JJ IN DA HOUSE: Fun of Baking @ Totoro Gourmet Studio, Kuala Lumpur

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Fun of Baking @ Totoro Gourmet Studio, Kuala Lumpur

It is rather fun and exciting when it comes to baking.
I'm something rather into cooking and it's been year since I last baked.
I was rather happy when I am able to join my friend for a baking class in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

Totoro Gourmet Studio is a well known pastry studio in KL famous for its one-to-one baking classes.
As far as I've visited so many bakery, Totoro Gourmet Studio is also the one of the most innovative and creative cake designs and decorations skills.
All the cake designs are rather unique but also clean at the same time. My friend, Nick himself is rather particular on baking which has made him a master baker now.

I was surprised to be served a slice of specially made cake by Chef Nick.

The picture below is Salted Egg Yolk Cheesecake, which was named as Ultraman Cheesecake by Chef Nick too. It was rather rich and delicious as the saltiness and sweetness from salted egg yolk and cheesecake blended together. It forms a rather appetizing dessert instead.

So we are baking Chocolate Rum Cake for today.

Of course the common ingredients are butter, sugar, flour, essence, chocolate, eggs, rum and etc.

There are some extra tips that we gotta take extra cautious, some small steps could made a big impact if we didn't do it properly though.

Melting the mixture of butter, sugar and essence.

Bacardi Gold anyone?

Chocolates! Lots of them!

Some extra tips to remember: do not add all ingredients in one shot.
Remember to add them a bit by a bit so that the whole mixture could blend well and smooth.

Rum is added according to personal preferences, of course average would be just great.

Especially to certain people who are not into strong liquor.

Finally, you can also add some nuts into your cake mixture so that the whole cake could taste better when you were to chew nuts in your cake.

Pour the batter into a baking tray and ready to send it to the oven!

This was how it looks like when it came out from the oven.

Leave it cold before the decorations and finishing.

Secondly, we are moving into some of my personal favourites.

The Macaroons!

For people who have tried baking macaroons, you should know that every steps in baking macaroons require extra cautious. One wrong step could ruin the whole baking process.

Some people did asked me, can I not add too much sugar into my macaroons so that it wouldn't taste so sweet?

Let me tell you, if you cut down on sugar when you bake macaroons, you are only cutting down the quantity of macaroons. It would not lesser the sweetness in it as macaroons is entirely made of sugar.

There are skills even in mixing the batter, becareful in every little steps could lead you to a better success.

The colour of macaroons is up to personal preferences. But of course you wouldn't pick green colour for strawberry macaroons right?

Mix everything slowly and patiently. Baking takes a lot of time and patient.

You would not be successful if you were to rush everything.

Draw on your baking papers before pressing the mixture.
It makes your life easier and every macaroon biscuits can come out evenly.

Attention, 100% focus on what you are doing.

Leave it there for about minutes, and they are ready for baking!

The fillings of macaroons are also up to your personal preferences, whether is it strawberry, green tea, chocolate, vanilla or any others.

Look at all these perfect looking macaroon biscuits!

They are smiling!

There are also skills in pressing the fillings into the macaroon biscuits.

But just make sure all are added evenly.

Now, Raspberry Macaroons are served!

But remember to chill it before serving.

Then we move back to cake decorations!

The below decoration was done by Master Nick himself.

The cake was really delicious as the richness of chocolate blended perfectly with the strong rummy feeling in it. It tasted even better when you can bite nuts along with your cake that added some crunchiness into the cake.