Words by a Grandma who wears genuine heeled Ferragamos with matching handbag and Armani denim

‎"没有辛苦, 没有成功 - Most see success without recognising what came before it, like tears and perseverance. They also forget that every setback is actually a step forward in experience, towards achieving greatness. You don't how many people suffer the 17 or so failures before their big break… and these are the people who truly understand and are not afraid of making mistakes or learning from them, because they know each of those strengthen them for the future." 


Wise grandparents are so wise. I'm a little late to say this, but I'm ready. 
Not only am I ready, I have something that will be with me forever to remind me. It was a looooong bittersweet experience, but fuck its worth it ;)

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!

Food projects across the year

Mind you, some photos are better than others. 

At least I'm making the effort right :)

OK, from the oldest to the latest....

Sam and I did this dinner ages ago for some of my family friends. Going clockwise: Top right is my famous sweet potato mash with mustard seeds, next to that, my famous potatoes twice cooked (boiled then baked with pork oil in the oven), Sam's famous slow roasted garlic-lemon-fennel pork shoulder with crispy skin, steak salad with feta cheese, avocado, spinach, grilled capsicum and grilled zucchini, and lastly, Sam's delicious spring chicken.

Passionfruit macarons and mini caramel-filled chocolate cakes (for a friend's surprise birthday) - I didn't make the macarons. A friends did, but eventually I learnt from her how to make them and you'll see my lychee flavoured ones towards the bottom of this post :)

Mmmmm 24-hour cooked steak, thanks to Sam. With grilled eggplant and sweet potato mash again. We just love grilling veggies. hehe.. and we love our mash!

Red velvet cake with orange cream cheese frosting - can't really see the red. Well it wasn't even that red, it was more burgundy coloured. haha.. still yummy though.

Sam and I had a break and stopped doing anything really.. for awhile. And after a long period of not cooking or baking. Sam did something!

He made fresh pasta! He flavoured one batch with chilli flakes and the other with ground pepper. Yummo! and so easy :) 

This was the documented mess.

We continued to cook heaps but never took any photos. And they were really good food too. 

Anyway, the following are most recent. I went on a macaron craze trying to do it but failed. So to reclaim some pride, I made something I missed eating and made sure that it was EASY and fail proof.

Sticky date pudding! I think I made them at least 3 times. I loooved the recipe I found online. I started putting instant coffee powder the second time on ward and I prefer it that way now :) Those are frozen blueberries in the picture and they go so well with the pudding.

So I finally decided to give macarons a try. 5th time lucky! But I really couldn't have done it without my friend's help and tips... such temperamental biscuits these ones. But so worth it :)

Lychee buttercream macarons! This was using Poh's recipe (yes the 1st runner-up from the first season of AU Master Chef! Google "Poh's kitchen macaron" and you'll find the recipe!)

I was so excited I could make macarons but they were not exactly "crispy" on the outside like macarons should be and a lot of mine stuck to the baking paper. So I made another batch the next day, letting them sit longer before baking, and preheating the oven at a very high heat but bringing it down as soon as I put the macarons in. This time I had yellow colouring on them, and I made salty caramel fillings. 

*Sorry, no photo :(*

They turned out crispier - just what I wanted, BUT, most of them still stuck to the pan, and sticking to the pan means they were under cooked. Yet, the shells were starting to brown ever so slightly by the time I took them out. So, my analysis is, the heat is still too high, and I take them out earlier than I should. 

Oh yeah, I screwed up the original recipe for the salty caramel too. First, I screwed up the method for mixing the caramel, and I had sugar syrup instead which I didn't know what to do with. I thought, keep, these are great for iced coffees! (lol) the cheap asian in me. Then I tried making the second time, and I screwed it up because I burnt the mixture. The colour actually looked alright. But when I tasted? not alright. BURNT. So I chucked them. Then I ran out of cream. A crucial ingredient to the caramel. 

I panicked, then looked over at the sugar syrup. And thought, okay, I'll improvise with this and I did. I threw half the syrup away, but put in more butter and brown sugar (like what I do for the caramel of my sticky date pudding), and tada! Made my salty caramel.

