If you’re a little underwhelmed by my birthday cake, trust me, I was there first. I was turning 40 last month, and I had serious plans. I wanted to make a cake that was so majestic, such a visual assault on the senses, that all of you will have no choice but to concede what

I could lie and say that the above is a fancy update of roti prata, but I won’t. In truth, it’s a no good piece-of-crap choux pastry I ended up making for my husband Z’s birthday last month. Ever heard of Paris-Brest? It’s a French pastry in a shape of a wheel that was created in

Like, what happened? How did I manage to make a pastry that grew tumours? This is supposed to be a Galette des Rois, an almond-cream-filled pastry the French traditionally eat around Christmas. Taken from Young Mo Kim’s A Collection Of Fine Baking, this recipe had me making the puff pastry by hand to achieve a monumental 144

Go ahead, laugh at my chiffon cake. Say that it looks like an Egyptian pyramid that’s been chopped off and pried open for easier access to King Tut. Because once you’ve had a taste of this cake - complete with that  glob of unmixed egg white on the inside *see it?* – you’re not gonna be

DO NOT attempt to adjust your computer screen. This cake is really as bad as it looks. Ever since I started this blog last May, I have - only half-jokingly too - tried to project myself as some baking wunderkind on the cusp of conquering the confectionery world. But at the start of this new year, I thought, what the heck, I’m gonna

BEFORE you think I’m still on a rampage against Nick Malgieri, let me say right now that I had actually planned an ending to this post. And it reads: “You’re forgiven, Mr Malgieri.” See, I’m reviewing his latest cookbook The Modern Baker for the newspaper and I can’t possibly shred it to smithereens just because his