Japanese Souffle Cheesecake

I'm not a fan of the usual dense American-style cheescakes, but I really like this Japanese souffle cheesecake. It tastes light and airy with a slight hint of cake. This type of cheesecake is so much more difficult to make than teh regular dense cheesecake. A lot of techniques go into mixing this cake and whisking the white. Very easily it can fail. I made this cake for a get-together a while ago that I couldn't attend because of the lunar new year. It was supposed to be a birthday cake so I couldn't cut it open to see if it turned out alright. Actually to this date, I don't know if it turned out okay since no one that ate the cake really said anything to me. I can only hope from the beautiful exterior, that it was a success.

Earl Grey Sponge Cake

At mom's work Christmas dinner last week, her boss, riding on her buzz, wanted me to bake them a cake. I asked her what she liked, she said, not too sweet and no cream. That about eliminated 90% of all cakes no? Well, I decided to turn to my trusted sponge cake recipe from my aunt. This time around, I modified it a little to reduce the sweetness. And as I slowly transform this blog to gain more popularity with online readers, I will post a step by step instruction.

Today's my grandma's birthday, so this one will serve as her birthday cake as well. In fact, the very last time I did this cake, I made it for her birthday too. How fast did this year pass by!

Tiramisu cake

Wake me up when September ends...title of one of my favorite Green Day songs seem to suit my hiatus from this blog. Actually, October has passed as well, oh well, who's counting? My memory is short, so I won't offer any reason for my prolonged absence, only my apology.

I haven't stopped baking, but now that I'm starting to make handmade cold-processed soaps I have to make time for my new hobby. In fact, the first batch of my soap will mature and be ready for use in about 3 days! You'll hear more on that later.

For now, I hope you are satisfied with my Tiramisu recipe. I'm pretty sure I promised the recipe many entries ago, but never got around to it.

Black Forest Cherry Cake

Black Forest Cake is a name that brings me nostalgia from my childhood in Taiwan; however, if you ask me to pinpoint any particular memory of this cake, I would not be able to tell you. The truth is, I don't even know if I really had this cake before as a child, yet the name is so familiar to me. Then, couple of months ago, someone in the office celebrated his birthday and the office bought this cake for him. It was from Sun-Kee, a Chinese bakery with authentic "Asian" flavor. Everyone raved about the cake, and I did too. If I haven't said already in this blog or elsewhere, baking is like a challenge, a game to me. I don't care so much about eating the end product, rather, it's the process of making something that's normally store-bought that brings me so much joy. This cake tickled me hard and I knew I had to try to make it sooner or later. Two months later...her I am.

Swedish Princess Torte

I'm literally in awe of myself right now after spending almost a full day in the kitchen since 9 am. I've always been curious about this particular type of cake for a long time mainly because of its elegant beauty. And the other day at Ikea, when I saw that they are selling tiny princess cakes in a box in the freezer I almost got one. But really,who wants their first princess cake to be from a furniture store (line stolen from a fellow blogger).

Taro Swiss Roll

 

I absolutely love taro root and almost everything made out of it, so when I see a beautiful taro root in the grocery store, it's just impossible for me to pass it up. It's really unfortunate that most taro roots sold here are bad and moldy. Most ones in the grocery store are chopped off in parts, and you should never ever buy those because that means those chopped off parts were moldy. This also makes me nervous about eating non-homemade taro products because god knows what kind of taros were used. So you should always buy taro roots whole and clean. 

Earl Grey Mousse Cake

 

.. to celebrate Billie Joe's birthday, not intentionally of course. I feel that I haven't been making any updates with real substances, but it doesn't mean I haven't been baking! In fact, I have just completed the February Daring Baker challenge, but I am not allowed to post it on my blog until the 27th (Daring Baker rule). So to keep this blog alive, I decided to take on a different challenge on my own before the big reveal on the 27th. I chose Tartelette/Veronica's Mousse Cake recipe with a variation on the flavor. I'm not a big fan of caramel as the original recipe asks for, so I decided on my favorite flavor-- earl grey tea. Earl grey is such a versatile flavor and works particularly well with pretty much any desserts that has a milky flavor. This is also my first time making mousse. The only time I had mousse was at my 19th birthday in Taiwan when my aunt made me mango mousse cake. It was beautiful and delicious, so I know sooner or later I will have to tackle this challenge as well. 

Honey Glazed Corn Bread Cake

Rum Cake

Earl Grey Sponge Cake & Burnt Honey Cake

Tomorrow is new year's eve as well as my grandma's birthday. I was out of egg today and wasn't able to go get more until this afternoon so I couldn't start making cake til around 5. Since I have yet to succeed on making the Japanese style honey cake I thought I would give it another try. For some reasons I had a hard time looking for the recipe on the Taiwanese blogs, and the few I found all required SP (cake emulsifier). I don't really know what SP is, and have never seen it sold in the stores here. So in the end I settled for a Honey Sponge cake recipe that actually calls for bread flour! So curious I gotta try it.