Giant Sushi Chiffon Cake

 

My giant sushi cake saying hi!

This giant sushi is a rice chiffon cake sandwiched by two patterned deco roll sheet cakes.

Here is my giant salmon:

And my giant wooden board below:

While you can replace parts of the cake flour with rice flour, I wouldn't recommend substituting all of it as rice flour gives a more "shortness" type of texture.

Check out my other "sushi" creations here! This one is my biggest sushi yet! =)

Hope this kawaii sushi made you smile!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Lantern Chiffon Cake

Happy Lunar New Year! I made this lantern chiffon cake a while back but forgot to post it up in the busyness of Chinese new year! Glad we are still within the 15 days =p.

I had envisioned making a chiffon cake lantern few years back already, but always had no time to try it out! Have you seen a lantern cake that lights up? Watch the video of the cake lighting up here!

Happy blessed new year!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Bunny in Strawberry and Passionfruit Macaron Teacup

This is the third time I am conducting class for this design but because there is a change in flavour, I decided to match the design to the flavour! Presenting my bunnies in macaron teacups! 

The bunnies are sitting in strawberry swiss meringue buttercream instead of osmanthus oolong ganache. This bunny theme might come in handy if you are thinking of something to do for Easter. The macaron teacup and saucer set is passionfruit flavoured so it pairs well with strawberry. These two different tart fruits complement the sweetness of macarons very well. 

In this class, I teach the swiss meringue method, piping and decorating simple characters like the bunnies, making hemispherical macaron shells, assembling the whole structure and making the filling. 

A little tip I can share here is the teeny strawberries that the bunnies are holding or wearing. You can make them out of red heart sprinkles. You may have some of this leftover from Valentine's day so might as well transform them into tiny strawberry sprinkles! Simply add on the seeds and leaves using royal icing and voila! You have strawberries! 

Even broken sprinkles can be decorated and used! Waste not! 

I made 4 different expressions on 4 bunnies but like hubby said, trying to fit all of them in a single picture isn't as stunning so I took another one to feature another expression. 

Have a berry good week ahead! 

With love,

Phay Shing

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'I Love You' Surprise Valentine's Bear Chiffon Cake

A Valentine's Day Forever Friends Bear Hearts Chiffon Cake with a special "I Love You" surprise! 

I realized that we don't say these words often enough. In the 5 love languages, words of affirmation is one of them, so let us not forget to say them =). I made this special creation to thank my friends/loved ones who have supported all these years. Blessed Valentine's Day and thank you!

Here's a video to show cutting of the surprise!

May it be "Valentine's Day" for us everyday!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Chubby Unicorn Macaron Carousel

My friend requested for a unicorn macaron carousel for her daughter's birthday. She's a special friend because I got to know her through her supporting us in our bake sales way back when we were new to baking. Ever since then, I have been baking for her daughter's birthday almost every year since Jorayn was 2 years old. How time flies! 

This unicorn design is a customized one that mean something to Jorayn because it is modelled after her favourite plush toy. I had to change some of the colours so it doesn't blend into the pink carousel frame. 

I love how this chubby unicorn looks so contentedly sluggish that it has to rest its bum on the ground instead of float in the air gracefully 🤣. 

I used a combination of French method and Swiss meringue method to make the macaron shells due to schedule limitations. I split the baking into 2 separate days. I used French method for the unicorns and lettering as it is a small batch, and swiss method for the carousel frame. 

Piping unicorns. 

The macarons are filled with dark chocolate ganache and  a firm mixed berry (raspberry and strawberry) ganache. I will share the recipe that is firm enough for macaron structures like carousel in this post. 

Recipe for firm mixed berry ganache 

Do note that ratio of white chocolate to compote or ratios within ingredients can be tweaked according to taste. But do bear in mind that the filling has to end up fairly firm at your current climate for it to be suitable as a filling for macaron structures like the carousel frame. When set, it should be just slightly softer than the bar chocolates that you eat. 

