I ♥ Macarons!

Homemade Rose Macarons

Yes I did! They weren't perfect but way better than I expected considering all the hype about them! I first came across Macarons when my French mate brought some over for my housemate as a present and I just happened to be at the table at the time and it would of just been rude of me not to try one. They were from Ladureé. At first we were like did you bring these from Paris! But no Ladureé have a counter in Brown Thomas in Dublin. So I tried a rose flavoured one and it was devine! I was hooked and armed witha a voucher for Brown Thomas I had, I bought a big box of Macarons from Ladureé. One of every flavour. Nom Nom.

The Perfect Macaron after Seriouseats.com

A friend of mine who is an excellent cook told me she had got a book on macarons but said she was disapointed as the language wasn't great and it resulted in a not so perfect macaron. Now I think she might of been talking about I ♥ Macarons the must have book on macarons but it is translated from Japanese and supposedly mainly just pretty pictures. So after alot of reading of blogs and so forth I decided to give rose macarons a go, following the advice of this guy, David Lebovitz, who seems to be the dude when it comes to pastries or something like that. He refers to a 'foot' which is the bubbly looking bit on the bottom of the macarons. See the photo above. I didn't achieve this but heres hoping I will next time!

Pencil Marks for the Macarons

Powdered Almond, Powdered Sugar, Granulated Sugar and Egg Whites

Anyway I started off by drawing circles that were about an inch in diameter on some baking paper to act as a guide when I piped the mixture out. I drew 30 of these circles, 15 on for each baking tray. I had ground almonds already but I ground them some more so they were more powdery. However this made the almond clump together. This meant I had to roast the almond on a baking tray to dry it out. I put it in the oven for 10mins and hoped for the best. In the meantime I powdered some sugar in the blender. You could use icing sugar but sometimes this has added cornflour which supposedly causes the macarons to crack. 

Mixing the Colour into the Egg Whites

I whisked the sugar and egg whites up and added the colour (half a cap of red colouring) and a cap of rose water to the mixture at this point as I was folding the rest of the ingredients in later and wouldn't be able to mix the colour at this point. I also made it slightly redder than I wanted as I knew the almonds and powdered sugar would dilute the mix. The almonds were still clumped together after roasting and it required alot of effort to sieve them into the egg whites with the icing sugar as they kept clogging up the sieve. I eventually got there. 

Piped Macarons Ready for Baking

My Syringe with a Plain Cap

So the mixture was easy to but into my syringe piper unlike butter icing which is a nightmare! Runny enough to flow out easy, thick enough to control and pipe into nice domes. I'm sure a skilled hand could spoon them out neatly if no piping bag was available. Once I'd piped them all out I had to rap the baking tray against the counter a few times to flatten the top of the macarons as they are meant to have flat tops not domes. Popped them in the oven at gas mark 1 for 15mins. They looked great. Maybe starting to golden a little which I didn't want as it would ruin the colour. I let them cool and then things went down hill a bit. 

Macarons Fresh Out of the Oven

When I tried to lift the macarons off the baking paper they started to crumble! Perfect shells had formed but there was mainly just a big void of air in the centre with a bit of gooey macaron STUCK to the baking paper! Then I realised I'd used greaseproof paper not baking paper, hence the sticking problem but not why the centre was nothing but air, my Mom thinks I should of left them in for longer. Oh well I'll know next time. Never the less out of the 30 shells as I'm now calling them I managed to salvage maybe 18 or so of them i.e. 9 Macarons. :( I was not a happy bunny but I was still excited as they looked awesome!

Homemade Rose Macarons

I mixed a bit of butter, icing sugar and some rose water up and using my syringe piped it in a circle around the outside of the bottom of the macarons. Ideally I should of filled them but they were so fragile they were cracking under the weight of the filling. It was a very rich filling anyway so it didn't matter. I didn't add any colour to the the filling as the pink and white contrast is quite pretty. I was thinking of flavouring it something different. Maybe vanilla but I was too lazy to go get some from the cupboard (Does anyone else think its strange seeing cupboard written down as everyone glosses over the p?)

Homemade Rose Macarons

Homemade Rose Macarons

So there was a lot of wastage, not a lot of sticky centre, no foot but who cares. They were delicious! I am however going to lay off the rose flavoured stuff for awhile! If you are going to make them I'd read up on it first as there are loads of tips such as leaving over night to develop in flavour. Yea about that.... Anyway if you wanna read more about my tasty adventures check out my Chocolate Fondant or if you want to see some of the costume parties I've been at try the Stretcher Race! 

