Where's Pablo?

Do you know this penguin? I did not until recently when I was introduced to Pablo and the Backyardigans. In fact, my knowledge of who's who in childhood pop culture is very limited these days and only exists because of several nieces who delight in Dora and Disney princesses. Personally, I am from the generation of Sanrio classics, when Hello Kitty, My Melody, and Little Twin Stars reigned supreme. Forget Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids, this Canadian-Chinese kid from the 1970's still has her pristine collection of Hello Kitty pencil cases and stickers and currently has unusual empathy for a character named Kogepan.


A lucky little girl named Blake (a big fan of Pablo) celebrated a birthday with swirly pink, purple, and yellow cupcakes decorated with royal icing alphabet letters and numbers. Six dozen cupcakes later, I have a new respect for these small tasty treats. The whole cupcake hype has been wasted on me, who admittedly, poo-pooed the notion that a cupcake could ever be delicious or desirable (I don't like a mouthful of buttercream). But their appeal makes more sense to me now, both from a consumer and creator point-of-view.


First, rather than getting a slice of cake, it is inherently more special to get an individual serving that is yours alone, not a fraction of a greater whole. Second, even though cupcakes are technically simple and often devoid of much flavour complexity, the possibilities in design are endless as each cupcake is its own blank canvas individually but also as a group where repetition and patterns can be visually stunning. Vive le cupcake!

Something blue

Blueberries were always a part of my childhood summers. A family friend owned a blueberry farm and picking blueberries was a regular event each August. My mom would wash, dry, and freeze bags and bags of blueberries to make blueberry milkshakes for us later in the year. I remember how she would vacuum seal each freezer bag by using a straw to suck out all the air before closing the seal, a technique that I now use. It's funny what little memories stay with me into adulthood as I find myself repeating the same seemingly mundane activities of every day life that I witnessed my mom perform decades ago.


With so many blueberries currently inhabiting my freezer, I decided to incorporate them as a mousse layer into an entremet which was for my friend Patricia's bridal shower. The shower also had a wine theme so a recent purchase from Gehringer Brothers estate winery, a 2007 Private Reserve Riesling, became a gelée layer studded with fresh blueberries. I was thinking of adding some citrus notes and opted for lemongrass mousse because I had a few stalks leftover after cooking up some Vietnamese lemongrass chicken earlier in the week. Finally, two layers of pistachio lime joconde were also assembled into the entremet.


White chocolate spray gave the entremet a velvety finish. The weather here in Vancouver has been very hot lately and so my poor white chocolate curls became extrememly soft but survived intact. No air-conditioning for me. Soon it will be cooler though since unbelievably, there are only two weeks left in August! Luckily, I will have many blueberries in my already crammed freezer to enjoy this winter.

Strudel lessons

As promised, a cherry strudel was my project this week, using up some remaining local Lapin cherries which were competing for attention with five pounds of blueberries in the fridge. My first exposure to authentic strudel was on Day 3 of pastry school, when we watched in dumb-struck awe as our expert German pastry instructor stretched a handful of strudel dough into a tissue paper thin sheet which covered the workbench (about 2.5 feet by 5 feet) without a single rip or tear.


Admittedly, my strudel skills are rudimentary and this cherry and peach strudel is not traditional Austrian apple strudel; however, I was determined to practice my strudel dough stretching abilities using local summer fruit. When working with strudel dough, the goal is to pull and stretch the dough as thin as humanly possible without tearing it. How thin? Thin enough to read a newspaper through it. Using gravity to gently thin the dough by its own weight is then followed by gentle pulling and stretching action with the palm of your hand. A flour dusted linen or tea towel works well to help roll up the fruit filled strudel without having to handle the fragile dough directly.


I did make a few mistakes. Although my strudel dough was hole-free, I think I was too cautious and could have stretched it even thinner. Too much fruit and not enough length of dough also produced fewer layers and thus, a less flaky strudel than I had hoped for. Finally, I underbaked it for fear of overcooking the fruit and so the strudel was not as crisp as it could be. But we ate it anyways!

Diversion: the Okanagan

Exploration and relaxation were on our agenda last weekend as we took a road trip into British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. The wine and seasonal fruit bountiful in this region, just a short four hours drive from Vancouver, attracted us and since it has been almost 18 years since I was in the Okanagan, a visit was due. Okanangan Wine Country is now internationally renowned for its extraordinary terroir, offering world class wines and equally delicious culinary experiences.


Our first stop was Mission Hill Estate Winery to enjoy an outdoor patio dinner at The Terrace, set atop a scenic overlook in Westlake. The five course tasting menu provided a masterful dining experience set against the dramatic architectural backdrop and landscape. My favourite was the Foie Gras au Torchon, accompanied by sweet quince purée, caramelized onion, and ice wine agar caviar on buttered toasted brioche. Dessert choices featured local orchard treasures, either ripe plump apricots or a trio of cherry concoctions, including a strudel which I plan to reproduce very shortly.


We stayed at a lovely bed & breakfast in Summerland under the shadow of Giant's Head Mountain, surrounded by the dry summer heat and early morning calls of quail (they say "Chicago! Chicago!"). At nearby Silkscarf Winery, along with wine, the most perfect Lapin cherries were for sale and after the first hour, I was already near maximum gastrointestinal capacity from unbridled cherry consumption. Later, I discovered that the Lapin variety of cherry was actually developed in Summerland in 1983 and to me, their crunchy dense texture and explosive flavour make them, by far, the best cherries I have enjoyed.


