Footwork

Macaron au Chocolat

I was totally enticed into making these cute little sweets, blinded by their innocent looks. At the second failure, my hands were half way up. Who said ‘Every failure is a route to success’? Oh yeah? I always could take the high road to Pix where amazing macarons are waiting for me. I have more egg whites to spare however – if I suck at it thrice then, really, this is not the charm.

I hear people say the phrase like ‘some things are better left to professionals’ and this may be one of those. Like croissant, for example. To achieve the buttery, flakey crust that the bakery sells is not easily attainable thus $2.75 for a plain croissant (at some stores) is a reasonable price for not making yourself.  I would even shell out $3 for it. Besides, who’s going to clean up all the mess? Ah…honey? Come in for sec.

The recipe I used seemed simple with lots of color photos. I prepped the egg white for 2-3 days. And powdered sugar… wait.. it said here – Do not use powdered sugar has corn starch in it. I grab my car keys and headed to a near-by store to get pure powdered sugar, I need Sucre Glace! Ay ya,ya! They did not have it. Plan B – make your own powdered sugar, Holy Google said I can. I put regular sugar into my food processer and voila! Well, not quite, the simple recipe is not so simple anymore. Look at all the sugar dust making my counter white!..and my hair!

A successful macaron has nice pied (pi-e French for foot), all around the shiny ‘round’. In other words, macaron without foot is pas bon (not good)! Whew! At least mine had foots to walk on. I think I had enough of this learning curve without getting it straight but the reward of my effort came when my son liked them and ate all my mistakes too.

Ganache/ganache au lait

• Heavy cream 100CC. If you’re using milk chocolate 90CC
• Corn syrup 10g
• Dark chocolate or milk chocolate 90g. Use quality baking chocolate. I used Guittard dark chocolate tablets.

1. In a small sauce pan, boil cream and corn syrup on medium high heat. Turn off heat and set aside.
2. In a metal bowl, put chocolate (if you’re using sheet or block chocolate, chopped in small pieces).
3. Pour cream mixture over the chocolate.
4. Mix well with rubber spatula. Cool to room temperature then cover, keep refrigerated.
   

Macaron batter – supposedly make 30 rounds/15 pair.

Necessary equipment – food scale, food processer, hand held mixer, card dredge

• Almond – raw, skinless 65g
• Powdered sugar with no corn starch 100g
• Cocoa powder 8g
• Egg white 45g and 5g – Leave egg white covered with plastic wrap at room temperature for 2-3 days. Do not use cold eggs.
• Granulated sugar 15g
• Red food coloring 1 drop This is optional but richen the color of chocolate.

1. Put almonds in food processer and run for about 2 minutes to turn into powder.
2. Add powdered sugar and mix for 30 second.
3. Add cocoa powder and mix for 30 second. Put in a large bowl. Set it aside.
4. Put 45g of egg white in large bowl. Using hand held mixer beat egg white until cloudy. Add granulated sugar a little at a time and whip on high speed using a big circular motion until the white forms very stiff peaks and has sheen, about 5-7 minutes.
   
5. In the almond powder mixture bowl, pour 5g egg white and red food coloring and combine.
6. Add meringue at once into almond mixture bowl. Scoop up from bottom with rubber spatula fold in meringue. No need to combine perfectly. You may see some white.
   
7. With a pastry card dredge or sukeppa, scrape off batter and push against the side of bowl to burst meringue bubble – this is called makaronju (makaronaju). This is where I stumbled twice. Do not over do it. 3-4 times is enough I think. What you want see is when you gather the batter in the middle, it slowly spread out. Doing too much will result in runny batter, make it hard to pipe out and won’t rise.
   

Pipe out the batter and baking process

Necessary equipment – 16X11 inch insulated cookie sheet (if you don’t have it, use two cookie sheets, one top on the other), parchment paper, pastry bag with 1/2 inch round tip

1. Line the cookie sheet with parchment paper
2. Put batter in pastry bag with half inch round tip.
3. Pipe out 1-1/2 inch size round. You should have 2 inch space between.
4. Rest for 20-30 minutes until dry to the touch. 10 minutes in, preheat oven  to 300 F.
5. Put in oven and turn down oven to 270 F. Bake for 16  to 18 minutes. The macaron should rise, develop foot, sheen and has dry surface.
   
6. Take out from oven and cool in cooking sheet to room temperature.
7. After it has cooled then carefully remove macaron from paper. Finish cooling on a wire rack.

Finish line

Congratulations! Your goal is almost there! Take ganache out of the refrigerator to soften, about 30 minutes.Then stuff into pastry bag with 1/2 inch round tip.Be a Match Maker – match two same size macarons, pipe some ganache on one and put mate macaron on top.

 

Ice Apple

I was cooped up in the house for a couple weeks needed fresh air. My husband and I went to Al’s nursery in Sherwood for ice apples. Ice apples (actually, Fuji apple) are left on the tree and are harvested after the frost to intensify the sweetness. We had a first 1 pound free coupon. This place is HUGE!This caramel was from a company in Utah.

We tasted every available sample.

This was good but I am not sure I want this much.

There were both Ducks and Beavers there.

Wow! It is time to clean the lens on this camera.I’m always in mood for dance!

Hi, Hello deer (there).Put a shining star up on the highest bough. I can’t help but start singing!

I was not the only one who kept busy in the kitchen. My husband made this cheese cake for co-workers.

Chinese chicken noodle soup for a neighbor friend and left over for our evening meal. Hmmm warm your soul.