Carb loading

With San Francisco celebrated as the worldwide home of sourdough, I know the breadmaking competition at SFBI will be intense!  Just to stress me out further, I googled the other Australian attending the course and found he already sells his bread professionally.  Seriously, has he just signed up to laud it over everyone else? Anyway, with departure date nearing it has been time to get in some last minute practice.  Below are some of the more recent efforts - a plain sourdough, a sesame sourdough, a sunflower sourdough, sourdough potato pizza and an imposter simple milk loaf made with yeast (aka bread for beginners).

My sourdough cultures have become virtual pets, and the big questions are now:

(a) how will they survive in the freezer while I'm away; and

(b) will they ever forgive me for five months in the cold?!

Maybe I'll smuggle back a San Fran Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis sibling for them as a post hibernation surprise...

Green tea party

Be careful what you wish for.  After last week's flat macarons (see bottom left picture on this blog), I spent the week wishing for puffy ones and it seems someone upstairs misinterpreted my wishes. A few theories for where it all went wrong:

- Dry to wet ratio out of whack

- Over-aged egg whites

- Lazy arm action and undermixing

Hopefully all will be revealed at SFBI.  Anyway, here they are in all their puffy glory - green tea macarons with a chocolate ganache filling.

With green tea being the flavour of the weekend, I couldn't resist making this Okashi green tea chiffon cake.  I filled it with a chocolate chestnut ganache and iced it in a white chocolate cream.  Yes, that is a green cake.  Close your eyes and swallow!

The warm-up

No I'm not talking about preheating the oven.  Every reality show has a before and after, so these are some of the practice rounds before classes start........  Ok, maybe I'm not showing you all the practice shots, like last week's eclairs that ended up not so successfully down the chute, but that's why I'm the blog editor with the power to pick and choose.

Last week's brown sugar and white chocolate swiss roll, swirled with what was left of the chunky cherry, peach and vanilla jam I made back in January.

Orange blossom madeleines in my new madeleine pan.  I don't know if I'm more addicted to buying cookware or cookbooks! Amazon.com - my home away from home!

G&B dark chocolate and cinnamon swirls.  All organic....had to be healthy, right?

An S for saffron.  Saffron fruit loaf thanks to one of my favourite bread books by Dan Lepard.

And lastly, an apple and olive oil cake adapted from Ottolenghi.  How yummy was the brown sugar, cinnamon and cream cheese filling!