Ingredients :

90g White chocolate, finely chopped or use chips

12g cocoa butter (may replace with white chocolate ) 

24g Vegetable shortening (may replace with butter but Singapore is too warm for that!) 

5g Strawberry compote* (or raspberry) 

9g Freeze-dried raspberry powder (or strawberry or mixed) 

1/4 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp strawberry emulco/ paste (optional) 

* You may omit the compote if it is too much trouble, and add more freeze-dried fruit powder according to taste for a firmer filling. I was preparing a larger batch of compote for class at the same time. To make the compote, blend (and sieve if using raspberries) the fruit and cook over low heat with some sugar (I use about 10%weight of fruit because it is for macaron filling and I don't want it to be too sweet) until reduced to about half the original weight. You may add a tsp of lemon juice and pinch of salt. Excess compote may be refrigerated or frozen. 

Steps:

1. Place all ingredients except freeze-dried berry powder in a microwave safe bowl. Heat on medium-low power for 10 seconds and mix well. Repeat until melted and smooth. Alternatively, you may use double-boiling method to melt the white chocolate mixture. 

2. Gradually add the freeze-dried fruit powder amd mix well. Set aside to firm up to toothpaste consistency 

3. You may use it as it is or whip it with a spatula if you wish to lighten the texture. 

Filling up a unicorn with both types of fillings

Filling the base macaron

I love how the base macaron looks when assembled! 

I had to take a picture of the carousel before the name and age were added on too because I love how the carousel looks in this uncluttered state. 

As with my other bakes, I hope this carousel full of sleepy and chubby unicorns put a smile on your face 😊. 

If you are interested in knowing how to construct a macaron carousel, you may refer to my book Creative Baking: Macaron Basics or purchase my online class for macaron carousel with ArtZ Baking and Culinary studio. I provide ongoing support and troubleshooting help as part of the perks of my online classes and you can also  learn from others who join it based on their experience, and watch the recorded class unlimited number of times. 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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'Puppy in a Mug' Valentine's Day special

I was going to start working on new Youtube content again but inspiration strikes! Since Valentine's Day is just around the corner, I decided to make something VDay themed, as well as take the chance to prepare some new class content. Presenting some adorable choux pastry puppies! 

"I give you some luv💕💕" 

The puppies, hearts and mugs are all made of choux pastry! You may refer to my book Deco Choux Pastries on how to make the choux au craquelin hearts as it is one of the entries there. The puppies aren't in the book but you can find the technique for making them in the book as I have similar animal designs to the puppy. The mugs were made by baking cylindrical choux cases in a metal mould lined with perforated mat, a technique similar to how I made the choo choo choux train. For the basic choux pastry batter and craquelin recipe, you may refer to this post. 

I made some puppies holding heart sprinkles and sitting in cupcake cases for April class material with Tottstore as this would be less challenging given the time constraint. 

I decided on lavender vanilla honey diplomat cream as the filling! 

And because it is VDay themed, my good friend said to me "You know the doggie with both eyes closed, it is just asking for a cupid's arrow to be in its head". And so, I decided to follow her suggestion and had a good laugh 🤣

Lovestruck 😍... Literally 😂... Ouch! 🤣

I hope these cute puppies put a smile on your face! Happy Valentine's Day in advance! 

With love,

Phay Shing

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Moo Moo Chiffon Cake (福满牛年moomoo乐)

 

My little moo moo cow chiffon cake, inspired by the cute happy #福满牛年moomoo乐 ! 😍

How are you getting ready for the "niu" year? <3

A little different and quieter this year, hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Fortune Ox Mandarin Orange Choux Pastry

 I am busy preparing for my Fortune Cat choux pastry class but couldn't resist taking time out to make the Ox version of "Fortune Cat"!

Since mandarin oranges are in abundance during this season, I made mandarin orange diplomat cream for the filling! 

