More cool vids

Mandarin Orange Sorbet & Caramel Decoration

Tried my hand out at caramel decorations for the first time. Used a coarse granulated sugar to get the caramel instead of the usual fine granulated sugar. Took a longer time than usual to melt the sugar and getting it to boil evenly was hard as some parts took longer than others to melt.

When it turned golden brown, tried using a spoon to drizzle the melted caramel into some shapes. The caramel was drippy in the pan, but when I used a spoon which was in hot water and dried to scoop up the caramel, it somehow cooled the caramel till it became thick and lumpy...

Still managed to get the shapes though, after repeatedly heating the caramel till it became drippy again. Was kinda worried that I'd burn it after all that heat...

Did the mandarin orange sorbet last week, basically just frozen mandarin orange juice and sugar syrup. Didn't take out the seeds when I juiced the mandarin oranges. BIG MISTAKE... The seeds are pretty bitter if you've munched on 1 before. Imagine 3 mandarin oranges worth of seeds that went through the juicer together with the juice. In the end, it's still pretty sweet but the bitterness still persists a little.

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Hazelnut Chocolate Cake

Choco nutty goodness

Tried out this chocolate hazelnut cake from this recipe book that I bought sometime back. Cake is chock full of hazelnut bits and dark chocolate bits. There's also a filling in the middle that was supposed to be whipped cream but I changed it to Nutella instead. As Nutella is pretty hard when chilled, I whipped some cream and mixed it together with the Nutella to make it more spreadable and not so hard when chilled.

The outer choclate layer is just dark chocolate with cream and vanilla extract. Followed the recipe but the frosting turned out pretty thick. Spreading it on the cake was like spreading cement on bricks. I'll probably up the amount of cream next time to make it thinner and easier to spread.

The top is just coarsely chopped hazelnuts that have been toasted prior to being chopped.

However, one thing I didn't quite like about it was the end result. The cake became pretty sloped at one end, quite hard to compensate for the slope. Think it's probably because one of my oven racks became sloped after 13+ years of use hence the sloped cake. It didn't help that the cake was cut in half to accomodate the filling. Will probably split the cake into 2 portions to bake seperately the next round, it's easier to handle a whole cake rather than a cake that has been halved even though they are of the same thickness.