Baking!

So, in a few days I baked some:

 coffee and salted caramel macarons

mocha (coffee and dark chocolate) macarons

banana bread

red velvet cupcakes with rose water cream cheese frosting

These are my resting macarons. 

This is a very very important step in macaron making because they seriously determine the strength of the crust and size of feet when being baked.

This is the salted caramel ^^

Ready! they are pretty awesome!

Always find matching pairs and arrange them neatly to help with piping.

And one little bugger didn't have a pair. 

So I triple layered one macaron!

And as usual.... I always overpipe the fillings.....

And then topped with cocoa powder.

These were the batches for the mocha macarons.

The difference of the biscuit was that I dusted cocoa powder on them while they were still wet and resting.

Look at the size of those feet! 

No flash

These are the mini banana breads I made using the one last banana in the house. 

That was all of it - 2 muffins, from one banana.. and they tasted sooo good fresh from the oven with butter.

I saw this while having lunch in a Japanese restaurant today.

I don't know if you can see it but I think... the subject is wripping off condom wrapper using her mouth?

Anyway,

Red velvet cupcakes!

These are mini ones.

Rose water cream cheese frosting. 

Dear Malaysian friends, its basically bandung flavoured cream cheese frosting :D yep, the saaame syrup.

My frosted mini cupcakes.

And a summary photo of my latest baked goods.

Red velvet cupcake with rose water cream cheese frosting, and,

Mocha macarons (there were some salted caramel in these ones too 

because I didn't want to chuck the left overs hehe)

By the way! I bought some disposable piping bags with reusable piping tips (came in the same packet). Yayy.. they weren't even expensive but they make a huge difference on the cupcakes don't they. 

Good night~

Food again

This is what I did with some failed macarons and left over orange chocolate ganache - I squashed them a little and layered them in a ramekin bowl with chocolate between the layers and on top. 

Despite how ugly the photo is, it was so goooodd. Kept me going when I was stressed with my assignment!

Yet another ugly photo of something that tasted like fat heaven - the cheesiest omelet ever. Mixed with my eggs were basil pesto, a bit of milk and a bit of chicken stock. When it was almost done, I put shredded cheese and bocconcini (buffalo cheese) on the omelet, then rolled ot as soon as they all melted.

And I made more macarons last night! And they turned out really nice :) and cute!
For some reason, I wasn't thinking when I put pink colouring in... especially when I did mango fillings! duuurrr.. but anhyway.. still turned out nice ya. I put some lime zest in my mango cream too, as you can see.. the little bit of green on the photo.

^^ cooking and baking makes me so happy!

Assignmenting

First I worry about not having enough detail to write up recommendations.

Then I get frustrated that it takes so God damn long to write them up.

Then after spending so much time planning and writing, I worry that I can't fit all of them in

Then at the end I become thankful that I can't fit all of them in anyway because I'd rather be stuck with having to deal with what I've written than to put in the effort replace those fucking words.

Life of a last minuter :)

Ps. I'm going to fucking bake today!

Successful Macarons!

Yesterday, after trying three times and failing all three times, I finally made a GREAT batch of chocolate macarons!

This is what happened (following a recipe I haven't attempted before. This was different to the green (pineapple-avo) ones, which were also different to the pink (lychee) ones):

The first time, I cracked ALL of them in 2 minutes, they had no feet, and they were under cooked inside. So I thought, OVEN TEMPERATURE must have been too high.

The second time, I lowered the temperature a little and this time followed one advice which was not to rest them (contrary to every other macaron advice) and to cook them straight after piping, and to make sure they bake for about 25 minutes. In the end of that, some cracked (not all), a few developed feet, but they turned out like meringue cookies i.e. they just crumbled when bitten into rather than have the crisp followed by chewiness.

The third time, I used a different recipe, one which I was more familiar with - the one I used to do the lychee ones. I rested them, put the temperature even lower, and placed one baking tray above and one below my macaron tray and cooked for 20 minutes. The end? Same result as the second time, except the center was chewier and less crumbly.

After the third time, I was tempted to bake again. However whilst making the butter cream I got tired, and thought I'd sleep on it and just bake the next day (which was today). While I was in bed, I kept thinking about what I've been doing wrong. I basically fell asleep thinking about macarons.

But I got it - Thinking about the times I made them previously and succeeded, compared to last night.... I HAVEN'T BEEN FOLDING THE BATTER RIGHT. And I remember being very cautious with the folding (aka macaronage) and I even intentionally folded much less compared to normal because I remember reading so much about how easy it was to over fold.

zomggggggggg as soon as I realised this I couldn't wait to wake up the next day and start baking again.

I did exactly that this afternoon (woke up so late because I went to bed at 4 -_-).

I was careful with my macaronage (even tested the consistency), piped the little babies, and laid them out to rest.

TIP* If your piped buttons have nipples when you pipe them, and they won't flatten after tapping the trays against the bench tops, they need more folding!

Up close:

As you can see on the photo, if some of them still show a wittle bitty bit of nipple, it's still good. Just know that you should get worried when they become too runny and flattened way too much way too early.

The result from the right macaronage, the right temperature for 25 minutes and resting:

Cute macarons... with feet and uncracked!! :3 yaayyyyy

And I made salted caramel butter cream fillings, once assembled, they look like this

Yayyy mee!!! They look so cute and taste yummmmooooo B)

Practice does make perfect :)

Failed macarons (again!)

So far I've been trying to bake macarons using the french meringue method (as opposed to the italian). I baked agan during the weekend, this time I used green colouring on the biscuits and made pineapple-avocado-white-chocolate-ganache filling (recipes from Poh's Kitchen). The things on top are ground szechuan pepper (tried to be artsy fartsy).

And I failed agan! 

Anddd.... ALL my macarons cracked :(

ROAR!!!! I WANNA DO THEM AGAIN. I kinda get how guys get motivated when they get rejected by girls now.. hahaha

The next time I try this I'm gonna use the italian meringue method. So this requires the extra step of making sugar syrup, and while hot and at a certain temperature then add them slowly to the egg whites to beat. etc etc etc.

I'm gonna need a kitchen thermometer, but I'm gonna try without one since I've done something similar (while I was doing the pineapple-avocado-white-chocolate-ganache filling).

Anyway, I had heaps of filling left when I made the macarons. SO, I made cupcakes and coloured the leftovers fillings yellow, then filled my cupcakes "butterfly" style.

Gaahhh.. cute right!??! hahahah cupcakes are seriously so much easier to make -_-"

I WILL MASTER YOU MACARONS!