More Marshmallows

Scary Coloured Marshmallows

So I attempted the marshmallows again. Tad obsessive but I want to get them perfect! This time I opted for some flavours! I split the mixture into 3 bowls and added a cap of food colouring and a cap of essence to each bowl. The green ones are peppermint, the yellow ones are lemon and and the pink ones are rose. A cap of colour was far too much and it produced gaudy colours to say the least. Also extra lemon essence wouldn't of gone astray and alot less mint! I love mint but this was just too much. The mint ones have to be stored separately as the mint started seeping into the other ones. The rose flavoured ones were perfect! 

Mmm Rose Petal Jelly aka Jam

Now rose essence is probably quite difficult to get your hands on so instead I use rose water which is more dilute and available in most pharmacies because it has many beneficial properties. It is often used as a cleanser by people with dry or sensitive skin. It can also be added to your shampoo to prevent hair loss. Just make sure it is pure rose water not rose water and glycerin as I've no idea if it tastes nice. If you are feeling very adventurous you could try distill your own rose petals. My Mom did this about a month ago and made lovely rose petal jam which is great on bread or as the filler in a cake. 

Back to the marshmallows. They were still not as fluffy as I'd like and I think this is partly to do with the whole not having a sugar thermometer and hence not reaching 130 degrees Celsius and the fact that when I separated the mixture in the 3 bowls it cooled down alot and began to set. This made it extremely difficult to pour it into the tins to let it set. Therefore I think alot of the air was squeezed out of it while scraping it out of the bowl. Also I greased the cling film with oil this time instead of butter and I had no trouble at all getting the cling film off. I enjoyed some of the mint mallows in a cup of hot chocolate last night while watching some Harry Potter in preparation for the final movie! 

So another not so perfect attempt at marshmallows as they still look rubbish but I'll get there eventually! It was alot easier this time as I'd an extra set of hands to help manage the mess and so forth. 

Badass Biscuit Cakes!

Ironman Cake

So it is tradition amoung my friends to make each other birthday cakes which are somehow related to the individual. We had a bit of a dilemma for two of the cakes as they were needed while we were staying down the country. We wouldn't have the time or the privacy (the cakes are surprises)  to make them while away and a 5hour car journey in the summer would ruin most cakes and soft icing. So the solution was to make biscuit cakes! However, we aren't ones for normal cakes so off we went to Lidl and raided the chocolate aisle. The contents of the cakes were Malteasers, Crunchie, Kinder Chocolate (those little bars), Twix, marshmallows, Mars Bars and Rice Crispies, just to name a few.

We made one cake using golden syrup and butter melted with milk chocolate and the other with condensed milk mixed with melted milk chocolate. The conclusion was that the golden syrup and butter combination set better than the condensed milk with made a very heavy cake. The bars of chocolate and marshmallows etc. were chopped into bite size pieces and then stirred into the mixtures. 

Charizard Pokemon Cake

The first cake was a Ironman head. Unfortunately, we didn't fully account for how much compaction would be required and therefore the proportions aren't quite right. The cake was formed simply by lining two saucepans with cling film and filling them up in layers while compacting with the bottom of a glass. The bases were put in the fridge and allowed to cool. The icing for the Ironman cake was from a packet of Dr. Oetker Ready to Roll Coloured Icing which is hard to find but most Tesco Stores seem to have it. The candles got out of control though!

Nom, Nom, NOM!

The second cake was not as successful. It was meant to be a mosaic of the Pokemon Charizard made from Smarties. (My friends and I are definitely of the Pokemon generation sure just look at our Costumes) The cake kind of worked but was very rough around the edges literally. The base was moulded in two small but deep oven trays also lined with cling film. Then chocolate was poured on top of the two bases while the lay side by side in order to form a smooth surface. This didn't really work since we didn't have enough chocolate and it split in the middle during travel.

To form the mosaic a picture of Charizard was printed to the scale we wanted it and the smarties laid out on top of it. Then the smarties were painstakingly transferred to the cake. The head did not really work as we didn't have the 'resolution' we needed for the detail. Finally the candles were arranged as the fire coming from his mouth and tail. There was about 30 candles but 50 would of been more effective. It still tasted good! As you can see from the photo of everyone enjoying it. Shame they didn't get to try my Marshmallows!