Black sesame chiffon cake

This black sesame chiffon cake is the poster cake for Keiko Ishida's japanese desserts book Okashi Treats. I've had it for quite a few years now, and have tried making several of her recipes in the past couple of years (which generally turned out well). But perhaps the idea of making and creaming a chiffon cake seemed too challenging before I took a proper cake decorating class, and so I never attempted this till last week!

If you're into Japanese-style cakes, this book is a good buy since it's written in English and gives anyone easy access to Japanese recipes/ recipes with a Japanese twist. I also appreciate the baking tips shared in the book - which should be very useful for most beginners. Japanese/ japanese-influenced cakes really appeal to me, and I've gotten a few books written entirely in Japanese in the past few months. Not too surprisingly though, the present me (when excitedly getting a new Japanese recipe book) repeatedly overestimated the perseverance of the future me in translating each recipe, and so to date I've only attempted a total of ONE recipe from these books..

But I will do better in the coming months! (or so i think... :))

Strawberry Ruffles Cake

I don't know about you, but I am really drawn by the romantic-looking ruffles on these ruffle cakes. It's one of those cakes I pin to my Pinterest board from time to time, hoping that I'd be able to make one some day. It's a huge hassle to do the ruffles though, and so for a while I merely dreamt about it; but never got down to taking any action - till I stumbled upon a good stable swiss meringue buttercream recipe (when making my strawberry cupcakes). 

Strawberry cupcakes

Strawberry is the flavour of the month! I made two more strawberry-themed cakes this week - the first of which are these strawberry cupcakes. The cake is flavoured by freshly pureed strawberries, decorated with strawberry buttercream (incorporating bits of fresh, chopped strawberries) and finally topped with a little slice of strawberry. I was quite excited how pretty they turned out to be; and more importantly, my guinea pig tasters all enjoyed it :) The cake texture is a little on the moist-side though because of the strawberry puree mixed into the cake batter.

Pretty bake tools

These are some lovely baking/kitchenware that have come through my mailbox over Christmas and in the past week. From cupcake cases, tablemats to cookie cutters (that spell my initials), an exquisite seal spoon and even my favourite striped straws! That my friends staying overseas remember and send me little gifts useful for baking or food photography gives me a real warm fuzzy feeling :)

Club Street Social

I wanted to try out another new place for breakfast/ brunch; and after some research, D suggested we visit Club Street Social - located at a quiet corner of Club Street. This was after reading a rave review by Ladyironchef who claimed that this is one of the best (if not the best) brunch places in Singapore. We arrived at the cafe/restaurant slightly after 10am on a Sun morning; and since this place is supposedly quite popular I was pretty surprised we were able to have the whole place to ourselves.

But the feeling of exclusiveness lasted for a mere 10 minutes :P

Strawberry Shortcake

I have a "cakes-to-make" list which changes from time to time, and the strawberry shortcake made it to my list a week or two ago. I got quite excited thinking about it then; and ended up buying a Japanese recipe book with step-by-step instructions on how to make this cake - apparently a default birthday cake and all-time favourite for many Japanese :) I couldn't really find high-fat whipping cream in local supermarkets though; and made do with the typical one I see in NTUC. Thankfully it whipped up relatively nicely (though not that perfect still) and to my surprise, someone placed an order for one the day I uploaded the above photo to FB. 

Our first harvest

I harvested our first kangkong and ladyfinger late last week - it's really amazing how something as basic and simple as soil can nourish my plants to yield these lovely veges. Too bad there weren't enough of them to make a dish, and so I stored both of them in the fridge. To my dismay, the kangkong became shrivelled after a day (as I had naively left it uncovered and exposed to the cold air) and so we had to discard it. Thankfully the ladyfinger was hardier, and we waited for another one to mature before cooking them for dinner on Monday.

Dark chocolate sunken souffle cake

Out of the three chocolate cakes I've made so far (a moist beetroot chocolate cake; the chocolate hazelnut buckwheat one; and most recently the chia seed chocolate mud cake), this probably ranks as my favourite chocolate cake recipe so far! It's extremely rich (made with a substantial portion of >70% cacao chocolate); and can be easily matched with berries/fruits of my choice. I imagined it to look lovely with a mountain of blueberries, and so this is how mine ended up :) I'm sure it will taste and look great too with a mix of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries!

Chye Seng Huat Hardware

For the "uninitiated", Chye Seng Huat hardware looks just like another hardware store in the Lavender/ Jalan Besar area - as the cafe owners decided to retain the shopfront/ look of the premises they took over even after turning it into a cafe. I've been interested to visit after reading about this relatively novel concept a few months back.

D and I had a loose agreement to check out this place, but somehow we never got down to it, and I decided to visit it anyways first when my sis-in-law and I decided to meet for breakfast/ brunch yesterday morning :P

You can get more background about this place and a rave review about Chye Seng Huat from Chubby Hubby (complete with gorgeous photos); or from Ladyironchef if you prefer something brief. I will just write about my little outing there :)