You may refer to this blog post for the detailed recipe of choux pastry batter and craquelin. I left everything uncoloured except for a small portion of batter which I coloured with cocoa powder for the horns. 

Preparing to bake the choux pastry cases for the head and body. 

Freshly baked choux pastry cases! 

You may refer to this post for the template for the horns and ears, adjust the size if necessary depending on how big your baked choux pastry cases are for the head and body. Unfortunately I am not able to share the template for arms and feet as I use it for classes. But I am sure you can easily figure it out yourself! You may refer to my book Deco Choux Pastries to have an idea of how to construct cute characters out of choux pastry. 

I decorated the Ox the same way as my Fortune Cat choux pastry, using royal icing for the facial details and tag, and a sour candy strip for the collar. 

I am not able to share the recipe for the mandarin orange diplomat cream as well but you may refer to my book or other choux pastry blog posts of mine to have an idea of how to make it, or try other delectable flavours I have shared like lychee rose, chocolate, vanilla lavender honey, coconut pandan gula melaka, mango, earl grey and matcha! 

I hope these very cheerful oxen will indeed bring some blessings or "福” to you, just by looking at them! 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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Snow White's Colour Changing Skirt Chiffon Cake

 Do you like Snow white's colour changing glitter skirt? 💛💖

Watch the video here to see the transformation!

Inspired by Tik tok foodie.beats's sprinkles video, this is my full chiffon cake version!🥰

I personally like the pink skirt more!💕 How about you?😀

Hope this cake made you smile! =)

With lots of love, Susanne

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McDull Lychee Choux Pastries

This is a way overdue post! I forgot I made these choux pastries end of 2019! 

Besides making McDull macarons for a request, I made some Choux pastries as well 😊

McDull in apple and watermelon suits! 

I filled the pastries with lychee pastry cream that is lightened with non-dairy whipped cream. Recipe can be found here. The detailed recipe for choux pastry batter and craquelin can be found here. I made these pastries at the same time as the Pokemon ones, that's why the same filling is used.

I must admit that this set is rather challenging in terms of maintaining the puffiness and colour of the baked pastry cases at the same time. Originally I planned for McDull in pineapple suit as well but the colour contrast between the resulting light brown and yellow is poor so I decided to drop it.

Piped batter with the various coloured and patterned craquelin

Freshly baked choux pastry cases. 

I piped the snouts and limbs of McDull separately and baked for a shorter time.

Royal icing was used to decorate the pastry cases as well as to join the parts together.

You may refer to my Deco Choux Pastries book for more Choux pastry ideas and techniques!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Why are macarons difficult to make?

I am finally launching my new Youtube channel! This has been about 5 months in the making with long periods of musing over content or long breaks when I was too busy to work on Youtube stuff due to classes, bakes for sale or family. I have been wanting to share what I know about this topic of why macarons are difficult to make for the longest time! 

Meet the hosts of my new channel! 

I love cats so naturally the hosts are kitties. My new channel is named "Baking with Phay" because most of my followers are from the west and somehow the name "Phay" stuck with me when people address me although my name is Phay Shing. 

My younger kid composed and played the opening jingle for the video, which will appear on all my subsequent videos. The focus of this channel will not be on recipe sharing with full length demonstration on how to create specific bakes. There are plenty of those out there. What I want to focus on in this channel is techniques. Genre of bake will be varied but will be mostly on macarons and choux pastry with the occassional random other bakes. I prefer to keep my direction and options open. 

What compelled me to start this channel is from my own baking experience as a homebaker and from teaching at various baking studios. I want to share what I feel new bakers would need to know when they are first starting out, stuff I wish I knew when I first started. Postings may not be regular as I still have a lot to handle at home and at baking classes. 

Here's a sneak peek at the answer to the question "Why are macarons difficult to make?" 

Without further ado, here's the video on my new YouTube channel! 

