pumpkin roll

Why aren’t pumpkin desserts a thing in Australia? For all of the obsession with pumpkin spice lattes and Halloween and fall season in general in the US, we’re just sort of ‘meh’ on the whole phenomenon this time of year. Maybe it’s just hard to get excited for Halloween when there aren’t any autumn leaves lying around. So I was determined to educate myself and give in to the passion surrounding pumpkin-flavoured sweets.

Random story, there’s an English tuition place near us back home named ‘Pumkin Kids’, spelling mistake and all boldly displayed on its signs. Irony at its finest.

Anyway, no typed up recipe today as it’s just the one everyone uses and credits on the interwebs. Simple straightforward fall staple – I thought I’d keep it classic for this historic moment that is trying sweetened pumpkin. If it wasn’t for the sugar it’d be pretty much healthy: virtually no fat and a full cup of vegetables. I thought it really resembled yam cake which I’ve made before both flavour and texture-wise, meaning it’s sort of mellow, complemented perfectly by spice, awesome comfort food.

So far I’m loving blogging. I can create a relatively safe space for myself to reflect without judgement. A retreat where I don’t have to retreat. As much as I’m still self-consciously aware of how I’m in that awkward initial phase where I haven’t really found my style and am posting shitty photos taken with a phone camera; I feel like I own something. Maybe one day when I’m comfortable enough I’ll even go without an alias.

I try to remember to thank God for one of his greatest gifts – friendship – every night. It’s saved my ass more times than I care to count. I’ve moved schools literally ten times growing up, between two countries. It got to the point where I’d pretend I hadn’t learned my classmates’ names yet in order to still pass as the foreigner, so that when it came time to break bonds, I wouldn’t have to because I didn’t have any. My efforts at building fences didn’t work out, fortunately, and there would almost always be souls kind enough to approach me, aloof as I seemed. It was a weird and unnecessarily self-induced phase, my early teenage years, where my life was spent in self-pity and my extreme shyness took a toll. If I ever have my 15 minutes of fame I’ll remember those who kept me in perspective and make my junior high and high school years not entirely miserable.

hazelnut opera cake

As the old saying goes, I’m passionate about cake. But I will steal your first born for a slice of Gâteau Opéra. Classically made with layers of almond joconde biscuit alternating with ganache and coffee buttercream, I put a little twist on mine. If I had to choose just one dessert to have for the rest of my life, this would probably be it. Having made this in the past exclusively with almond, I thought I’d switch it up a tiny bit and go for hazelnut this time. Which was a good decision.

Not too sweet at all due to the dark chocolate ganache, complemented by the most decadent mocha buttercream (and why wouldn’t it be? It starts out exactly like an ice cream). It’s funny, like most things I’ve made, I haven’t tasted any other renditions other than my own. I can’t imagine what one crafted by an authentic French patisserie would be like – my taste buds would probably go to heaven and my head would explode.

Today marks the first day of a 10-day mid-semester break which is waaaay overdue. I feel like I’m burning out and on the verge of giving up, so far am I behind with 11 hours worth of lecture content every single week. I literally cannot fathom what people who achieve higher than average grades do to keep up. They’re probably robots with microchip inserts and photographic memories. Even if I concentrate as hard as I can on what the lecturer’s saying (instead of typing up lecture notes as I usually do), I lose the train of logic about halfway through anyway. For someone who’s never missed a lecture unless absolutely unavoidable, I have to wonder whether my study methods are efficient at all.

The only plus side to this semester is that we only get one assignment across all the courses, which I suppose is pretty unheard of at uni. At least my law friends squint their eyes in envy when they count the number of assignments they have on two hands and I say we hardly have any. Still, having extra responsibilities at home for the time being doesn’t help at all trying to be organised. By the time I’ve come home from a full day of pracs and lectures and cooked dinner and cleaned up, all I can be bothered to do is kick off my boots and dive into bed.

So in the space of 10 9 days, I have to: start and finish the aforementioned written assignment, revise 2 years’ worth of clinical based content for the viva (fuck oral exams and my anxiety), re-learn and study 2 semesters’ worth of pros(thetics), somehow study 6 lectures per week’s worth of DENT2052 and revise for the anatomy prac exam which is straight after the break without any specimens to look at. Oh and freak out about the other prac exam which requires us to drill 2 cavity preps and restore one of them in 2 hours. I can barely do 1 prep and 1 restoration in one 3hr session. So yeah, I’m pretty much screwed. Every time I look at the repeating students I think about the likelihood that it could be me next year.

