Bake Feste!

Exams ended last Thursday, and we had a short break until school started again today. My friend and I took advantage of this short holiday to bake after not baking for so long due to the exams (: So yesterday I had an insane bake feste with my dear friend claudia, and we made so many goodies! My feet were hurting at the end of the day from running around the kitchen, but the fun was worth all the hard work (:


First up was a green tea layered cake, recipe from here. It was quite nice, except that we were a little shy with the green tea powder and hence there was only the faintest of taste of green tea.. But anyway we had alot of fun dressing up the cake!

When our classmates saw it, they all said they have never seen so many macarons or truffles on a single cake xD It was a little crowded on the cake, but at least everyone got a macaron each (:

The macarons were green tea macarons with green tea milk chocolate ganache. The colouring was entirely due to the green tea powder, it is really quite potent as what many websites say, just a teaspoon of it makes the entire batter green. For the shells I just added a teaspoon of the powder with the dry ingredients, and for the filling I mixed in a teaspoon into milk chocolate ganache. The result is rather satisfactory, I love the burst of green tea flavour :D Its definitely something I'll try again!

The truffles were made due to a desperate attempt to use up the wasted yolks from the macarons, and I got the recipe here. The flavour is extremely rich, maybe due to the type of chocolates I used. Eating one is enough if you aren't a major chocolate lover! The weather in Singapore also made the rolling of the truffles into balls extremely difficult. It's so hot that the chocolates started melting and become extremely sticky after 15 mins of taking them out of the fridge to roll into balls.. I was so desperate I chilled my hands using ice cubes right before I started rolling, but that only worked for the first ball i rolled. I got quite enough of chocolates after that, I don't think I will be eating chocolates for some time >< They became more manageable after I rolled them in either cocoa powder or rainbow balls.

Besides the cake, claudia also made some raspberry oatmeal bars (: I don't have the recipe, but here is a photo of it! The sweetness of the jam was offset by the oatmeal crumble, I can eat a few at one go xD

I also decided to make peach cheesecake for my gymnastics batchmates, its a modified recipe from here. Its a really brilliant and easy recipe, and her strawberry jellyhearts look super pretty!! I still have yet to reach that level of presentation. I replaced the strawberries with peaches and I used orange jelly.

Comments about the changes was that the orange jelly is a tad too sour for a cheesecake for some, for other they thought it was still wonderful. I used Tortally jelly, which melted when it was out in the open for some time >< maybe the instructions for the amount of water is for really soft jellies. For a cheesecake that would last longer outside, next time I would just add less water and stir for a longer time to dissolve all the jelly crystals. But anyway, I love the jelly layer on the cheesecake, it creates a lot of wobbly and squishy fun!

Lastly.. How could I not have a cheesecake macaron? After the wonderful and tasteful idea making a cheesecake into a macaron came into my mind a few months ago, I googled around and found that so many out there has the same thought! There were many variations, such as making a cream cheese based filling and use fruit jams, sprinkling graham cracker crumbs on the shells, mixing cornstarch with jams and cook it to give it a thicker consistency, dressing up the macaron as a strawberry (check out Macaron Mafia he is awesome!! This is his strawberry cheesecake macarons, they are amazing!)

So after I made the base of the cheesecake, I set aside some graham cracker and butter base aside, compacted it and left it in the fridge for a while. Then I made the cheesecake filling for the cheesecake, and scooped some into empty macaron shells. Then I took the extra graham cracker base that i set aside, broke off some small bits and embedded those into the filled half shells, and topped that with a peach slice before putting the macaron shell over it!

and the result! The cheesecake filling made the macaron shells a little soft, but it was really heavenly, and the peach slice and the chunks of the graham cracker base were like bits of yummy surprises in the macarons (: I love how macarons can be so versatile and delightful, be it making them and seeing feet and smooth tops, or trying out new flavours (: