MACARONS :D Cookies and cream mint, and green tea.

I had a gathering with my old classmates from secondary school the other day, and we decided to potluck food, and I thought it would be a great occasion to make some christmas macarons! The initial idea was to have green and red, then since the green tea macarons I made the previous time were such a hit, I decided green has to be green tea flavoured. For the red macarons, I wanted to have a white-ish filling so it would look like candy canes, and hence giving me the idea of having mint as a filling. At the same time I wanted to try making a cookies and cream filling, and the ideas sort of merged.. I used the basic macaron recipe for the shells but added green tea powder for the green macs, and red colouring for the red macs. For the filling, I melted chocolate into heated whipping cream, and the ratio depends on the consistency I would like, and I added green tea powder or crushed mints.

In my mind the ideas were perfect, but of course in practice they tend to not turn out so perfect after all! xD For the macaron shells, I ran out of red colouring before I got to the shade of red that was desired, and hence it became sort of a deep pink ._. and green tea powder was quite potent so I only put in a teaspoon so the taste won't be overwhelming, so the shells were a light shade of green.

For the filling, I used milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate for the green tea ones, and the chocolate ganache was runnier than usual due to the increased proportion of milk in it, and hence they became more of a drizzling consistency instead of a spreading one.. I tried to salvage it by adding some chocolate chips, but it was still a tad too runny >< and the assembled macarons ended up looking like they have no filling and some filling started to dribble down the sides, so I had to quickly pop them into a container and into the fridge they go, so the chocolate may harden a little more.

Green tea macarons with green tea chocolate ganache!

As for the cookies and cream, a white looking colour would require white chocolate, and that means it contains even more milk! I tried to use very much less whipping cream while making the ganache, but it became very difficult to mix. I couldn't find peppermint oil at the supermarket, so I crushed mint sweets instead and melt them into the mixture over the flame, but as the sweets melted the sugar caramelised, and it all became a sticky mess. After spooning some onto the macaron shells, I sprinkled crushed oreo cookies on it, then capped it with the other macaron and inverted it to allow the sticky mess to somehow fuse o.O

Cookies and cream mint macarons!

I had a lot of fun shooting the macarons to make festive pictures (: Some friends actually thought I shot them at some studio! xD

The macarons were well received at the gathering, although some felt that they were a little on the sweet side. Next time I would just stick to dark chocolate xD and using mint chocolate if I couldn't find peppermint oil.

Merry Christmas!! and happy holidays (:

Austrian Raspberry shortbread

I haven't been baking since forever due to A levels, but now that's over, a few friends and I headed over to another friend's house to bake! It was a day that nothing went according to plan except lunch..

So, after lunch, we were going to adapt Smitten Kitchen's shortbread recipe to contain salted caramel filling instead of raspberry. And that was the start of all our troubles. We all agreed that 2 cups of sugar sounds insanely sweet so we cut the sugar to 1.5 cups. While measuring out the flour and sugar, the electric whisk that was creaming the butter went a little mad and was reluctant to beat.. and while all that was going on, we tried to separate egg yolks from the whites unsuccessfully and resulted in 3 wasted eggs.

so then we were trying to incorporate the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, and somehow, the dough remains sticky and refuse to turn dough-like. after much worrying and trying to unstick my fingers from the mess, we gave up and tried adding some sugar instead.. which worked like a charm o.O the mixture finally became a dough and we dumped that in a clingwrap and put it into the fridge.

We got started on the salted caramel by putting sugar and some water in a pan on medium low heat. to our shock and horror the sugar just wont melt and the mixture started bubbling. we fiddled around with the knobs and heat to get it to stop boiling and start dissolving instead, and the mixture just became viscous with many chunks of recrystalised sugar, reminiscent of rhyolitic lava flow. after much desperate mixing and googling for help, the mixture started to turn amber! amidst the yells of happiness, the celebration hasn't exactly begun when the amber colour turned brown in a matter of seconds and a burning smell filled the air..

and with that, we ended up scrubbing caramelised spoons, spatulas, and the pan. And also created some abstract art using the burnt caramel since it wasn't edible anyway.

this is an abstract art piece displaying a lion chasing deer across the prairie.

um. use your imagination.

okay so we gave up after cleaning and decided to scramble those wasted eggs instead, and ate it with some crepe a friend prepared earlier in the morning (:

breakfast at 4pm

when the dough was done chilling, we had to some how get it into small pieces, but we have no food processor.. hence we ended up grating it as fast as we can before it all softens into a lumpy mess in our hands D:

then we finally put the shortbread with raspberry jam into the oven, and 10 mins into baking we realised it was on the wrong function, toast instead of bake, so the tops were browning fast.. :O after turning the dial into the correct mode, we sat around, tuned our friend's guitar, watched the amazing Vi Hart, and finally, it was done and we could pack our things, clean up, and make our way home (: although everything was entirely not according to plan with many failures, it was fun (: i'll try salted caramel again, when I'm feeling brave (;

it turned out quite good! still a little on the sweet side, but I guess its supposed to be sweet anyway..