Rant over. Back to cake.


Hazelnut opera cake (one 13cmx30cm cake)


For the hazelnut joconde biscuit:
100g hazelnut meal
100g pure icing sugar
32g plain flour
2 large eggs
16g butter
2 egg whites (save yolks for the buttercream)
20g granulated sugar

For the mocha crème au beurre:*
150g whole milk
30g roasted cocoa beans (optional but lends subtle undertaste)
50g sugar (1)
2 or 60g egg yolks
30g granulated sugar (2)
5g instant coffee granules
165g unsalted butter, at room temp.

*I made double of what is necessary to assemble the cake because the whisk of my stand mixer wouldn’t have been able to reach such small quantities. Feel free to cut in half, though you’ll miss out on licking on the equivalent of Olympian ambrosia on Earth while you’re assembling.

For the ganache:
60g dark chocolate (at least 70%)
44g heavy cream
30g nutella

For the soaking syrup:
75g water
33g sugar
5g instant coffee
splash of Frangelico (optional)

For the chocolate mirror glaze:
5g powdered gelatin
25g water (1)
55g water (2)
33g cocoa powder
33g heavy cream
25g dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Line a sheet pan (approx. 40x30cm or similar capacity).
If you only have one mixer bowl and don’t want to wash it out, whip the egg whites and sugar together first. Otherwise, leave it till last. The meringue should be a medium peak for easy folding. Set aside.

Whip the whole eggs with the sifted icing sugar until very pale and barely drips from the whisk. Sift in the hazelnut meal and flour together and fold in carefully to incorporate. Melt the butter and cool it slightly, then add to it some of the batter until homogenous. Put the buttery batter back into the main batter and fold gently to mix. Finally fold in the meringue in 3 additions and take care to retain most of the air.

Spread the batter evenly on the pan and bake for about 15 minutes or until the middle springs back when touched lightly. Once slightly cooled, release the edges and flip upside down onto a lined surface to cool completely. Cut off the crispy edges (approx. 5mm) then into 3 equal pieces (cuts parallel to the short edge so you end up with three 13x30cm strips).

Make the buttercream. If you’d like to infuse with cocoa beans, bring the milk, 50g sugar and beans to a boil and leave to infuse for at least 10 minutes. Otherwise, just bring milk and sugar to a simmer. In the meantime, whisk together the yolks and 30g sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Slowly stream the simmering mixture (bring it back to a simmer if you left it to infuse) into the yolks while whisking the yolk mixture constantly. Then pour everything (through a sieve if there are cocoa beans) back into the pot and cook on low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to leave an open channel when you drag your finger through it on the back of a spoon.

Pour the mixture into the bowl of a mixer and turn it on low to release the heat. When it reaches room temperature, add in pieces of butter and increase the speed to emulsify and aerate. If it looks curdled, whip some more and it should come back to a silky smooth texture if the ingredients are all at room temp.

For the syrup, boil water and sugar together then add in the coffee and liqueur. Leave to cool.

For the ganache, heat the heavy cream until boiling and pour it on the chocolate. Leave for a minute then stir to combine. Mix in nutella and leave to cool to room temp. just so it’s spreadable.

For the glaze (finally, I know), bloom the gelatin in 25g water. Meanwhile, boil together everything but the chocolate, stirring to get rid of cocoa lumps. Turn off the heat and add the bloomed gelatin and chocolate. Stir to melt and set aside.

To assemble, take one of the biscuit strips and spread on 32g chocolate melted with 1/2 tsp neutral flavoured oil. This is just to prevent a soggy bottom. Flip it upside down so the chocolate side is down and chill briefly to set up. Brush the soaking syrup generously onto the first layer of cake. Spread on a thin layer (no more than 5mm) of half the buttercream evenly. At any point during assembly if something turns runny or feels too unstable to stack, just chill for a bit to firm up.
Layer on a second strip of cake, and brush with syrup. Spread on the ganache. Try to keep all the layers approximately the same thickness.