I hope you found it helpful! 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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Valentine's Day Cute Ox Surprise Chiffon Cake

 

What is the most moo-ving surprise you have received for Valentine's day?💖💖

Hope my surprise hearts ombre chiffon cake moo-ved you to smile! 🥰

And here is the Valentine's Ombre hearts chiffon cake! I made ombre layers both at the sides and the top of the chiffon cake! See my previous ombre hearts creations here.

Hope the cute cake made you smile lots!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Year of the Ox Macarons

This was something that was in my mind that I couldn't put away until I have made it because of the compulsion it evokes. I was just musing over how people all over the world would love to receive some blessings during this pandemic chaos, at a time when the Year of the Rat draws to a close and the Year of the Ox is about to be ushered in. This was what I made! 

I pictured Little Brother Rat offering Big Brother Ox an early new year greeting by offering up teeny mandarin oranges in his tiny paws, wishing/hoping that Big Brother Ox would bring many blessings to everyone. And Big Bro carries a gold ingot on his back with the chinese character "blessings" on it, all fired up to bring blessings to everyone. 

A closer look at them! 

I used the Swiss meringue method to make the macarons. You may refer to this post for the recipe. 

Here is a picture of the piped batter. After baking it, I realised I would do better by baking Little Brother Rat as a separate macaron shell since there are just too many layers of batter with long waiting time if I did the Ox and Rat together as one macaron shell. Since I had some leftover batter, I redid the rats as seperate pieces from the Ox and they turned out much better. 

Piped batter! 

I decorated the baked shells with royal icing and black edible marker. 

I filled the macarons with dark chocolate ganache and mandarin orange yuzu curd. You may refer to this recipe for dark chocolate ganache. I will share the recipe for the curd in this blog post. 

Recipe for mandarin orange yuzu curd 

Ingredients:

45g unsalted butter

40g caster sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

65g fresh mandarin orange juice 

15g yuzu juice concentrate (without sugar added)

1 tbs mandarin orange zest (about 8-10g)

A pinch of salt

Steps:

1. Using electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy.

2. Add egg and egg yolk a little at a time, beating well after each addition. 

3. Add orange juice and yuzu juice and mix until combined. Don’t worry if it starts to curdle.

4. Pour contents into a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring continuously with a spatula.

5. Once the curd is able to coat the back of the wooden spoon, remove from heat.

6. Fold in orange zest. 

7. Press a cling wrap over surface of curd and let it cool before storing in fridge for up to a week and freezer for up to two months.

Here is a close up view of the filling. Pipe a ring of dark chocolate ganache before filling the middle with curd and sandwiching the top shell on. If you don't want the macaron shells to turn soggy too soon due to the high liquid content in the curd, you may coat the base of the top and bottom macaron shells with a thin layer of ganache first, which was what I did.

It was my intention to bring some blessings or at leaat put a smile on people's faces with this creation. I hope it did! 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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Melt-in-the-mouth Ox Pineapple Tarts (easy tip to make pink noses)

Would you bear to eat these pineapple cow tarts?🥰😛

Watch the video! I share a new way to make the noses pink! 🐮🐽 I first shared this method to make my Valentine's day pineapple tarts many years back.

'Melt-in-the-mouth' Ox Pineapple Tarts (portion is enough to make 42 ox tarts)

420 grams Pineapple Jam 

227g unsalted butter, cut into chunks, soften at room temperature (2 sticks butter)
60g icing sugar
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
350g plain flour
47g corn flour
1/2 tsp salt
cold water (few drops if needed)

1. Roll pineapple jam into 10g balls.

2. Using a kitchen mixer with paddle attachment or food processor, mix together plain flour, corn flour, icing sugar and salt. Mix or pulse for a few seconds.

3. Add cold butter cubes and beat on low speed or pulse in a food processor until mixture has the texture of coarse meal. You can also use your fingertips. This is called the rubbing-in method.

4. Add in egg yolks and vanilla extract beat until a dough is form. If your dough is too dry, add a few drops of cold water. Do not overbeat.