Problem was, I didn't let it cool enough (too excited) and didn't beat/mix it enough (too excited) to make it the right texture to pipe as fillings. I piped anyway. But they couldn't hold shape and dripped everywhere.

AT LEAST, they were very tasty :p

(Ugh.. I wanna master these babies. And this weekend will be my opportunity to try again! muahah)

When I was done with the salty caramel macarons, I had a lot of left over caramel. 

What did I do?

Baked sticky date pudding. Why? 

Well why waste the caramel!

I bought more cream from the supermarket and started modifying the caramel, baked another sticky date pudding, ate the sticky date pudding (shared), and then...

I had left over caramel.

What did I do with the left over caramel!? 

No, I never waste.

I made caramel buttercream for the cupcakes that I made for my brother's birthday!

Here is the prettiest I could do with frosting. By the way, I've been using those freeze plastic bags to pipe all the baked goods. So considering that, I think I did well ya :D

The caramel buttercream was yummo, BUT.... the actual cupcake had the texture of a muffin. They tasted great... even had white chocolate chips in them. But... they were NOT cupcakes. They were frosted muffins. A little sad, and disappointed, and dissatisfied. I started researching like crazy and was excited to try again asap.

I came across Nigella Lawson's recipe and was pretty confident they were the right recipe I was looking for (and they were!). So, without wasting time..... in the same week. I went to try her recipe.

Below are her "royal icing" cupcakes, aka meringue icing cupcakes.

I didn't have icing sugar which she recommended for the icing. So I used caster sugar and stupidly added the same amount as what Nigella would recommend for icing sugar. The "meringue" was gross. So I used my newly developed (and still developing) baking sense to correct it. I set aside half of the grainy and sickly sugary meringue, and beat two more egg whites on a separate bowl. I didn't add more sugar to stiffen the egg whites, instead I added half the failed meringue which I set aside to stiffen them. And TADA. Grainy sickly sugary meringue transformed! See picture above :)

I added yellow colouring because I had a twist to Nigella's recipe. 

I added more lemon juice than the recommended amount and some lemon zest for lemon flavoured icing!

Then I had left over icing because I used extra egg whites to correct my meringue.

Again, I didn't wanna waste them. So I added MORE zest to the meringue, MORE lemon, and more sugar to stiffen it even more... and baked mini lemon pavlovas! and had them with mangoes and mango sorbet ^^ (yum!)

Then.....

Unlike Nigella's icing, the icing on my cupcakes never formed a thin crust. Maybe because it had different ingredients? I was unhappy with how soft it remained so I chucked my cupcakes in the fridge the next day to see if they would harden in a few hours.

They didn't.

Still unhappy... and MORE unhappy because my cupcakes were not cold and dense. I started thinking how I might improve them. Then, I thought about what I did with the leftover meringue the last night.

!!!!

I decided to add another twist to Nigella's cupcakes. And baked them in the oven for a few minutes to make PAVLOVA CUPCAKES! 

I even added some white chocolate chips to decorate them.

Tada! Cold/hard cupcake with overly soft meringue icing turned hot pavlova cupcake with white chocolate chips! The pavlova top was just the way I wanted it to be.. crispy crust outside, marshmallowy inside.

This was only yesterday. But I was so happy I made cupcakes with the right texture, I wanted to make them again but wanted a different look and frosting.

So........ tonight, I attempted by first multi-coloured cupcakes!

Too much blue colouring fell in one of my batter :( so the purple bits weren't that nice looking. (All my cupcakes were topped with purple)

At least my piping is improving :D

And the insides. The pink and orange parts were too similar.. so they looked like one colour :( The frosting recipe was also Nigella's. But I added a shot of coffee because I wanted mocha flavoured frosting. In the end, even though they looked odd..... they tasted yum ^^!

Gosh this post took longer than I expected!

Anyway.... I'm gonna bake again very soon I can guarantee that.

Heheee good night!