About Marshmallows, Chocolates and Everything in Between

 

The finished product, with freshly drizzled molten dark chocolate.

A closer look.

Removed from the cake tin.

View from the side.

Look at all that layers!  Mission Accomplished!

(Now that you have finished drooling over the pictures, I shall begin my post proper)

I baked this baby in January.  I was feeling particularly generous during my birthday week, so I decided to bake this over the weekend, then share it with my colleagues on Monday during contact time.  It is essentially a 3-layered cake: the base layer is the brownie; the middle layer is the mousse, topped with marshmallows; and the top layer is the chocolate cream, then topped with more marshmallows and drizzle with molten dark chocolate.  Sounds sinful?  Wait till you taste it!

I made both the brownie and the mousse on Saturday cos I need to chill both of them overnight in the fridge to let the mousse stand before I can apply the final layer.  As I said, it was a MAMMOTH 2-day effort!

Baking the brownie:
Nut-chopping frenzy!  Like my Christmas Cupcakes, the walnuts I bought had to be chopped up in order to spread out well in the brownie paste.  The brownie itself was relatively easy to bake, which is quite an accomplishment for me.  I once baked a brownie using those ‘instant brownie mix’, and it was disappointing.  Come to think of it, that was my FIRST baking experience!  Things sure have come full circle.  The current version was a rather thin brownie (to make way for the other layers), but it was a smooth, smooth preparation process.

Pouring the mousse:
Once the brownie had cooled down, I popped the brownie out of the 10-inch cake tin into a 10-inch loose bottom cake tin.  Then, I poured the mousse onto the brownie, then arranged the marshmallows on top.  The tricky thing was to keep the marshmallows in their places while I continued pouring the mousse over them.  The whole thing at this point looked like something I stole from the sewers but hey, gotta have faith in the end product, right?

Spreading the cream:
On Sunday afternoon, the mousse has firmed up, so it’s time to spread the chocolate cream on top.  I followed the cookbook’s instructions to a tee: melt the chocolate, then mix it with cream.  However, when the mixture became thicker and thicker, I knew an ‘uh-oh’ was not far behind.  Nonetheless, I decided to spread the thick mixture over my mousse.  So, the supposed chocolate cream had become chocolate crust.  Oh well.  Can’t win them, can we?

After that little mishap, I decorated the top with more marshmallows, and drizzle them with molten dark chocolate.  As you can see from the pictures, I did a pretty convincing job   Even my dear wife gave a long whoooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaa when she saw my work!

The moment of truth:
On Monday morning, I pushed out the cake from the bottom with much effort, and my ‘baby’ was born!  My colleagues were mighty impressed (a couple of them complained that I spoilt their appetite for dinner after eating their 2.5 inch x 2.5 inch slices). The whole thing turned out better than I had expected.  Now I know I can recommend my cookbook to any budding bakers out there!

About Encryption

My son has been speaking simple words for quite some time already. But recently, he started to speak his usual words with either the consonants or vowels replaced with other alphabets.  E.g. normally he would say, “seven, eight, nine, ten”, now he would say, “seben, eick, nime, fen”.  Initially, I thought he’s just being playful, cos he knew he said the words wrongly, and that his daddy and mommy would spot his mistakes from a mile away, so he just wanna see our response and have a good laugh about it.

However, the more I think about his actions, the clearer it becomes: My. Son. Knows. ENCRYPTION.

WHOA.

I mean, I may be thinking too much, but think about it: what are the basics of message encryption?  You take a normal message, run it through a cipher, and out comes an encrypted message, which is exactly what my son did!  Is my son a digital prodigy? Is he The One?  Am I in the Matrix?  Will my son fly?

WHOA!

About a Tarty Affair

Long overdue update again!  During this year’s CNY, my dear wife felt the sudden urge to bake her own pineapple tarts.  So, me being a loving hubby, went to Holland Village and bought her all the necessary ingredients and tools.  After seeing her creations of joy, my fingers started to itch.  And since there were leftover pineapple filling…

Being a true dude, I focussed on searching a pineapple tart recipe that is meant for dudes, i.e. tasty and easy to make.  So, I found my dream recipe here (and the video here).  I opted for the cocoon shape instead of the sunny-side-up shape because it looked so effortless on the video.  Also, I couldn’t imagine myself flattening dough evenly with a rolling pin.  Therefore, cocoon-shaped pineapple tart it is, then!

Dude Baking Tips 101: ALWAYS look for an easier way out.  Although conventional recipes call for mixing butter with flour using finger tips, I simply used the electric mixer to mix the two up, then change the mixer’s “hands” to dough kneaders and Voila!  Effortless dough produced

Ironically, the biggest challenge of this little culinary mission / experiment was neither handling the dough nor the baking process.  It’s getting the bloody sticky pineapple filling out of the plastic bag and shaping them into little oval balls.  It’s like really, really dry nose dirt.  And it makes a sick noise (sounded kinda like the alien egg sequence in Alien) whenever I succeeded in prying them out of the bag with my spoon.  Somebody went waaaaaaay overboard with the glucose…

But once that part was over, everything else was a breeze.  It’s all in the preparations.  Once I got the ball rolling, I managed to churn out 80 pineapple tarts within 2 hours.  After that, just glaze and bake.

Feedback on my maiden attempt has been great!  The texture was a bit flaky, but all in all, it’s good stuff   So, I guess I can start to take orders for CNY 2012 lor!