Sugarloaf @Temasek Culinary Academy

My classmates and I hopped of to Sugarloaf at the @TCA after food science and product knowledge class. For some of them, it is already their second time there but it was my first so I was a excited bouncing thing xD

Anyway, Sugarloaf is a casual dining cafe run by the CCM (my course!) year 2 students(me next year!). They bake and cook the food sold there under the guidance of the chefs. The front of the house is handled by the students doing service management module.





Now to the important part! -- The food!
I was spoiled for choice as we walked past the counters. The purchasing works in a way that you walk down a "series" of counters and display shelves and you are assigned a number. So as you walk you just choose the food you want and you get billed at the end. The counters are roughly divided into cakes and tarts, desserts and sandwiches, pastries and main course, then cashier and drinks.

In the end I went for the apple crumble and the thai grilled chicken. The thai grilled chicken was nice and tender and a little burnt on one side as you can see from the picture. Maybe its intentional? heh. The sauce that came with it was sweet and spicy and had a strong taste of coriander. Overall, pretty good! Though the portion was a little small.
The apple crumble was really good. The crust is crunchy yet light and not too sweet. The filling though, was a little sweet for me. The meringue (which I thought was whipped cream at first sight), was good too! Not too sweet and melts in the mouth.

Eugenia and Whitney also kindly let me sample their deserts. The lemon curd of the lemon meringue pie was a little too sour for me and there seems to be an overload of meringue. But I suppose that is serves to balance out the acidity of the lemon curd. Nicely browned peaks and sweet and simple presentation tho imo!

The creme brulee was awesome! I really liked it. The satisfying part is always tapping and breaking through the sugar surface. I think the colour of the "brulee" is really nice and I like how it is topped some fruits!

Definitely going to sugarloaf again and looking forward to making these myself next year!

Cream Puffs

This is a picture of my first time making choux pastry, and well, assembling them into cream puffs. It was quite an experience. Firstly,  I messed up the first batter by trying to sub 2 large eggs with three small eggs. The batter turned out to be too liquid and just spread out when I spooned them onto the baking sheet. I redid the batter, kept to 2 small eggs and it turned out just fine!
Next, I bought some whipping cream and started to whip it with my hand mixer. I roughly reached a creamy texture but I thought it might not hold piping patterns so I just whipped it a wee bit longer. And it turned into cheese. Heh. just kidding. But yes, the whipped cream turned into curd that I could pick up with my fingers. I was quite horrified and had no choice but to store the choux pastry shells until I got more whipping cream.
Finally, I achieved somewhat creamy texture with my second carton of whipping cream and filled my choux pastry shells. And even made some swans :)
Overall, Im really satisfied with how the choux pastry turned out but the cream wasn’t quite sweet enough. The powdered sugar did help a bit with the sweetening tho. Definitely gonna try to whip up some eclairs or profiteroles next time round.