Chocolate Tart

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chocolate, dessert, food, life, photography, recipes, tart

I made the huge mistake of purchasing a 2kg bag of plain flour instead of self raising and it is now my mission in life to pursue as many plain flour recipes as possible to deplete my plain flour surplus.

Decided to start off with chocolate tart because I am trying to deplete my chocolate surplus too!

Recipe from here.

Raspberries, Buttercream and Pastry

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chocolate, dessert, food, photography, puff pastry, rapsberries

Shooting in candle light has never been my strong suit – still isn’t. This is the best that I could do. 

Raspberries with coffee flavoured cream on puff pastry, decorated with chocolate filigree.

Coffee Chocolate Cake

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cake, chocolate, food, life, photography

I combined my two loves today – coffee and chocolate.A friend had bought me a box of Merci chocolates and it seemed fitting that I bake a cake just to celebrate that fact. Merci holds a special place in my heart – it may not be the best chocolate on the market but when I was growing up it was one of the very special treats that I got to enjoy.

Chocolate Cupcake with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing

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baking, chocolate, cupcakes, dessert, peanut butter, photography

I am on a cupcake roll.

Saw a recipe for peanut butter cream cheese icing and decided to give it a shot. It reminds me a lot of Julie’s Peanut

Butter Cookies that I grew up with as a kid back in Malaysia. 

Decorated it with some black lava salt. Aren’t the flakes pretty?

Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

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cake, chocolate, dessert, life, photography

I committed to a 3kg bag of Callebaut chocolate about a year ago and it has come to my attention that if I don’t finish it soon its intensity is going to decline. Therefore, I’ve been trying to make various different chocolate goodies.

Today, I tried making molten chocolate lava cake. I dislike making anything that is extremely time sensitive (in this case, too short and it’ll fall apart, too long and it won’t be molten) but I was lucky enough to get it right.

Recipe from here.

Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies

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chocolate, cookies, food, life, photography, recipes

I have tried many recipes for chocolate chip cookies in my day and I always fail to find a nice crispy recipe. After many failed attempts, I found just the right recipe here.I had tons of fun photographing it. Yes, that is a old wooden cheese box that I had lying around, waiting for its turn to be helpful.

Chocolate Cage

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brownies, chocolate, dessert, photography, recipes

I spent Christmas alone this year. I don’t mind – the last few months of my life has been so hectic that when the opportunity came for me to either go to Sydney or stay in Melbourne, I opted to stay. As a result, I have had the time to potter about in the kitchen and come up with this:

Tempered chocolate cage decorated with filigree, with a very lucky rose adorned brownie sitting underneath.

I was extremely pleased with the result. Recipe for brownie from here.

Chocolate Cupcakes

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chocolate, cupcakes, dessert, food, photography

Forgive me for my long absence – I have been too busy with my new job being both a practice manager and a clinician.

I have not been in the kitchen for a long while – my new job left me so tired and busy that all I wanted to do every time I came home at night was to just lie in bed and go to sleep. Not very inspiring, but true.

I finally managed to persuade myself to revisit my love of baking and here are the results:

Chocolate cupcakes topped with sugar flowers and leaves and a hazelnut. Cupcake recipe from here - it was lovely, moist and most of all extremely simple to bake. Highly recommended.

P/S: Aren’t the flowers lovely? My housemate received them as a farewell present from her workplace.

Life Is A Box Of Chocolates

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chocolate, gift wrapping, melbourne

One of my favourite things in life is packaging. Whenever I go shopping, I have to confess that whenever the assistants ask if it’s a gift, I say yes. Because they’ll gift wrap whatever it is beautifully and I just love it. Anyway, it is a gift – from me to me! Sad life aside, I had the pleasure of shopping and wrapping my friend’s engagement present last week and here it is:

Net A Porter (one of the most dangerous online stores) sends your purchases wrapped up beautifully in these black boxes to your front door. Decided to recycle one of mine for this occasion. Prettied it up with some white ribbon and a matching black card.

And the present itself – a collection of various chocolates from the various chocolate stores in Melbourne plus a couple of my own baked efforts. I had so much fun shopping for it.

Now, onto the next project…

Chocolate Truffles

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chocolate, dessert, food, photography, recipes, truffles

I am not the best with guessing ingredient quantities so after I made a batch of chocolate ganache cupcakes I was left with half a bowl full of ganache. When life gives you leftover ganache, make chocolate truffles.

 

You could of course make the ganache specially for truffles. Recipe below:

200g chocolate
100ml cream
3 tbsp cocoa

Bring cream almost to a bowl in a saucepan. Take off heat and stir in chocolate until melted. Leave to cool at room temperature until ganache is firm enough to roll. Shape into balls of desired size and roll in cocoa.