Cream Puffs with a message

A colleague of mine from the restaurant ordered these from me to surprise her boyfriend. Yay my first order!

“I <3 U, HAZIQ”

How sweet of her!

She actually saw the ones I made for Ronna’s birthday previously and wanted these to just give her boyfriend a little something.

It was a fun project, and the extras I made were gone within the hour I made them.

I used milk chocolate instead of the usual dark to top the cream puffs cos it was all I had, but sis and bro seemed to think that milk chocolate worked better, so that was a lucky thing. And they were filled with stabilised vanilla whipped cream – a bigger crowd favourite than pastry cream, which some people don’t seem to like as much. Whipped cream also made the cream puffs lighter in taste, so the my colleague and her boyfriend could finish the box on their own.

The heart was outlined in chocolate, then flooded with a royal icing that I coloured red. The red heart was a special request from my colleague. I personally think that royal icing doesn’t match with cream puffs that well, but I was stumped and that was the only idea I could come up with as yet. Perhaps white chocolate with red food colouring instead? But I don’t know if the chocolate will seize up or not. Hmm.

Quiche

I’ve always been curious about quiche. It isn’t something commonly eaten in Singapore. So, when I came across this recipe from Use Real Butter, it went straight into my bookmarks. Of course, the gorgeous pictures there definitely helped me to decide that THAT quiche recipe was the one to try.

There you go, my version of quiche. Made with matchsticked carrots, sliced red onions, a handful of parmesan and lots of crispy bacon. Yummm.

Dad liked it, sis liked it, boyfriend liked it. I think this is a winner.

Egg Tarts

I’ve always had a fear of pie crusts and “cutting the butter into the flour”. I don’t own a food processor, and I don’t have a pastry cutter. The times when I tried to “rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips” failed rather miserably, when all I did was to melt the butter between my fingers and get a whole lot of flour stuck up my nails. I never really got “crumbs that look like coarse sand with bits that are the size of peas”. Nuh uh.

When Boyfriend wanted to make egg tarts, I vehemently refused to, insisting that tart crusts are just plain difficult to get right. Boyfriend went ahead with his egg tart project on his own though, that brave guy (I’m so proud of him), and it actually turned out rather alright, save for a few changes he might make in the future.