My Macarons - A Grey issue

I feel so stupid. Yes, I have labelled myself that already so please spare me and do not repeat it after reading my post. You see, for coloring my macarons, I use Wiltons coloring gel. For those who do not live in sunny Singapore, or should I say now because of global changes, very humid Singapore, we do not have coloring paste/powder being sold in our local stores! If any Singaporean out there who knows there is one, do let me know. What is available are gel and there is Wiltons candy gel and Wiltons icing gel. By the way, I managed to search online and found a store in the UK that sells color powder. Ordered them online immediately. Back to my story.

I purchased a variety of colors and that included both types. I did not know the difference between candy and icing coloring gel. The attractive colors with fanciful names blinded me to think straight. For those who know where I am coming from, do not scoff. 

So one day, I used the black candy gel for my black macarons. I had wanted to make Blackberry macarons with blackberry curd. Ambitious, you say. To my greatest horror, I was churning out cement-looking macarons! No posting of photos this time round. They were horrible looking. They will give you your ultimate nightmare. The color was similar to cement - dull and grey. Add more gel, that comes to your mind and to mine too. And so I added more black coloring till I emptied the entire bottle. 

Viola! I made the perfect stone-grey-cement-looking macarons! Not black beauties but repulsive grey little tombstones. Really unappetizing! "Yucks! " My son, Dom, spewed out immediately. "No offence, dad. But if you were to throw any one of these ugly slabs at me, I will be knocked dead"."Thanks, son, Rub it in. Rub it in harder". I found out later that there is a difference between candy and icing gel. And so I learn - the hard way.

No Blackberry Macarons this time. So the frozen blackberries remain untouched in my freezer. Till I find the right color for my macaron shells to go with my blackberry curd, I will not experiment with black coloring anymore. Any color suggestions for my shells to go with blackberry curd? 

Still mad at macarons

As the title says it, I am still mad at macarons, that is, them not turning out perfect or as I would like them to be. But I have succeeded in getting those 'feet' and the soft texture inside the shells. The classes I have attended have helped me but it definitely must be what I had picked up and the steps I had meticulously followed in making that great macarons from Jill Collonna's Mad About Macarons!

Yes, I happened to google for macarons and came across Jill's website. I posed a question to her and to my surprise, she replied through my blog (Mac Madness 22 April) and encouraged me to keep working on them. Over the weekend, I purchased the book from our bookstore Kinokuniya and had since tried out two of her recipes.

The ones I am featuring are the Macarons Au Chocolat Noir or Dark Chocolate Macarons.

It was easy - looks easy, seems easy but not-so-easy to make them! Especially getting that egg whites beaten to the right consistency and folding the meringue into the almond meal and icing sugar were so tricky that I repeated the two steps not less than 3 times. Yes, when I saw that the whites were not what they were supposed to be, I discarded them and whipped up a new batch. Yes, when I thought the final batter did not lend a certain consistency as Jill has mentioned, I disposed them and mixed up a new batch again. I know it is painful to see them going to waste but it is even more painful not getting them right!

Finally, churned out the batch you are looking at:

I will not be publishing her recipe as I respect copyright issues but I did tweak the recipe for the ganache fillings. I used Valhorna Dark Chocolate Equatoriale 55% and reduced the recommended amount from 200g to 130g. I reduced the unsalted butter by 10g to 40g. Perhaps I should have stuck to 200g and 50g respectively. In any case, I am quite pleased with the macarons I churned out this afternoon.

Thanks again, Jill, for the encouragement you gave and the wonderful book you wrote. 

Cheers to a Cherry Cake

As a follow up to my previous post, I decided to bake the Cherry Cake adapted from robin's eurasian recipes. I had to tweak the recipe as I was baking half the recipe. But the tricky part was how does one half a recipe that uses 5 eggs? Came round that when I calculated the total weight of 5 eggs @60g each and divided it by two. Not too sure if that was a wise move but I simply did it.

