Time to get the rolling pins out! - DB does vol au vent

4 days late, but I come with 4 different variations of vol au vent. I must admit, I cringed when I read that this month's DB challenge involves puff pastry. I've made a couple of successful puff pastry in the past, but I'm still not comfortable in doing any lamented dough. I always find it quite temperamental. But, when you get it right, it is so worth the effort.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' Challenge has been chosen by Steph of a whisk and a spoon. Steph chose Vols-au-Vent, which we are pretty sure in French means, “After one bite we could die and go to heaven!”

As always, I want to try to do as much varieties as I can. I have lots of leftover in my fridge, so I decided to use them as I can. I ended up making 2 savouries, and 2 sweets. In the spirit of Ramadhan, I made some opor ayam, and I still have some leftover, so I shredded the chicken and thicken the soup and made it as one of the savoury filling. For the other savoury one, I use up some leftover from the chicken sweet chilly mayo wrap, my yesterday's lunch.



For the sweets, I incorporate leftover salted caramels from my boss' order and the IMBC (Italian Meringue Buttercream) leftover from the cake order last weekend. I transform the IMBC into 2, one gets a burnt sugar syrup added to them to make burnt sugar frosting, and the other one was whipped together with a lavender syrup. I paired the burnt sugar frosting with layers of salted caramel and chocolate ganache. Whereas the lavender frosting got paired with Yuzu lemon curd. This is particularly my favourite. The tartness from the curd complements the sweetness of the frosting beautifully with a slight lavender undertone. Perfect to welcomes the spring (which is suppose to come by now, but it is still bloody cold here).


Check out the Daring Bakers roundup for other fantastic vol au vent. Thanks again ladies for the sweet challenge =)

A hearty breakfast when time is on your side

Nothing can make my day brighter like a good hearty breakfast in a lazy weekend. For once, time is on my side this morning and the rainy weather is perfect to be spent with a hearty comforting vanilla rice pudding. Rice puddings are not hard to make, but it can be quite time consuming. A good one will take at least one hour with constant stirring. I have been looking for a recipe for making it in a slow cooker, but I haven't had much luck.



I first tried making rice pudding when I bought the Marie Claire breakfast book. It calls for a lot of spices like cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg, just the way I like it. But when I cooked it, I ended up with a mess. It seems to need almost double the quantity of milk as what stated in the recipe, but the rice was still undercooked at the end. What a disappointment from what seems to be a very promising start. Not until I tried making Aran's arroz con leche when my faith is restored. Her version is so simple with only cinnamon and milk but it was soooooo good. To satisfy my need of spice, I added the spices from Marie Claire's recipe and cook it using Aran's method. I end up cooking it for almost 90 minutes to 120 minutes to achieve a thicker rice pudding. I have some left over of fleur de sel caramel sauce from the pancake I made a couple of days back, so I add it to the vanilla rice pudding. yumm yumm yumm.


Vanilla rice pudding

1 litre milk
100g arborio rice
50g sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp freshly ground cardamom
pinch of fleur de sel or sea salt
1 vanilla bean, seeded

In a heavy based pan, heat the milk, salt, spices and cinnamon stick to a gentle simmer. Try to keep the heat very low. Add sugar and rice, stir to combine. Stir every 5 minutes or so and cook gently until it thickens. It took about 90-120 minutes for me to get a thick consistency. Serve with any sauce or on its own with a dash of freshly grated cinnamon.

Fleur de sel caramel sauce

250g brown sugar
400ml thickened cream
1 vanilla bean, seeded
60g butter, chopped
1/2 tsp fleur de sel

In a heavy based saucepan, cook sugar, cream, vanilla and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stirring constantly, cook until it boils and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in fleur de sel. Set aside until it thickens to the desired consistency.

Fleur de sel caramels

Been feeling a little less inspired lately. Eventhough there has been a lot of things happenning in my kitchen, just couldn't find the energy nor the mood to write it up. Here's one from the archive.. I actually made these a little over a month ago for the Melbourne Food bloggers' get together.

Caramel must be one of my favourite flavour of all time. Caramel cakes or caramel sauce smothered in ice creams, pancakes.. you name it.. I don't know whether it's existed here in Australia, Alpenliebe caramel candy are still my favourite.


I've been meaning to try to make fleur de sel caramels ever since I've seen it in blogs everywhere. I tried looking for fleur de sel here in Melbourne, but so far hadn't had any luck. I tried Essential Ingredients, Simon Johnson and the newly opened Jones the Grocer at Chadstone, but still empty handed. Before my trip, I made a special mission for myself to look for fleur de sel when I'm in Singapore, since I've seen a couple of patisserie in Singapore had mentioned some fleur de sel desserts. I found a couple of gourmet food store in Singapore that I haven't heard before.. To my liking, Singapore has transformed into a foodie heaven!! Perhaps the high number of Western expats residing in the country has lead this small country into it's development. There I was, dragging my parents to the different food stores from Paul de Gastronomie in Paragon, Culina in Robinsson Walk, Jones the Grocer in Denshaw St and finally found one jar (the only one left I might add) at Culina on Denshaw St. I actually jumped up and down when I saw the jar. I also picked up a Vanilla fleur de sel, tempted to buy the lemon one, but I can always made one myself from the plain fleur de sel.

This caramels are quite soft.. Not exactly what I thought it would be. I was kind of expecting that Alpenliebe type of hard candy, not the soft toffee. But the caramelly taste is very addictive! Seriously, M had to hid the jar to keep me from finishing it all by myself. Perhaps next time I will cook it a little bit longer to make it harder. This recipe is seriously easy to make! The only thing you need to be carefull of is not to burn your sugar. A good quality thermometer will do the trick. I made two batches, one with plain fleur de sel and one with vanilla. Really hard to differentiate the two other than a speck of vanilla beans on some of them. Perhaps I should add one vanilla bean to the sugar to make the vanilla taste even stronger.

Fleur de sel caramels
from Gourmet, October 2004

1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 teaspoon fleur de sel*
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water

Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.

Bring cream, butter, and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.

Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.

Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248°F on thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into baking pan and cool 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.