lately..

After a recent 2 day stretch of baking non-cooperative macarons, I decided to throw in the towel for the time being and turn my focus on doing other things, before I pull out all my hair in angst :(
I'd been wanting to make financiers for a while, after acquiring this silicone financier pan. The only thing was I had no idea how it would taste like. the recipe called for two forms of butter: plain melted butter and clarified brown butter to be added to the batter. I have never made brown butter before (made by heating butter till the milk solids settle to the bottom and the mixture turns brown) and as I took a whiff, notes of caramel, coconut and vanilla came wafting up my nose. Whoa.. pretty intriguing stuff. So this is the end result - it tastes like an extremely rich butter cake, though I'd probably use pistachios or hazelnuts next time.



Meanwhile, I was in the mood for some Japanese style strawberry shortcake but I was wondering what to use for the cake. The biggest problem I always have with making sponge cakes is achieving a super light and tender texture. I liked the texture of bakeries where the crumb was tight, but the crumb of all my foam-cakes, regardless of whichever recipes I use, always turn out very loose. I'd been told that commercial bakeries actually use a lot of emulsifiers to make it soft, so probably achieving that texture is difficult (?) at home, unless one uses Ovalette or other emulsifiers. Anyway, I decided to make a genoise, as seen here. While it came out soft and wobbly on the day of baking, the next day it was a different story despire soaking the cake in a tonne of syrup, the texture left much to be desired. I would try the whole recipe again using Wondra flour, if I can find it!



So this is what I've been working on for today.. salted caramel and chocolate tarts. This is really one of my favourite desserts and a little goes a long way. You can't really see it from here but it has 3 layers: the caramel at the bottom, a chocolate cremeux in the middle, and a glaze on top. If anyone wants the recipe, i got it here: http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/02/chocolate-tarts-with-salted-caramel.html
I followed the recipe to a T, but doubled making the amount of caramel and I would probably reduce the glaze recipe by 1/4 next time and it would just yield about 12 individual tarts.

model.

If pastries can be models, I guess macarons can fit the bill. I can never resist taking pictures of these vividly coloured beauties (albeit with my crap phone camera).



These purple macs are cassis flavored. I'd initially toyed with the idea of an entirely jam filled macaron but decided I didn't want it to taste too cloying so I just added 3 tbsp of blackcurrant preserve to my regular white chocolate ganache. These have been aging for about a week now, and the interior tastes just like heaven.



The light green ones are pandan, my most popular flavor to date. the darker ones are pistachio and rose. I guess what makes all my mac fillings so nice is that I only use natural flavors. that means: real pandan leaves not fake extract. I use rosewater, not the artificial extract. Real preserves and real fruit purees, never chemical essences. I've been toying with the idea of getting fruit powders (to flavor the shells), but they can only be got online and is rather expensive. They've an amazing range of fruit powders though ranging from banana to raspberry.

The only thing I don't like about macarons is the amount of food color that goes into making them; I just don't like the idea of using anything artificial but with macarons - it really can't be helped as you need something vivid to bring out their attractiveness. Again, there are organic and natural colors available online but once again, they are horribly expensive.

basics.

I haven't been in the mood to bake any complicated cakes lately, but yet I've been craving for cake. good old-fashioned cake without any complicated layers or fussy embellishments so I decided to whip up this orange cake. This is one of my favourites, after the simple sour cream pound cake is baked, a hot orange syrup is poured all over the cake and the cake is left to absorb the goodness. A slightly damp, very moist crumb is the result. This cake is very dangerous to the waistline; I've never met anyone who didn't ask for seconds!



This is my first time making a whoopie pie. I've never had one before so I really didn't know what to expect. I used the recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's 'Heavenly Cakes' but used a plain 7 minute frosting instead. While it was tasted just ok, I thought next time, I would use a more decadent filling to bring out the taste - perhaps cream cheese, caramel or a chocolate ganache.

thoughts on italian meringue.

After trying italian meringue macarons a few times, I've to concur the french meringue macarons taste so much better. It has a more delicate, airy, melt in your mouth quality. A freshly baked french meringue macaron shell is more fragrant compared to the italian one. The italian one, i cannot smell the nuts and the taste is like artificial candy - it is so horribly sweet. Interestingly enough, the sweetness dissipates slightly after the macaron is matured.. hmm. The only good thing about the italian ones is that the shells are so smooth with that perfect egg shell feel.
I also noticed the hollow pattern in french and italian meringue macarons to be different. For me, French meringue macarons tend to be hollow right under the shell and if you press too tight at the top, the whole thing will just collapse in. As for the italian meringue macaron, the hollow is centered right in the middle with pieces of 'meat' here and there. As the shell is quite sturdy - to me, the hollow problem is not so obvious. However, italian meringue macarons can taste 'crunchy' if the syrup is taken too far. Some recipes suggested 244 F and some 230 F, which left me initially confused. Now I just use the 230 figure because at 244, the shells came out really rock hard crunchy despite maturation and as I am using a thermapen, I don't think my temperature is wrong.
Hollows - ahhhh!! The bane of my existence. Despite 'thinking' I had fixed the hollow problem in the previous entry, my resulting batches have all turned out hollow. And I've no idea what went wrong. Perhaps time to invest in a new oven? I'm using a really really small and crappy one at the moment.
Anyway these are some macarons (made with french meringue) for an order not long ago. ( Flavours: turquoise - caramel, pink - rose lychee, green - pandan)Thanks guys for your orders and for the customer who called for a hantaran order, they are time-intensive to make - so i do require a week's notice :)

more flavors.

