Month: April 2021

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Forsythia & Pandan Cake

This didn’t quite work — I wanted to try making a forsythia and pandan cake. Made forsythia tea, subbed in a cup of it for a cup of water in the cake mix. (I also added an extra egg and subbed in melted butter for the oil in the cake mix.) But I don’t think I can really taste any difference; I’m not sure forsythia is strong enough to overcome a yellow box cake.

AND I added pandan powder to make some of the batter green; I got a two-color cake effect when I cut into the baked cake, but I honestly couldn’t taste the pandan either. (Pandan has sort of a grassy-coconut flavor.) Pandan extract next time, I think — pandan powder has failed me.

But it’s still pretty, so that’s something, and the kids thought it was delicious. They’re not so picky about cake, though. 🙂

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Making Forsythia Tea

Harvest blossoms, pour boiling water over, let sit overnight to cool completely, strain.

Once you have the flower tea, you can boil with sugar to make a simple syrup for drinks and desserts, or add honey to make forsythia honey, use pectin, lemon juice, and sugar to make forsythia jelly, etc. and so on.

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Boxing

Kavi tells me that “boxing” videos are a thing on TikTok. I’m not deft enough to pack and record myself packing on video at the same time, but the spring Patreon Earth tier boxes are going out today, so here’s a set of photos — sort of like a time-lapse video? 🙂 (There’s some variation in the boxes, depending on what I have on hand, but this is basically what’s going in this tier.)

– tissue paper

– caramel chocolate, coconut rock, dragonfruit chocolate (with white pepper and citrus), ruby chocolate, passionfruit marshmallow

– unicorn hibiscus chocolate (with Celtic sea salt and pounded hibiscus)

– hibiscus & vanilla flower cookie

– coconut-cashew milk toffee crumble (nice on ice cream, yogurt, stirred into granola or cereal, or just eaten straight out of the bag)

– more coconut rock (this one is variable, filing up with extra sweets)

– pandan crinkle cookie (ditto variable)

– snowdrop soap (unscented)

– dried flower & resin bookmark

– photo mini bookmarks

– confetti! 🙂

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Pandan Crinkle Cookies

Fun for Easter and spring! I don’t have a recipe for you yet, because I used pandan powder, but it didn’t give much green color (or flavor), so I ended up supplementing with food coloring. I want to try again with pandan extract, see if I get a better result so I can skip the food coloring.

But these are certainly cute nonetheless, and tasty, and Kavi was very impressed — we haven’t made crinkle cookies before, and it’s a dramatic moment when you open the oven door to see the crinkling. 🙂

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Taste = Paramount

So, I don’t think I’ll be working with edible paper again anytime soon — it makes a dramatic effect, but it just bugs me that the paper doesn’t taste of anything. Taste = paramount!

Also, to make these look finished, you really should pipe icing around the edge, and I have slightly shaky hands, so my icing skills are never going to be professional level. Hopefully my Patreon peeps won’t mind if these are slightly wonky. 🙂

Edible flower paper circles found on Etsy.

(For the Earth tiers, you’ll be getting either a Holi cookie or a spring flower cookie — they’re both hibiscus & vanilla cookies with royal icing, so same flavors, just very different appearance!)