Baby Shower | Congrats Liang & Josh!

Baby "DoFo" (that's a mashup of last name syllables) is on the way, and I was happy to bring desserts to the tea-time themed baby shower. To match the theme, I wanted to make small bite-sized desserts that didn't require any utensils to eat or serve. Another friend was already bringing scones, so I decided on coconut macarons with lime-lychee curd, matcha green tea sugar cookies (this time cut into D's, F's and circles -- the ability to spell out DoFo was purely coincidental), and bourbon sugar fudge squares.

To make the macarons, I made plain shells but baked them with toasted coconut shavings on top. I probably could have ground up coconuts into the shell or used coconut extract, but I didn't necessarily want the coconut flavor to be predominant. For the filling, I made lime-lychee curd (using a basic lemon curd recipe but substituting the lemon juice for about 75% lychee puree and 25% lime juice) and mixed it with a small portion of pastry cream.

The matcha green tea sugar cookies were just like the previous time I made them, but with a different brand of matcha that made the mix much more vibrant:

The fudge comes from a Bon Appétit recipe and is addicting. The original thought was just to throw in something darker and richer, like the pastry equivalent of a cigar for the men at the shower. But this ended up beingmy favorite of the three. The fudge has a light bourbon flavoring in it, and is topped with bourbon raw sugar and Maldon sea salt flakes which really give this dessert that something special.

Here's the recipe:

Chocolate Fudge with Bourbon Sugar

Makes an 8"x8" square (cut to desired shape/size)

Ingredients:

• 283.5g bittersweet chocolate
• 113g unsweetened chocolate (okay to substitute with bittersweet)
• 1 14-ox. can of sweetened condensed milk
• 142g unsalted butter (1¼ sticks), cubed
• ¾ cup (170g) unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 2 Tbsp bourbon
• 1 Tbsp light corn syrup
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 vanilla bean
• flaky sea salt

for bourbon sugar:

• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 cup demerara sugar (raw cane sugar)
• 2 Tbsp bourbon

Directions:

1. In advance, prepare bourbon sugar by scraping vanilla beans into a small bowl and stir in demerara sugar and bourbon. Spread on to a parchment-lined baking sheet and let dry out overnight (or speed up process by placing in oven at lowest heat possible.
2. Line an 8"x8" baking dish with parchment paper, leaving generous overhang to be able to pull out fudge later. Lightly coat with butter or nonstick spray.
3. Heat chocolates in a double boiler (i.e. heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water), stirring occasionally until almost completely melted. Set aside.
4. Combined condense milk, butter, bourbon, corn syrup, and salt in a small saucepan. Scrape in vanilla beans and heat over medium under barely hot (as close to same temperature as the chocolate).
5. Gently stir in a quarter of the milk mixture into the chocolate with a rubber spatula. Add another quarter, stirring to incorporate. Continue mixing in the remainder of the milk in 2 additions, stirring vigorously until fudge is shiny and almost elastic, about 5 minutes. 
6. Scrape into the prepared pan and smooth top.
7. Let cool before sprinkling with bourbon sugar and sea salt.
8. Cover and chill at least 4 hours.
9. Turn out onto cutting board and cut as desired.

Matcha Green Tea Sugar Cookies

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

These might not be the right cultural reference, but they're green and they're tasty. I was inspired by a Bon Appétit recipe, but when that particular recipe resulted in cookies that were more like tea cakes, I searched for a great rolled sugar cookie recipe that could be appropriately modified with matcha green tea powder. The chopped white chocolate and candied ginger are optional but add some depth in flavor.

Here is the approximate recipe:

Matcha Green Tea Sugar Cookies

Makes about 40 ~two-inch cookies

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup (170g) unsalted butter (room temperature)
• ½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
• ¼ cup (50g) brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp almond extract
• 2¼ cups (281g) all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp matcha green tea powder
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 85g white chocolate, chopped
• candied ginger, chopped (to taste)

for sugar coating:

• ½ tsp matcha green tea powder
• ½ cup (100g) granulated sugar

Directions:

1. Whisk together the ½ cup of sugar and ½ tsp matcha in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Whisk together the flour, 2 Tbsp matcha and baking powder in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Using a stand mixer, beat the butter until creamed. Add sugar and continuing beating until light and fluffy, scraping bowl as needed. Add egg and both extracts and continue beating until fully combined.
4. Add half of flour mixture and beat until just barely combined. Add remainder and continue mixing until just combined.
5. Fold in white chocolate and candied ginger.
6. Flatten and wrap dough in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 1 hour.
7. Roll out dough to ¼" thickness. Cut into desired shapes.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes until just lightly colored around edges.
9. While still warm, toss cookies in matcha sugar mixture and set on cooling rack.

Birthday | Purple Princess Cake

It's not every day that someone requests a princess cake, or even knows what that is! I love fun opportunities like that. A friend wanted to surprise a birthday girl with a princess cake. The only real guidelines were that she likes purple, and her nickname is "Panda".

