Office Bytes | Vols-au-Vent Puff Pastry

French for "windblown" (I learn something new every time I use wikipedia in preparation for my blog posts), these hollow puff pastry shells are an amazing vehicle for both sweet and savory fillings. They're made with two discs of puff pastry, with the bottom one docked to minimize rise, and the top one with a hole cut out to create the hollow.

For a recent surprise baby shower at work, I wanted to bring an easy finger food dessert other than cupcakes, as I knew the party organizers had already pre-ordered cupcakes from a bakery shop. I made these vols-au-vent, half filled with lemon curd crème légère, and half filled with vanilla crème légère, each topped with sliced strawberries. And of course, I used the extra puff pastry dough to make my favorite cinnamon twists :)

Office Bytes | Moving Day!

Some of my happiest baking is for the office. To me, there's an inherent joy in desserts, and to share that joy with others and make even just one person merrier (especially in the workplace) is what motivates me.

Amazon Lab126 just moved offices to a shiny new location in Sunnyvale, CA and to celebrate our last day in the old office, I made a cake! This is a 4-layer lemon chiffon cake with coconut pastry cream and a middle filling layer of mango bavarian cream and fresh slices of mango. The outside frosting is just a plain Swiss meringue buttercream, decorated with toasted coconut chips.

I left the cake out (in a mostly closed box) in the kitchenette to let it thaw a bit. By 11am, the cake was 90% gone and I hadn't even announced its presence. I barely got to taste a bite and snap a photo of the inside before the cake was completely gone, the box thrown away and my knife rinsed off.

I guess hungry employees find joy in cake on Friday mornings!