5. Remove dough from mixing bowl and shape into a ball. Wrap the dough with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for about 30mins.

6. Divide the dough into 16g balls (42 pieces). Leave the remaining dough for making the ears, horns and hands.

8. Preheat oven to 160°C. Dust the work surface with corn flour.

9. To each 16g dough ball, flatten each dough into a small disc using a rolling pin and wrap with a pineapple jam. Roll the dough with filling into a ball. Use a curved tip and chopsticks to make the eyes and ears. Pinch 2 ears, 2 horns and 2 hands from the remaining dough and stick on.

10. Place the tarts on baking tray lined with parchment paper. Gently brush the noses with pink egg wash (1 egg mixed with 1 drop of pink food colouring).

11. Bake in preheated oven at 160°C for 25 mins. Leave to cool on baking tray completely before storing in air-tight containers. 

Enjoy!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Jawa and Tusken Raider Dark Chocolate and Earl Grey Macarons

I was asked to make some macarons for a Star Wars fan club event that was supposed to happen back in May last year but it got postponed until end November due to the pandemic. The drawings for a rather chibi version of Jawa and Tusken raiders were given to me so it was very helpful when I had to make a total of 66 character macarons like these! 

I used the Swiss meringue method to make these macarons. The shells alone I chose to split over 2 days to bake as I still have my hands full with family. 

Here are some photos of the piped batter... 

Piped Jawas! 

Piped Tusken raiders! 

I decorated the shells with edible marker and royal icing.  It took me 2 days to complete decorating the shells. 

See the awesome feet! 

See the awesome feet on these too! 

I filled the macarons with dark chocolate ganache and Earl Grey ganache. 

Here is another peek at the assembled macarons! 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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Macaron Teacup Bouquet (Online class)

 This was a last minute decision but I am glad we made it! I am supposed to teach the Chinese New Year themed macaron teacups with an auspicious Chinese character "吉" on it in a week's time. But because the class looks set to be small and there was interest in an online class for macaron teacups, we decided to do a video of the physical class to create an online class.

Most of my followers on Instagram and people from the macaron Facebook group aren't Chinese so I thought something that is more Valentine's Day themed might be more suitable. So it was a last minute decision to include a bonus design for transforming the red macaron teacups into one suitable for Valentine's Day.

Instead of giving your loved one a bouquet of flowers, why not give edible bouquets in macaron teacups instead!

As a friend rightly pointed out, this is suitable for Mother's Day as well! I decided to keep this bonus design simple with simple hearts as teacup decorations, and simple rosettes and leaves piped using buttercream. If you have a mini Russian tip for piping roses, those will work great too! 

In this class, I will demo how to decorate the teacups with hearts, and pipe the buttercream bouquet, in addition to showing how to make the Chinese New Year teacups below. 

If you are interested in this online class, please contact Sharon at whatsapp +65 96882777.  Alternatively, click on this link for more details of this class. There is no closing date for registering for the online class but please do so soon if you would like to learn how to make these before Valentine's Day. 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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Ox Family Chiffon Cakes (Chinese New Year)

 

Happy "niu" year!💖

The 牛 family is getting ready!!🐮👨‍👩‍👧‍👦😛

What are your plans for the moo-vellous new year?🥰💖

These are made similar to my Chiffon Cake Piggy Family I made for Chinese New Year two years back. Hope this cute creation made you smile!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Fortune Cat Mandarin Orange Choux Pastry Class

What better way to welcome the new year than with something cheerful, auspicious and delicious! Presenting my version of "招福猫" filled with mandarin orange diplomat cream! 

You will learn the basics of choux au craquelin, how to assemble and decorate this cat design, and how to make mandarin orange diplomat cream. 

The class is full but you can still contact Sharon for this class as we are opening up another one in early May. Fortune cat, while very much Chinese New Year themed, is still relevant throughout the year. Please contact Sharon at +65 96882777 over whatsapp if you are interested. 

With love, 

Phay Shing

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