Simply tempting!

This is the product from the hands-on class at Shermay's conducted by Chef Jocelyn.

A wonderful feeling to step into a clean and well-organized work place where most ingredients needed were pre-arranged within reach. As usual, Chef Jocelyn's notes in the recipe pack was so meticulous that all I needed was to concentrate on the demo.

We made our own cake batter after Jocelyn's demo and while the cakes were baking, she continued with the illustration on layering and frosting.

Theses were nicely done up.

I didn't do any fancy design on my fudge cake. I simply piped the borders after frosting, after all, chocolate fudge cake is enticing on its own.

A Julia Child's classic

Reine de Saba - Queen of Sheba, a classic cake from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As its known, this is a Chocolate and Almond cake with Chocolate - butter icing. I came upon this blog and found the recipe straight forward, but when I did a search and discovered many people had posted their similar bakes with recipes in either three yolks or four and named this cake as such. Some sites stated that there are two versions as well.

This cake was iced with 33% Tanariva Valrhona Chocolate instead of the semisweet chocolate, thus appearance of the coating seemed paler in comparison. However, I used 55% Equatoriale for the cake itself. In this way, Nataniel would not complain that the cake was too bitter.

Thunderstruck!

Red beans in Chocolate cake? It's something unimaginable and heightened my curiosity till last Sunday which I went to Chef Aki's class. I was immediately struck by this cake after a bite which was abnormal. I don't fancy chocolate and its' relatives but this cake had me. This is my number three cakes in a short time span of four days. Deceptively average in appearance, it's exceptional in taste.

It can be served warm or cold, each has its own merits but I preferred it warm. It tasted more chocolaty when cold and firmer too. When it's warm, the red bean taste is more discernible. I still dislike chocolates and their likes, except this.