So I've been busy working on new flavours. I wish my macarons look better as they taste! You can't really see it from here but they are slightly deformed on the top. I don't know why when I bake them, some of them depress very slightly in the centre, almost like a tyre going out of air. Could I be I didn't age my egg whites enough? (I use 24 hour aged ones). Anyway deformed or not, they still taste great.
Green - White Chocolate ganache infused with screwpine leaf (pandan). We are lucky we have pandan leaves growing wild in our backyard. everytime I need some, I just go out and cut some.
Yellow - hazelnut shell with dark chocolate and nutella ganache. I can eat dozen of this flavour combination. I simply adore hazelnuts!
Pink - It's hard to find passionfruit in Brunei but luckily, I saw some in the supermarket a few months ago. I immediately juiced and froze it. I've been meaning to try the popular milk chocolate-passionfruit combo I'd seen in blogosphere. I'm lucky to have tasted pierre herme's mogador macaron before but it was the only combo that didn't work for me. I found passionfruit goes really weird with milk chocolate, maybe white chocolate would be better? I know of others who love it though so maybe it's just me..
Brown - Chocolate Macarons with Milk Chocolate and Chilli Ganache.

The accidental macaron and thoughts.

Salted Butter Caramel Macarons



Macarons with Rose Buttercream



It was all an accident. While making some macarons one day, I couldn't find the low, circular metal stand I use to place the baking sheet on in the oven. So I used a higher stand and guess what? The hollow problem was gone!
All this while, I'd been wondering what the air pocket in my macarons were due to. How could it be after whipping up hundreds of batches, I've never once got a perfect batch? I had sifted, measured and folded everything correctly - surely the mistake couldn't be on my part. It all came down to this: The position of the tray in the oven. Using a higher or lower rack to bake your macarons will definitely have an effect on the macarons. Here are a couple of other tips that helped (for me). I can't comment on every factor out there but if anyone had the same problems like I did, I hope what I'd experienced will be of some help.

(1) I bake my macarons at 150 C for 18 min. Every oven has its own idiosyncracies so you have to find what temperature works for you. A friend of mine used 170 C but for my oven, it burns the macarons after just a few minutes. I cover the above rack with aluminium foil to prevent the colour of the macarons from fading. This is a must for me.

(2) I always do my macarons in an air-conditioned room (living in a tropical clime). I've found that without it, the macarons do not dry and form skins even when placed under a fan. I've had macarons 'drying' for one entire day under a fan and yet they still cracked when placed in the oven, because the humidity in the air affected with the ability to form skins. The drying time is again, individual, but in my case it takes 45 min to an hour before I pop them into the oven with confidence they will not crack. For me, resting for the macarons to dry out is very important - it will ensure crack free macarons.

(3) Lopsided macarons (when they decide to put on sun hats) are due to leaving them to dry out for far too long. I get lopsided macarons when I leave them to crust over for more than 4 hours.

(4) When the feet of your macaron splay out, it is not aesthetically ideal. You have to lower your oven temperature.

(5) If you have any problems with hollows, you may (1) rap the pan sharply on the table a few times after piping the shells to remove air bubbles, then prick them with a pick (2) adjust your temperature or (3) adjust position of pan in the oven. Also, an undercooked macaron will definitely be hollow. I find there is a very fine line between being slightly undercooked and just done.

(5) After being filled, macarons must be rested in the fridge for at least 24 to 48 hours, and then brought to room temperature 2 hours before eating. This is extremely important. Newly filled macarons taste dreadful because they are too crisp. Once the shell absorbs the moisture from the filling - the transformation will make the macaron snap delicately like an egg shell upon bitin,g into a moist and tender interior.

(6) I'm using French meringue because I find it yields a more tender and melt-in-your-mouth macaron. I have not much success with italian meringue (my shells always end up crunchy even after maturation) but I will keep practicing the technique more in future.

Review: The salted butter caramel is incredibly rich and to die for. I much prefer this over say a caramel buttercream because I feel the former has a more decadent flavour and as for the rose, - as I've mentioned before I'm not a big fan of buttercream but somehow this seems to work - the sensous feel of the rose perfumed buttercream absolutely melts in the mouth :)

on croissant making.

Brushing egg wash on the shaped croissants.



Layers of laminated dough in the pain au chocolat.



This is my third attempt on making croissants and it seems I shaped the dough better this time. I remember my 1st attempt on croissant making was a complete disaster. Making the croissant pastry is akin to making puff pastry and involves rolling a slab of butter into a yeasted dough, folding it in thirds, rolling out, rotate, do another turn and in between you chill the mixture 4 times. It was a disaster because I was working in a warm environment and the butter kept oozing out of the dough until the whole thing disintegrated in a gloppy mess. Moral of the story: Work in an cir-conditioned room and keep on dusting your workplace and your hands generously with flour. If you do get leaks, simply patch it up with a bit of flour.
Anyway, after 3 times - I quite enjoy making them now. They are not too difficult to make but making it is a fairly intensive process - you need at least a full day. The positive thing is that the end product tastes so much better than the ones in the freezer section of the supermarket. Flaky, buttery and moist insides - what's not to love?