I replaced the maraschinto cherries with what was available in my fridge ie Waitrose Glace Cherries. You will notice that for the cherries, half of 250g is 125g but as I wanted a little more cherries to be in the mixture, I added to 160g glace cherries instead.

The ingredients below are for a half recipe. Oh yes, I omitted the cherry essence as I did not have it and put in vanilla extract instead. On hindsight, I should not have added any. Why? Did not think the vanilla brought out the flavor as much as the cherry essence would have. So if you do not have the cherry essence, I suggest do not waste your vanilla.

Cherry Cake adapted from robin's eurasian recipes:

Ingredients
150g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter (not stated in the actual recipe if salted or unsalted)
150g castor sugar (original recipe used fine sugar)
150g eggs (original recipe is 5 eggs so this is really up to you how you want to halve it)
1 tbsp milk (I used full cream)
1/2 tsp cherry essence ( I omitted it and replaced it with 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)
160g diced glace cherries (original calls for 250g maraschinto cherries)
Procedures
1) Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2) Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix well.
3) On a stand mixer, beat in butter and sugar till creamy ie 5 mins on high speed.
4) Add the eggs one at a time while beating for a few more minutes.
*5) Fold in half the flour mixture followed by the milk and vanilla extract and mix well.
*6) Fold in the remaining flour followed by the cherries.
7) Pour mixture into an 8 inch tin and bake for 60 minutes.

*Steps 5 and 6 were what I did instead of what the recipe called for - Fold in the flour mixture and add milk, essence and cherries. 

As soon as the cake was cooled, I cut it up to serve as dessert for my son and me. Too sweet for me! That is the problem when you add 35g more cherries into the batter. Well, at least I had the thumbs up from him. 

Rich Eurasian Cakes

Had a go with baking a chocolate cake days leading to Easter. I have been baking chocolate cakes but just thought I try out this recipe from robin's eurasian recipes. I guess I have always been impressed by the sugee cakes (semolina and almond) that is so trademark-ish of Eurasians. I stand corrected. So I was hoping this cake would somehow taste different.

Well for one, it was really dark and chocolaty. It rose to a nice height which is perfect for an iced layered cake. It tasted better and more moist the next day. This cake has made it to my list of cakes to bake for special occasions.

There are a few more recipes, common as they are that I would like to try out from the book. Namely the Cherry cake and the Butter cake. The latter calls for 12 eggs and 500g of softened butter! Though I mentioned that the sugee cake is so Eurasian to me, I am not sure if I should try baking it. The recipe calls for 10 egg whites and 15 egg yolks! That is a whole lot of eggs and butter we are talking here...but again these are precisely the ingredients that make a good cake so I reckon. So should I try the recipe out or not? As they say, no venture, no gain. Besides, since I am still in the mood of making macarons, I should be able to put those yolks to good use.

Come this long weekend cos of the Labor Day holiday, I see myself laboring to bake the cakes and, as usual, eager to know how they will turn out.

Beauty and the Beast

Attempted Lemon and Matcha Macarons on Good Friday and at the same time beating the clock to leave for a procession at St Peter and Paul's Church. Making time for the procession was a ritual my favorite aunt and I have been doing since I was a liitle kid. And now it is my turn to pass on to my two boys to 'carry on the tradition' so they say. Okay, coming back to the macarons...

After whisking and folding the merigue, man, I felt good. Only for the Lemon ones. Definitely seem better than the previous attempt at the chocolate macarons I did before. Immediately I whipped up my DSLR and started to shoot the macs as they stood on the trays to 'rest'.

Very pleased with the Lemon ones but not so for the Matcha ones. The latter looked 'ugly' and rough. Sigh. Just knew the green ones will not turn out well. Something must have gone horribly wrong either at the whipping stage or the folding stage. The incredible Hulk has been created.

Lemon ones - smooth and perfect        Matcha ones - ready to disappoint

Time was up to pop them into the oven. Time was up to take them out. Anxiety over. Very happy with the Lemon ones except that I should have added more coloring to make them more yellow to look more lemony. Success? Expected. 

