a new job at a shop which was directly opposite to a beautiful Italian patisserie. Each morning, my request would be a ricotta filled cannoli with a medium cappucino. I can remember precisely how the cannoli tasted, with it’s crispy shell encasing an airy mixture of ricotta cheese, douse in a little sprinkle of icing sugar, it brings back great memories.