A princess cake (prinsesstårta in Swedish) is a traditional Swedish cake made of layers of sponge cake, pastry cream, and jam (I think typically raspberry), and shaped into a dome with whipped cream. The dome is then covered by marzipan, traditionally tinted a light green color and decorated with marzipan flowers. In this case, I tinted the marzipan purple, and topped with purple marzipan flowers.

To assemble this, I first stacked the cake, jam and pastry cream layers. Then I spread whipped cream (stiffened with a little bit of pastry cream) into a bowl. Then I placed the bowl over the cake, inverted, and let it set up in the freezer.

Once frozen, the cake wasn't too difficult to pop out of the bowl mold. I smoothed out the whipped cream dome and then covered with marzipan. Not my smoothest cake covering job, but whipped cream is a little trickier to mold around than say buttercream.

Et voilà!

Wedding Preview | Malibu Romance

A couple weekends ago, I soft-launched the new Milo's Bonbons logo when I catered a wedding in Malibu. I'm excited to share what I made and describe that adventure in more detail, but I may need to wait for professional photographs, as I didn't have much time (or lighting) to capture many good ones myself. In the meantime, here's a quick preview of the wafer paper flowers I made for the wedding cake:

Wafer paper is made of potato starch, and with edible ink, you can print pretty much any color you want. I printed out shades of coral and pink to try to match the bride's bouquet, and then cut out petals to assemble together with piping gel. It takes a little time, but it's a little cleaner and quicker than gumpaste flowers. I also love the soft, romantic feel that wafer paper lends itself to. Can't wait to keep exploring this technique!

More detailed post on the wedding to come!

Panna Cotta Perfected

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have wanted to master a panna cotta, and I think I have settled on the right recipe for me. Ultimately, every recipe is some variation on the ratio of heavy cream to milk (or any other combination of dairy fats), with sugar, gelatin and flavoring.

For this particular version, I first made a raspberry fruit puree gelée (fruit puree slightly diluted with water and apricot nappage, to taste, with gelatin) and let it set in the mini cups on a slant. Then I made my panna cotta, using the recipe below, and poured it into the cups upright. Finally, I topped with some almond granola and a fresh raspberry. I originally intended to make a white chocolate basket for the raspberry but ran out of time. The result was still quite tasty and pretty!

Panna Cotta

Makes about 16 fl. oz.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (473 mL) heavy cream
• 1½ cups (355 mL) milk
• 5 Tbsp (~63 g) granulated sugar
• 4 sheets gelatin, bloomed (about one packet or one tablespoon of powdered gelatin)
• 1 vanilla bean (split and scraped)

Directions:

1. Heat heavy cream, milk, sugar and scraped vanilla beans until the sugar dissolves. Add the bloomed gelatin.
2. Cool in ice bath until lukewarm or just cool. This step helps prevent the fats from separating out into a two-layered panna cotta.
3. Pour into molds and chill for about 4 hours or overnight (although the longer you chill, the harder the panna cotta will be).

Pastry School Recap | Units 10/13/15 Plated Desserts

Something about plated desserts feels classy and elite to me. If I were to feel like a true pastry chef, I feel like I would have to master the art of these. However, I doubt I would ever work in the pastry kitchen of a restaurant. So, our dessert menu project from pastry school will have to suffice for life experience.

We had three units of individual plated desserts. Three! That is a lot, and I think most of us were a little sick of them by the end. I could fill pages of this blog with photos of visually stunning dessert plates, but I'll stick with the ones I concocted for our dessert menu project, for which I created my imaginary dessert restaurant, Spiked, featuring cocktail-inspired desserts.

(Disclaimer: Again, neither this restaurant nor the URL is real.)

From my menu, the chef selected the Margarita and the Rum & Coke for actual presentation and taste-testing. 

The Rum & Coke was intended to be a glass full of brown sugar rum ice cream sandwich cubes, coated or sprinkled with chocolate pop rocks, with a side of sour cherry compote and cherry cola sorbet. Unfortunately, the classroom fridge and freezer blew out the night before presentation, which melted everyone's ice cream. So in a pinch, I remade the rum ice cream and scooped it into the cup, sprinkled with chocolate pop rocks, and inserted a chocolate tuile straw for decor. Tastewise, it was still a success!

The Margarita was my favorite, and is also the concept that inspired my recent eggnog bombe. This dessert is a citrus tequila mousse bombe with Grand Marnier crème brûlée and a lime cookie. On the side is an orange tequila sauce, lime cookie crumbs, crème anglaise and a candied lime.

 Please excuse the iPhone photos! That's all I had available in class.