Place the third and final layer of cake on top, brush with syrup, spread with the rest of the buttercream as smoothly as you can as any unevenness will be visible through the glaze. Chill (not freeze) until the whole cake has firmed up all the way through.

When you’re reading to glaze, heat the glaze slightly to just warmer than body temperature. Place the cake on a wire rack on a tray and pour the glaze on top (through a sieve if it has bubbles in it), letting the excess drip off the sides. Chill until firm and cut off the uneven bits off the edges (and stuff straight into your mouth cos you bet you deserve it for all this effort).

tuile sandwiches w/ strawberry ganache

Life doesn’t get any better than free chocolate. Add that to one of the reasons why Tuesdays are ∞ better than Mondays. It was as if the goddess of replenishment took pity on my post-gross-anatomy-prac hunger and arranged for a fateful meeting between me and the lolly buffet stand.

Recall that I wanted to make Milan cookies a few days ago, I still did but was reminded of my abysmal piping skills and was sure they would not resemble the ones I so liked and would single out of engagement biscuit tins. So I went for tuiles – they can be more freeform and use more or less the same ingredients. But I still wanted to fill them up with sinfully sweet ganache, in this case a strawberry-white chocolate combo. I can’t seem to refuse this match made in heaven, of the way the tartness of the strawberries cut through the intense sweetness of white chocolate.

I literally stuffed 10+ tuiles straight into my mouth as soon as they came out of the oven and crisped up some. How can something made only with butter, sugar, egg whites and flour taste so good!? Addictive doesn’t even cut it.


Tuiles with strawberry-white chocolate ganache

For the tuiles:
65g butter, room temperature
118g pure icing sugar, sifted
2 (80mL) egg whites, room temperature
43g plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp almond (or any other) extract, optional

For the ganache:
130 white chocolate
34g butter
23g cream
86g strawberry puree, sieved

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Line baking trays (I use teflon-coated baking sheets which are way cheaper than Silpats and have lasted for years).

Beat the butter until creamy then add in the sugar and beat some more on mid-high speed until white in colour. While mixing on low speed, pour in the lightly whisked egg whites little by little to emulsify completely. Then add in flavouring if desired and fold in the flour either by hand or on low speed.

Fill a piping bag with a <1cm round tip with the batter and pipe out 2cm diameter rounds, at least 3cm apart as they will spread very thinly. Bake for approx. 10 minutes or until golden all the way through (not just edges). They will be quite soft and malleable straight out of the oven, so if you like you can shape them while they’re warm. Otherwise let cool to crisp up completely before lifting them out.

To make the ganache, melt the chocolate gently in warm water/over a bain marie/in the microwave and set aside. Boil together the cream and strawberry puree, then pour into the chocolate. Let the mixture sit for a minute then stir together to incorporate. While it’s still warm add in the butter (in small pieces) and stir to melt and combine. Let it come to room temperature to firm up to pipeable consistency and pipe/spoon it on half of the cookies. Sandwich similar sized pieces together and enjoy!

rare cheesecake w/ caramelised white chocolate

Today I backed out of two things I originally had semi-plans for. It seems to be a recurring pattern in my behaviour to look forward to a set due date then lose interest in the wait and regret not doing it in the future. Initiative I have, resolve no.

Initially I wanted to make Milan(o) cookies, like those I used to pick out of biscuit tins. On second thought, cheesecake sounded even better and I decided on one of my favourite blogs dailydelicious’ recipe for a rare yogurt cheesecake. For all the effort saved on breaking out the stand mixer and baking, I wanted to go the extra mile and adorn the top with caramelised white chocolate swirls.

All through the mixing of the batter, everything was running smoothly (literally). I baked the base, poured in the batter, gave it my blessings and sent it off to the fridge. Then I started to caramelise the white chocolate, something I’d heard endless raves and praise about but had yet to experience the euphoria myself, things went slightly downhill. Near the 20 minute mark, instead of gaining a deeper colour uniformly, it started seizing and clumping and caramelising at random spots.