And of course, the wine. After visiting seven wineries with my wannabe sommelier husband, I think that at least, I know what I like. My grossly underdeveloped palate certainly lacks the finesse to appreciate the intricacies of fine wine and my Chinese liver lacks the enzymatic tools to deal with it. But we came home with a selection of reds and one white, some to be enjoyed now and some for later, when memories of the summer heat and succulent cherries have faded.

Notes from the past

Piano lessons were a huge part of my childhood, like many Asian-Canadians of my generation. Beginning at around age four, weekly lessons became torture sessions due to our prototypical scary old piano teacher who shall be called Mrs. T. Mrs. T. seemed like she was 100 years old and since I had to wait by myself in her sitting room during my sister's lessons, her house too was a source of fear and mystery. Her ancient perfume and a wooden carved statue of what I now realize was St. Francis of Assisi still haunt my memories.


Music did not become fun until high school when, admittedly, I was a band geek who thrived in concert and jazz bands and choir ensembles. I played the flute, sang alto, and briefly learned the trombone for two months in order fill a vacant third trombone seat. Switching to a fabulous new piano teacher also allowed me to actually enjoy playing the piano. Technique and expressivity never came easy to me; I was not a musical savant and solo public performance was exceedingly anxiety provoking. Ultimately, completing my ARCT Performance Diploma at the dinosaur age of twenty will always be one of my proudest accomplishments, especially because I broke my left pinkie finger four days before my exam and had to defer it one year before finally passing with honours. So traumatizing.


I always credit my early exposure to piano as why I am very fond of fine motor tasks which require dexterity and coordination. The smaller the better, is my motto. Making this birthday cake was ridiculously entertaining and provided great satisfaction. The piano was built from an 8" x 8" x 2" square cake placed on its side with pastillage legs, keyboard, sheet music, and framed portrait of the birthday girl. Because she is a panda fanatic, I decided to have a well-dressed panda as the pianist, constructed from carved Rice Krispie treats and then covered with fondant.


The piano cake concept was adapted from one found in The Essential Guide to Cake Decoration, a good book on basics with cute design ideas. The panda was purely freehand and took almost the entire day to make. I am particularly fond of its carefully formed snout. When I heard that the birthday girl refused to let the panda be eaten, I was secretly relieved. Wouldn't you be?

Gardening

Having only recently developed a mildly green thumb, my appreciation of gardening has grown exponentially over the past two years since starting my own patio container garden. With a very shady north-east patio, my choices are limited to impatiens, lobelia, and the odd coleus, not the more showy sun-loving blooms like roses or geraniums. This week, my gardening moved indoors and to the kitchen specifically, in order to create a rose garden themed birthday cake for a lucky one year-old named Rose.


All the pink roses, white impatiens, foliage, and garden creatures were made from fondant, with small royal icing details. I could (and did) sit happily for hours without interruption shaping a whole menagerie of creatures and bouquet of roses, work that some people would find tedious. There is a meditative quality to this type of repetitive fine detail work which suits me.


The entire cake experience was not all rosy, however. Because the fondant roses were meant to lie flat against the side of the cake, I had shaved off the back of each rose and assumed they would adhere easily with either Tylose glue or stiff royal icing. Neither worked because of the fondant rose's weight against gravity causing them to fall off one by one, injuring some garden creatures in the process. Ultimately, I had to skewer each rose with a toothpick and secure them directly into the cake with great reluctance.


Despite the rose drama, this rose garden cake might be my favourite cake yet. My favourite details include the snails and their tracks becoming the writing, the inconspicuous family of slugs, and the rainbow caterpillars. Such a high degree of cuteness all packed into one cake!

Works in progress

Over the past week, I have been asking myself why I blog. This musing was prompted by several requests for recipes that I used in my previous post. When I first began my blog and named it with the most uninspired name possible, it was purely for the selfish reason of self-expression. Having made the great leap to professional pastry from ophthalmology, I needed to document this unchartered journey to an anonymous audience who would hopefully have some interest in experiencing the transition with me, whether from the medicine or food industry point of view. These days, as I am farther removed from my old professional life, I choose to focus my blog on documenting my own creative pursuits, through pastry and photography.


I still view my pastry life through an atypical lens because, despite it being over three years since my departure from medicine, my observations are akin to those of a displaced clinician who has meandered into the midst of a pastry kitchen. More importantly, my comfort level in my new "skin" is stronger having shed some, but not all, of the insecurities which came from perceived judgement and negativity.


Consequently, my blog will probably never become a mainstream food blog, filled with recipes and group baking activities, due to a conscious decision to concentrate on what inspires me and not to follow a particular format nor be instructional. Most of the recipes which I use or adapt at home are from unpublished sources and so I do not feel at liberty to send them into cyberspace. The whole question of recipe ownership intrigues me and I have yet to find a good discussion on this topic. Does changing one gram of an ingredient make it yours?


Meanwhile, these unfinished pastel-coloured fondant garden creatures are crawling around my countertops, soon to be assembled onto a rose garden themed birthday cake for a little girl named Rose. It was an opportunity to emulate the work of the talented cake designer at CakeJournal whose style can only be described as sooooooo cute. As a detail freak and former micro-surgeon, I am certainly in my element when making tiny things look perfect!