Then came the Matcha ones. Disaster? Expected. Sigh. I knew it. I knew it. Texture was rough. Hideous. The shells were soft and damp. Could not bring myself to shoot them alone. So decided to take a 'group' shot.

Made the effort not to highlight the rough green ones. They are really bad when seen with the naked eye.

There you go - Beauty and the Beast. I will not give up. Thanks to Jill and Bakertan. I will charge on...

Mac Madness

Chocolate Macarons with nutella fillings (the easiest way out for fillings)

Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz (website)

Macarons fever has hit me for the past month. Eager to try making them and still eager albeit being discouraged at most times. Yes, the challenge is there! Heard so much of how vulnerable these seem-so-easy-to-do-with-minimum-ingredients to make them, I jumped on the bandwagon to Mac Madness. Boy, am I mad at times when I think I made it.

Attended 2 expensive mac classes, one hands-on and the other demo, and I still do not get it. The cliche "Men Don't Get It" does not apply here as I dare say the two genders are always trying to perfect these elusive fabulous macarons. Don't get me wrong. For those professionals and those who have already achieved and been baking them like cupcakes, I take my hat off to you. You are to be worshipped. But generally from the blogs I read by home bakers like me, well, we need to 'arrive' not sooner but perhaps very much later. So apart from classes (and thinking of signing up for a couple more) I am desperately searching the net for recipes.

Many nights, usually after a long day's work, I will attempt to make them. Weekends, especially Saturdays are best days for me to work on them. Each time just when I think I succeeded, I get disappointed. My family has been encouraging but I always insist they are being polite after seeing my efforts and anxiety I display while whipping up the egg whites or using a candy thermometer to get that right temperature for the boiling sugar.

I have been delaying posting photos of my failed macarons or not-so-good looking ones until today. Why? I guess if I want to read my blog, say, ten years down the road, I have this as an archive. A decade later when reading them I will either be proud that I had perservered or I will simply say, "Fools rush in...".

Experimentia 1

What happens when you have the craving for bananas, oreos and had acquired a taste for rum? You combine all these three distinct items into a batter for cupcakes and aptly name them Banana-Oreo-Rum Cupcakes!

In my previous blog, Going Bananas Over Bananas, I baked a wonderful banana cake. It was an affirmation that I could bake it right. Further inspired by fellow bloggers who also baked Banana cakes; Banana Oreos Cakes and Rum Cakes, I thought I should combine all my three favorites and experiment. Hence the title of my blog Experimentia 1. It being the first of many more 'experiments' to come.

Really ignorant if there is already such a combination out there and I do appreciate it if fellow readers could tell me so and provide me the references. In any case, I doubled and adapted the recipe from blogger Cuisine Paradise so as to make it a tad original.

I replaced the Plain Flour with Cake Flour simply because I had left overs from previous bakes and I wanted the cake to be lighter and more fluffy. To cut down the 'sweet' content, without reducing the sugar, I left out the condensed milk and poured in the rum. As I was mindful that I had left out the sweetness of the condensed milk and replaced it with something bitter, I decided to crush as many oreos as I like and did so with the bananas by mashing more than 4. I was hoping the natural sweetness of the over-riped bananas will also overcome the 'bland' mixture. Really, it is up to the individual when it comes to a matter of taste.

Recipe for Banana-Oreo-Rum Cupcakes:

220g Cake Flour
220g Butter
180g Caster Sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tbsp Dark Rum
1 tbsp vanilla extract
About 16 Oreo cookies coarsely pounded
4 - 5 bananas randomly mashed

1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2) Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy
3) Beat in the eggs
4) Incorporate the mashed bananas, rum and vanilla extract
5) Sieve flour, baking powder and baking soda over the batter and fold in gently
6) Fold in the crushed cookies
7) Scoop and fill in cupcake casings - makes about 14
8) Bake for 25 to 30 mins

And there you have it, a moist and fluffy Banana-Oreo-Rum cupcake.