I gave it more time, and could not revive it back to the smooth glorious caramel I’d seen on others’ blogs even after a whole hour. I was sad and wanted to cry and tasted a bit of the clumpy mess. It was exactly as the name promised, a lovechild of white chocolate and caramel. It was awesome and took all my will not to go in for more spoonfuls. I added a bit of cream, sprinkled in salt and sieved out the clumps and out came yummy-golden-gooey caramel.

Now that that’s been rescued, by the time it look for me to confirm that it definitely wasn’t going to smooth out in the oven the cheesecake itself had mostly set. So adieu to swirlage. What difference did it make if I just spread it all on top? After all when it’s eaten the elements would combine anyway. So I proceeded and let it set up completely. Then the second bit of disaster happened when I tried to unmold it from the tin, the cake slipped off and landed upside down on the countertop. Yup. I may have cursed out loud. Thankfully the cheesecake itself was set and didn’t fall apart too much and only a part of the topping was sacrificed.

It tasted great, despite all the misfires. Light in texture and taste with a slight tang of the orange zest I decided to add in to complement the almondy base. Quite a departure from the sticky mouthfeel and guilty pleasure of a baked cheesecake.


Rare cheesecake w/ caramelised white chocolate

For the cheesecake:
Follow dailydelicious’ recipe and instructions

For the caramelised white chocolate:
Follow Poires au Chocolat’s tutorial

For the biscuit base:
18g almond meal
25g granulated sugar
47g flour
40g cold diced butter
Preheat the oven to 170C/340F. Line the sides and base of a 5-6″ springform tin.

Mix the almond meal, sugar and flour together and add in the small pieces of cold butter. Rub the butter in with your fingers until no visible lumps of butter remain. Work quickly to avoid melting the butter. Alternatively use a pastry blender or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.

Tip the mixture into the prepared tin (both sides and base lined) and press into the sides and base compactly. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden and crisp.

strawberry-white chocolate éclairs

In celebration of 3 (!!) of my classmates’ birthdays, I decided to make some long overdue choux pastry. Crisp thin shell coupled with rich creamy mousseline-like filling, what’s not to like?

Until last year, I hadn’t had a lot of success with choux pastry. Not the actual making of it, but the baking. It would always collapse, the insides gummy and soggy, not what you’d call a picture perfect pastry. One day I accidentally left some puffs in the oven after turning it off, and when I pulled them out, dreading to see a pile of ash terribly burned puffs, they were perfect. Golden brown, hollow sound on tapping. I was ecstatic. A longer baking time was all that was required to produce these delectable treats.

Is it weird that I always get hungry looking at gross anatomy specimens? And it’s not just me, I’ve checked. Maybe something to do with how processed muscles literally 100% resemble pulled pork. Today was the first time I held a human brain in my hands in all its slippery glory, with bonus spinal cord. Just think about it, a once alive person’s memories, all of it, preserved and sacred.

Strawberry-white chocolate éclairs

For the choux pastry:
50g water
50g milk
50g butter
pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar
60g bread flour (for best results, but all-purpose is also fine)
2 large eggs, lightly whisked

For the strawberry-white chocolate filling:
125g strawberries, hulled & washed
20g milk
1 egg
50g caster sugar
15g cornflour
35g white chocolate, chopped finely
100g heavy cream
10g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F and line a baking tray. Measure out the ingredients for the choux beforehand and have the flour ready by the stove.

Melt the butter with milk, water, salt and sugar and bring to the boil. As soon as it starts to boil, turn off the heat and tip in all of the flour at once. Stir it in and turn the heat back on to low, work the dough vigorously so there are no flour clumps. When a thin film is formed at the bottom of the pan, turn off the heat and set it to the side to cool completely.

When the dough has cooled, beat in the eggs a little at a time. When the egg has been absorbed completely, add in more until the batter hangs off the spatula/spoon/whisk in an upside down triangle sort of shape. (i.e. neither drippy nor stiff) You may need more/less egg depending on how long the dough was cooked, so only incorporate a little at a time and check the consistency constantly.

Fill a piping bag fitted with any > 1cm tip with the batter, and pipe out any type of choux pastry you fancy. There was enough for me to make 13 smallish éclairs and 9 profiteroles.

Bake for about 20 minutes until they are golden brown and sound hollow when lightly tapped. Leave to cool completely.

