And a big plate of pasta and turkey meatballs.

spicy sauce with broad beans and thyme-scented turkey meatballs!

And the family loved it. :)

Bon Appetit Vanilla Cloverleaf Bun Session

These were delicious for breakfast and tea...the vanilla interestingly developed a grassy flavour...really special, pandan-like, and special. Having tried this recipe with Swedish pearl sugar I must admit that I prefer the effect of a sugar crust created by spooning on caster sugar or golden caster sugar.

You can find the recipe here. The only change I made was to use golden caster sugar. I also added a bit of self raising flour (about a half a cup from the total amount) and found that that led to an even softer consistency. It is a *beautiful* elastic, fragrant dough, and one to be savoured in the using and the eating!

Bakery Hit List 2012/13

At the Hot Cross meet & greet today we discussed our ambitions for the coming year. I have quite a few, and as I'm on maternity I have a *little* bit of time to make them happen. My hit list is below, so if anybody knows how to make any of these please let me know...I would love your tips! Most of these are pretty complicated so we may not want to do all of them in the club, but I will be pursuing them in my own time, and I will keep everyone posted of my experiments (and results!); so if anybody wants to join me in having a go, just let me know!

1. Macarons (left)
2. Brioche (my favourite!)
3. Madeleines
4. Cannelés (below)
5. Financiers
6. Choux pastries
7. Some Viennoiseries.
and last but not at all least, I am going to begin the big project of making:
8. my own sourdough bread including cultivating my own sourdough starter.

I'd like to get a bit creative with sugarpaste too...I tend to do buttercream icings because they are tasty and I'm lazy.

I would like to inject cream into something: a pastry, a cupcake...I want to create something with a creamy filling! yum yum!

The bun has landed, and in fact, she's over 3 months old now, and keeping us very busy.

Blogosphere, meet Léontine Ishwar June-Ting Giet!