Hey guys, good morning how are we all doing? It is 8.20am here in Canada and I just got back from a sweaty gym session at 5.30am. I finished work at 12.30am so i am running on 5 hours sleep, but I feel good because I got my heart rate up today. But I will probably hit a wall at work because I begin at 1pm. I hope it is busy, it was busy last night and I had the best section so it just puts me in a good mood when I know I am making money.
Yesterday I actually served a couple from New Zealand, and I guess because I haven't been back to NZ in two years and lived in two countries since then, I have a mix of an accent. The couple couldn't pick if I was Australian or New Zealand. I was a little sad because I have been told the New Zealand accent is much nicer because it isn't so twangy and more chilled.
But then I would say certain words and they would go ahhh, yes I can hear your accent now. I also go asked if I was Dutch and American yesterday by other tables. So I guess I am just all over the place. To make work more interesting, I try guess where people are from as they probably guess where I am from. Most times I am challenging myself to guess if they are American or Canadian. The only thing I have picked up on the difference of the two accents is Americans tend to have a shorter way of saying things and Canadians drag out their words, if that makes sense. Haha
Today I have for you another cake. Lemon Syrup Cake soaked with lemon syrup, filled with blueberry jelly, iced with cream cheese icing, yellow ganache drizzle, blueberry sesame seed macarons and isolate candy.
I love lemon syrup cake so much. I think lemon is such a refreshing and cleansing flavour for the palate. I remember we used to get dessert at boarding school every night, that was ridiculous by the way. But on special occasions we would get lemon syrup cake with unsweetened yogurt. This was the only dessert I had and would always treat myself to two pieces of cake. I usually had just run back from training so I never felt guilty.
Same with cream cheese frosting definitely a favourite of mine. I remember loving carrot cake when I grew up as a kid because of the frosting mum used to put on the carrot cake. It definitely was a good way to get me to eat semi healthy cakes.
The thing I loved about my mum is she would pick up a brand new recipe she has never tried before and she would nail it every time. Weather it was a new cake, muffin, scone, chicken dish, lasagne ect. I think coming from a super foodie family has been so beneficial for me because I am never ever tempted by McDonalds because I know I can make better burgers. Same with pastry, I would cringe when people would offer around $6 supermarket bakery cake I would always politely decline because I knew I could make it better.
It is a tradition in my family that every kid has a night of the week where they have to cook. This saved my mum from cooking 7 nights a week. So all us kids would cook in the school week, Dad would do his traditional Saturday lamb roast every week and Sunday was choosing. So on Sunday Dad would pull out leftovers from the fridge, or you make your own dinner with the ingredients we have in the fridge and freezer. I used to make a lot of pasta dishes or pizza. Most of the family would make omelettes, scrambled eggs, bacon and egg pie.
This taught all us kids how to cook so we can live a healthy diet and lifestyle and save money at the same time.
Scroll down for the recipes...
Recipe:
Lemon Syrup Blueberry Cake
Lemon Syrup Cake
Blueberry Poppy Seed Macarons
Cream Cheese Frosting
Yellow Chocolate Ganache Drizzle
Isolate Seseme Seed
330g granulated sugar
130g water
62g light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sesame seeds (black and white)
Method:
Prepare a small bowl of water and a pastry brush next to the stove. Line a rectangle tray with parchment paper, covering all of the tray. This is going to be sticky business.
Place the sugar in a medium saucepan, add cream of tartar. Mix the sugar and cream of tartar together so you cannot see the cream of tartar.
Pour over the sugar your water, and corn syrup.
Turn heat up to medium heat.
Stir the pot constantly until all the sugar crystals have dissolved, usually at the beginning of boiling point.
Once at a boil, do not stir the mixture anymore. Continue to wash the sides of the pot with your pastry brush and water. Its important to keep sugar crystals off the sides of the saucepan.
Once the sugar hits 150 degrees, remove from the heat.
Let it then cool down to 132 degrees before pouring the sugar onto a lined baking tray. Sprinkle your sesame seeds over top.
Blueberry Jelly
2 cups fresh blueberries
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Honey
1 gelatine leaf soaked
Method:
Soak gelatine leaf in ice cold water in a seperate bowl and set aside.
Blend fresh blueberries, lemon juice and honey until a smooth puree.
Pour into a saucepan, and cook the puree over low heat (to dry out all the liquid)
Mix in the gelatine.
Line 2 cake tins 10cm, with glad wrap. Pour the blueberry jelly into the cake tins and allow it to set at room temperature.
Assembly:
Cut cakes in half and slice off the tops so the cakes are levelled. Pipe a border of cream cheese and place a disc of blueberry jelly. Repeat this until the cake is all layered.
Perform a crumb coat and refrigerate to set the coat.
Begin your final layer of frosting (make sure it is smooth) and set in the fridge to set some more.
Break up your isolate candy.
Decoarte the top of your cake, drizzle a yellow ganache drizzling. Pipe rosettes on top of the cake and place macarons on top and isolate candy in-between the macarons.
Delicious!