In the meantime blend the strawberries with milk and sieve out the seeds straight into a pot. Whisk the egg and 50g sugar until pale and thick, then add the cornflour and whisk to incorporate. Bring the strawberry mixture to a simmer, and pour the hot liquid a little at a time into the egg mixture, whisking the latter constantly to avoid scrambling. Once all the liquid is poured from the pot, put the entire mixture back in to the pot on medium heat, whisking all the time. Let bubble for about 2 minutes (still whisking) until thick.

In a heatproof container place the chopped white chocolate, and pour in the hot strawberry pastry cream directly on top (strain the pastry cream first if lumpy). Stir until the chocolate has melted and put clingfilm directly on top of the pastry cream before putting it in the fridge to chill completely.

Whip up the cream with 10g sugar until soft peaks form, then fold it through the chilled strawberry pastry cream. Put it into a piping bag with a small tip and fill up the hollow shells. Pretend to overfill a couple and deliver straight to your mouth (I know I did). Serve the rest as soon as they’re filled.

brown butter pear loaf

Brown butter. That stuff is like crack, man. The smell alone is enough to make me wanna swirl it through lotion and rub it all over my face. Yesterday morning it was destined to be made into banana bread; today a pear loaf (with bonus chocolate, of course). The decision-making process of how I arrived at the flavour was a simple one: the 2 Bosc pears I bought are desperately vying for my attention + there is leftover pear cider in the fridge = cake.

Is there anything better than a pre-swim bake on a Sunday afternoon? Only the feeling during the eating of it comes close. High on post-exercise endorphins
and the rest of the cider, I surprised myself by breaking personal barriers, all over some period jokes.



I cut down the sugar quite dramatically from the original recipe as it’s just right for my moderately sweet tooth. That and the fact that my lecturers’ judgemental faces inevitably come to mind whenever I reach for sugar.



Brown butter pear loaf
(adapted from Fish, chips & gelato)

80g butter
pinch of salt
125g sugar (I used raw)
2 eggs
1 tbsp Greek yogurt/sour cream
20g pear cider (or other preferred liquid, such as milk)
250g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
up to 1tsp ground spices (I used loose leaf earl grey)
2 medium-sized pears (I used firm but ripe Bosc)
50g chopped dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F and grease & flour or line a 9″ loaf pan with baking paper.

Brown the butter. Heat it on medium-high in a pot large enough for the entire batter. After a few minutes it will start to boil so I put a lid on until the violent spluttering and splattering have subsided. You’ll know it’s ready when it smells amazing and starts turning brown with burnt bits at the bottom. Add in the salt and sugar, stir to dissolve and leave the mixture to cool to room temperature.

Once cool, whisk in the eggs one at a time. The mixture will now look glossy and no longer grainy. Add the yogurt and cider.

Sift the flour, baking soda and spice together and add to the pot. Fold until just combined, then add the pear (cut to whatever size you fancy, mine were about 1.5cm cubes). Sprinkle the top with chocolate for good luck.

Bake for roughly 30 minutes or until moist crumbs cling to a toothpick stabbed into the centre. (My chocolate threatened to burn so I put some foil on top.)

forgive thyself

One of the influential teachers I was blessed with in junior high once said to a defeated, deflated me: "you have to learn to forgive yourself." At the time, it only seemed to apply to her observation that I was unhealthily obsessed with grades and percentages and making top 3 in the class. Nowadays, a fair few stations down the railroad, I'm starting to wonder what self-forgiveness really encompasses and releases.

We ask for forgiveness all the time. From our parents. From our teachers (mostly pre-clinic supervisors really...). And of course from God. It's easy to assume that nothing has changed when the trespass is small. When we've made a major oopsie - that's a whole different story altogether, and that's where the anxiety creeps in. A definite amount of self-confidence is lost permanently. It becomes harder to look at ourselves squarely in the eye.

I bring this up because I often wonder how far I've come in overcoming my social anxiety. Occasionally I still feel like pulling a blanket over my head, so self-conscious I feel. But the self-pity I drowned myself in is no longer. Instead of ruminating upon the fact that I'm the shittiest sister to my siblings and crying in my bed, I can now try and think of ways to change and let the atoning take its slow natural course.