model.

If pastries can be models, I guess macarons can fit the bill. I can never resist taking pictures of these vividly coloured beauties (albeit with my crap phone camera).



These purple macs are cassis flavored. I'd initially toyed with the idea of an entirely jam filled macaron but decided I didn't want it to taste too cloying so I just added 3 tbsp of blackcurrant preserve to my regular white chocolate ganache. These have been aging for about a week now, and the interior tastes just like heaven.



The light green ones are pandan, my most popular flavor to date. the darker ones are pistachio and rose. I guess what makes all my mac fillings so nice is that I only use natural flavors. that means: real pandan leaves not fake extract. I use rosewater, not the artificial extract. Real preserves and real fruit purees, never chemical essences. I've been toying with the idea of getting fruit powders (to flavor the shells), but they can only be got online and is rather expensive. They've an amazing range of fruit powders though ranging from banana to raspberry.

The only thing I don't like about macarons is the amount of food color that goes into making them; I just don't like the idea of using anything artificial but with macarons - it really can't be helped as you need something vivid to bring out their attractiveness. Again, there are organic and natural colors available online but once again, they are horribly expensive.

basics.

I haven't been in the mood to bake any complicated cakes lately, but yet I've been craving for cake. good old-fashioned cake without any complicated layers or fussy embellishments so I decided to whip up this orange cake. This is one of my favourites, after the simple sour cream pound cake is baked, a hot orange syrup is poured all over the cake and the cake is left to absorb the goodness. A slightly damp, very moist crumb is the result. This cake is very dangerous to the waistline; I've never met anyone who didn't ask for seconds!



This is my first time making a whoopie pie. I've never had one before so I really didn't know what to expect. I used the recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's 'Heavenly Cakes' but used a plain 7 minute frosting instead. While it was tasted just ok, I thought next time, I would use a more decadent filling to bring out the taste - perhaps cream cheese, caramel or a chocolate ganache.