Office Bytes | Holiday Eggnog Bombe

Happy holidays! My 2015 new year's resolution is to establish a new Milo's Bonbons website/storefront (with a blog section to keep providing updates of course). But before we bid farewell to 2014, here is one more post from the holiday season -- my plated dessert version of the classic eggnog.

This bombe is made with a rum crème brûlée tucked inside a crème anglaise Bavarian cream dome, on top of a cinnamon nutmeg shortbread. I plated this with a pear compote, shortbread crumbs and a curled wafer for my office holiday party potluck. This dessert was great while it was still cold and semi-frozen. Admittedly once it hit room temperature, I thought the flavors and textures were a little flat. (Certainly not as interesting as my original incarnation of this dessert as a citrus margarita bombe, which I created for my pastry school plated dessert project. I'll recap that project shortly!) Then again, I don't actually consume eggnog so I'm probably not the best judge for what eggnog should taste like . . .

But, this was a good opportunity to practice the preparation and service of a plated dessert. Main takeaway: stick with simple baked goods for an office potluck to avoid sleep deprivation.

Greek Yogurt Panna Cotta

A lot of my friends take interest in what dessert I might order at dinner, as if having gone to pastry school has somehow elevated my taste. I'm not sure that it has . . . but I do tend to order things that I know I couldn't make easily. Notwithstanding, one of my favorite desserts to order is panna cotta, which is actually a very simple dessert. It is an Italian custard, basically a "cooked cream" thickened with gelatin. There is something just so perfect about the velvety smooth, subtly sweet custard with a little bit of wobble. It is a great pairing with so many different flavors, whether fruity or spiced.

This version that I made recently for my own housewarming adds Greek yogurt to the mix, which perhaps makes it less of a true panna cotta, but is still easy and yummy. I added a graham cracker base for texture and flavor, and topped with a pear-apricot puree miroir and some pear compote.

Greek Yogurt Panna Cotta

Makes about four 4" tarts or 5 oz. cups

Ingredients:

• 250 mL heavy cream
• 40 g granulated sugar
• 2 sheets gelatin, bloomed (about half a packet of powdered gelatin)
• 175 g Greek yogurt
• ½ t vanilla extract (or vanilla paste, or a whole vanilla bean)

Directions:

1. Heat half of the cream and all of the sugar until the sugar dissolves. Add the bloomed gelatin.
2. Whip the remaining cream lightly (no peaks should form).
3. Combine the hot cream with the yogurt and stir with a spatula. Let cool.
4. Add the lightly whipped cream to the mixture.
5. Pour into molds and chill.
6. Add optional flavoring on top (I mixed about equal parts Bosc apple puree with apricot nappage).
7. Insert cute little spoon and enjoy!

Wedding | Congrats Tiffany & Jon!

A very belated post, but . . . This past July, Milo's Bonbons had the honor of appearing on my cousin's wedding menu! It was a whirlwind of a preparation for the wedding, but such a pleasure to cater desserts for Tiffany's and Jon's celebration.

 

My cousin asked for salted caramel chocolate cupcakes and lemon bars. Believe it or not, it was my first time making lemon bars! I probably should have experimented with that a little more, as I wasn't perfectly happy with my crust to filling ratio, but it's hard to go wrong with the flavor. I made both lemon and and lemon-cherry swirl bars as a nod to the wedding colors.

To give the desserts a little something extra, I decided to present the cupcakes and lemon bars on a display stand. I didn't have enough chocolate on hand to make a chocolate stand and thought nougatine would be a better vehicle for my cousins's wedding themes of red + gold and succulents. However, in retrospect, nougatine wasn't the best choice for an outdoor wedding. The display held up, but it sure got shiny and sticky! Next time I'm sticking with using isomalt instead of sugar, or just using something material.

Here is the making of the nougatine, from toasting the nuts, to cooking the sugar and rolling out / cutting the pieces:

 

Nougatine

Makes about a half sheet pan

Ingredients:

• 600g granulated sugar
• 250g sliced almonds, lightly toasted and warm

Directions

1. Make a dry caramel (or wet, if you don't want too dark a nougatine) with the sugar in a saucepan.
2. Stir in the warm, sliced almonds.
3. Immediately pour mixture onto a nonstick silicone mat and spread as thinly as possible.
4. Place a second map on top of the caramel and roll out as thin and even as possible. Begin this step as soon as your can handle the heat.
5. Remove the top map, carefully life the nougatine sheet and place on cutting board or oiled parchment paper. If mat sticks, then caramel is still too hot.
6. Using a knife or cutting mold, cut desired shape, working quickly. If nougatine is too cold to cut or shape, place back on silicone mat and into a 350 degree oven for just long enough to soften.

I was quite limited by the size of my oven at that time, which couldn't fit a full sheet pan, and thus limited the size of my cylinders and ovals. But, I'd like to think there was something "organic" or "artistic" about the pieces I built with :) I added succulent trimmings to my nougatine leaves/petals to tie everything together: