Maple Bacon Apple Pie

Jan 23 is Vinh's birthday. I had a plan for that. But also, I found out that the very day is the National Pie Day. He was meant to be Mr. Kake Fairy, he he :D.

In contrary to public perception, he doesn't get things baked for him. I'm usually caught up with the orders and experiments. I fail to set aside time to bake for home. This was a good opportunity for me to sit my butt and plan out a birthday/Pie Day surprise for him :).

What would be a good pie to make? Winter fruit pie, pandowdy...bacon! Can I pull this off? He loves bacon and I've been seeing more and more bacon being used in sweets. Surprisingly, there aren't much floating around in the cyber world. "Bacon pie" gave me quiche or pie lattice top made of bacon. Hmmm, not too enticing. Bacon crumble? Like Maple Bacon Donut from Dynamo? On an apple pie? Sounds like a plan.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I've ever cooked bacon. It's always there in the fridge but I don't usually make eye contact. Not that I don't like it. I just don't crave for it. When it comes to cooking bacon, I'm a complete novice. I was lucky, I had just come across an article on bad bacon and how not to make mistakes. I put the procedures in my head without practice. Bake them in the oven, brush some maple syrup at the end and I should be in business. Another challenge was to somehow steal bacon without him noticing the missing slivers. What's worse...I saw 5 pieces remaining and I needed 8!! I had to pull a brand new package from the freezer, defrost, and put them in the bag the way he does. 5 pieces will grow into a full package for him. Let's just hope and pray that he'll think he did it.

Ta-da! Here is the bacon I cooked! Look legit? 

I cooled them and blended into the crumble mixture. And here is the end product. I liked that the apples were still pretty crispy. As for bacon, the presence was definitely there. You could taste it without losing its applie pie status. Not bad :). With that, have a happy national pie day and happy birthday Vinh!

"M" Cake

HNY! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and wishing the best for 2014!! This special time of the year is made even more special (yes, it is possible) with three friends having birthdays back-to-back-to-back. Aaand, their names all starts with "M"! Naturally, this created a great opportunity for many of us to get together. Party time :D.

It was a no brainer to me to infest the cake with the letter "M". I couldn't think of a better way than to inbed it onto the sidewall. I piped out little M's everywhere on a sheet pan, being mindful that the letter will be flipped. I don't see big time bakeries ever doing this because it's time-consuming and can't be mass produced. This sheet of cake is dedicated to this cake and this cake only! It took ~30min to pipe out the M's. 

I hit that in the freezer to make it firm. Then poured white cake batter everywhere. I was going for the LV-logo-look...did it come close? ;)

Inside was popular chocolate cream layers. I wanted to keep that LV feel on the surface. So rather than putting in-your-face monogram, I opted for cocoa stencil. It'll be subtle enough but screaming "M"!!

The get-together was great as always. So many people were there, including those I don't get to see much of elsewhere. Everyone seemed to have liked the cake and, most important, the birthday crew liked it too. Success (^^)b.