A million sheets of heaven: Mille Feuilles

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

Mille Feuilles: Puff pastry with French cream and a topping of powdered sugar! Is there a more perfect combination?

I found in this recipe in the Cake Boss's book. (I plan of trying out all his recipes! There's a 100 of them =D ) But he calls these Napoleons. The only difference is the topping. I used powdered sugar, whereas his had icing on top.

My family has been asking for this dessert for a long time now, and I've always been afraid of how the puff pastry will turn out. It's a bit hard to control, but once you know how to work with it, you'll get the results you want.

Anyway, I made this dessert by following these steps:

1. I baked two rectangle puff pastry sheets.

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

2. In order to make French Cream, I mixed both Italian Custard Cream with Whipped Cream. Whipped Cream is simply 1 cup Whipping cream to 1/4 cup sugar whipped until thick. The Custard is bit more complicated but the basic idea is that you should simmer some milk with vanilla essence on medium low heat. In a separate bowl, whip up egg yolks, sugar and cake flour. Then mix both together until thick. After taking of beat, you add a LITTLE bit of butter and refrigerate. (I'll make a more detailed recipe soon and add it to the index :) )
3. You cut up the puff pastry and assemble!
4. Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

Bon Apétit! 

Car Cake

This is my first fondant car cake! And I'm pretty proud of it.

I realized from working with cakes, that I'm going to have to learn about A LOT of different things: from flowers, to people to cars!! It's really amazing work!

Back to this cake:

This cake is an old red mini cooper! I know: mini coopers are smaller than this, but well I really just couldn't cut out all that cake!! At the end, it's all about the cake, no?

Well this was pretty challenging! I baked two LARGE cakes, stacked them up, froze them then started carving. I had like 10 pictures of cars in front me while I did this. After I got the shape I wanted, I frosted it, put it back in the freezer then covered it with: yes you guessed it: marshmallow fondant =D

The details were pretty fun to make, the license plate, the lights, bumpers etc.

Oh for the windows, I just covered the cake with some white fondant first then with the red. Then cut up the windows from the red fondant and voila! Windows =D

What do you think??

Do I have a future in making fondant car cakes? :P

Be my Valentine, Snoopy Cake

Helen Keller once said:

The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.

But well, there's no harm in trying right? :P

and what is better and more beautiful than a cake?!

This year, I decided to go for something a bit out of the ordinary.

I just love snoopy! He's very special to me, and I find him the cutest thing ever =) and during this time of year, I thought I'd use this to try and bring some smiles to peoples' faces.

Snoopy (K)
Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

I saw a similar cake while looking at some awesome cake designs and directly knew I wanted to make this for Valentine's.

Be my Valentine!
Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

The red house works perfectly with all the hearts, don't you think?

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

Now the house wasn't very easy to make :P But I put my mind to it and was able to! I had to build it from some cardboard (I had no cardboard, so I used an empty Ghandour biscuit box) and then wrap it with red fondant. Snoopy was just the cutest thing to make (and surprisingly the easiest!) I just used some white marshmallow fondant and rolled them into balls, shaped them up a bit then stuck them together. I crafted Woodstock, the yellow bird using (yes!) some more fondant and placed a cute little heart on top.

And whats says "I love you" more than a heart?! I tried to put as many hearts as possible on it!
You see, I always say: If you make a cake and you're all happy and full of love, the end result would be great! That's the secret =D

This cake was no exception. I went into a frenzy of hearts and red and cuteness!  All I could see for two days was hearts and mushy stuff :P I just love this cake and am so proud of it!


I just hope that this day is full of happiness and love! I wish everyone would find that special someone to enjoy this day (and every day) with and be as happy as I am.



There's nothing better than being in love now is there?

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

Photo Credit: Diana Loutfy

A Bouquet of Roses

This is the second cake I made today! It's for my mom's birthday! I had to make some very special, you see I love my mom very much (and she is always the one helping me with my other cakes:P) So this was a challenge for me: Mom wasn't helping!!!

Well, as I mentioned in my other post, mom's cake last year was a chocolate log shaped cake with a couple of roses.
So this year I had to go BIG!!

I saw this beautiful cake some time ago and immediately knew this was the cake for mom. She loves roses! and anything red.

The roses took a long time! I had some help from my friend Dana and my sister Lana!! It was very fun making them, no? :P

Then I cut up some light and dark green stripes and make a border around the cake.
This was one the most time-consuming cakes I've done, but it was worth it! I loved the result!

Isn't it pretty???

OH OH, the cake is a delicious lemon cake. It's made up of 4 layers of vanilla cake filled with lemon filling and frosting. Everyone loved it!!!

Happy Birthday Mom!!! 

Thank you for everything you've done! I couldn't have done anything without you!!

I love you =)

If you haven't seen my sister's cake, here it is : App Cake

App Cake

Today is a very special day! It's my sister's and my mom's birthday =D It also happens to be the "anniversary" of the first fondant cakes I made. (Yes, they were both for my mom and sister). My first two cakes were very simple (and not all that great:P) They were a log shaped chocolate cake with some flowers on top (for mom) and a rectangle shaped cake with a fondant flat apple logo on top!

SO, this year, I decided I should redeem my self for those cakes =D

Sally (my sister) LOVES coffee! and she LOVES her iPhone! 

So I remembered this cake I tried a while ago that she loved. It's called Opera Cake.

Its 7 layers of  a coffee-lovers dream! It's made up Jaconde - which is simple an almond sponge cake - soaked in coffee syrup, coffee buttercream, ganache and  covered with a dark chocolate glaze. 

Now that the coffee part was done, I had to get some iPhone into it. 

A while ago, someone sent me a  picture of some iPhone apps cupcakes. They were gorgeous! and Sally loved them. 

So I got my fondant out and started the work!

I tried to make the apps as relevant as possible. 

Sally was born on Feb 11, at 4 o'clock. And 18 had to go someplace :P

 

Here are some more pictures.

I hope you liked it!!
Oh and here's my mom's cake : A Bouquet of Roses

Sally, Happy Birthday sis!! I love you so so so so much!!! You're finally 18!!!!! =D

Oh, this wasn't my original plan. My first plan was a girl playing the guitar. After I finished the girl and saw the apps I decided to go with the iPhone.

Here's a picture of the girl though:

Girl with Guitar

Éclairs

Who doesn't love a good old looong cream filled chocolate covered deliciousness?!

Éclairs! One of my favorite french pastries and one that my family (mom!!!!!) keeps asking (nagging) me to make! I made some this afternoon and thought I'd share them with you =)

These decadent pastries are filled with Italian custard cream and topped with dark chocolate icing.

Don't they look great? 

This recipe is again from the amazing Cake Boss (Khaled! Danke!!)