Macarons: A Culinary Experiment

I've been seeing a lot about macarons lately and had to see what the fuss was all about. I knew the top the cookie parts were something    meringue-like and I've had meringue before at a bake sale and it tasted like chalk - yuck. 


Yet, I could not get these pretty little snacks of my mind so despite the warnings of how difficult they are to make I had to give it a try. The recipe I used was from:
http://domesticcharm.blogspot.com/2011/10/french-macarons.html 


Only five basic ingredients. Doesn't sound too bad. The macarons themselves weren't the problem for me it was finding the ingredients that was the challenge. 


Confectioner's sugar - got it. Egg whites - no problem. Almond flour - never heard of it and can't find it in the store. Superfine sugar - also not found at Wal*Mart Supercenter. Cream of tartar - thought we had it, turns out we didn't, bought some, found the one we already had, only needed a pinch.


Macarons take one:
     Made almond flour in the blender by pulsing blanched almonds until they formed a powder. Not really as easy it sounds using an artifact of a blender that we have. and then sifted it a lot to get the big pieces out.
     Attempted to make superfine sugar by putting sugar in the food processor. Think i went a little too long because it turned out as powdered sugar. (Although that technique might come in handy someday.)
     As for the cream of tartar I didn't realize I didn't have any till right when I needed it so I Googled cream of tartar substitutes and found vinegar tried this as an egg white thickener - did not work.
      All I ended up with was a big mess so batch one was discarded. 


But all was not lost as the superfine sugar and cream of tartar was later acquired


Macarons take two: 
Things I learned:

1. homemade almond flour does work
2. cream of tartar makes a huge difference - even if its only a pinch
3. vinegar does not work

I was able to make an edible macaron although I will not pretend I know what I'm doing by posting a recipe because this was more of an experiment and there are other people who have these things down to a science. 

The result was tasty and good looking

Vanilla cookie with Nutella filling 

  

Lemon cookie with lemon curd filling 

A few days later I had my first professional macaron from 

Poppleton Pasteries in Corning NY just to compare

It was Raspberry and quite beautiful.

Grad Party Snacks

This past weekend was my cousin's graduation party which I had been looking forward to mainly because I was planing on bringing some pretty deserts to the party. We love to bake at home but usually more for flavor than looks and this was my chance to make something a little frivolous. 


My criteria for this dessert were good looking yet not too abstract, so that people would actually want to eat it. So after much consideration I decided to go with cake pops. Cake pops, who could go wrong? 

Cake Pops

Recipe: 

The recipe I used was from littlemissmomma.com for a more detailed tutorial(http://www.littlemissmomma.com/2010/07/cake-pop-recipe.html) 

Ingredients: 

• Any flavor cake mix (I used Betty Crocker milk chocolate)
• Corresponding frosting (I used  Betty Crocker Chocolate)
• oil and eggs - for cake
• white chocolate candy melts
• shortening 
• gel food coloring

Supplies:

• candy sticks
• Styrofoam
• chocolate melting pot 
• Ziploc bags 

Basically, make the cake according to the package instructions. Let it cool completely. 

Crumble the whole cake into a large bowl. You'll have to get your hands dirty for this next part. Take half the container of frosting and mush it into the cake until combined. 

Form the cake mixture into balls about the size of doughnut holes.

Melt the chocolate according to the package instructions. Add some shorting if its too thick. The chocolate melter comes in handy here because white chocolate is especially easy to burn in the microwave and the melter keeps it melted the whole time so it goes on smooth and easy. 

(This was my first time using a chocolate melter. I got a babycakes chocolate melter from Kohls on super sale for under $10 and it really did make chocolate dipping a lot easier)  

Dip each stick into the melted chocolate before inserting into the cakeball so that the chocolate will act as glue and prevent the cake from falling off later. Once on the sticks you can put them in the Styrofoam to stand them up. 


Next dip fully into the chocolate. 


Use extra chocolate to make designs on the top. To do this put the melted chocolate in a ziploc bag and snip a tiny bit off the corner and go crazy. The chocolate should stay melted long enough to finish. 


Tip #1: I didn't dip all of the cakeballs the day I made them, the ones that I left naked till the next day became crumbly and broke or fell off the sticks when they were dipped. I would recommend dipping them all the day they were formed into balls. 


Tip #2: I heard that liquid food coloring would turn the chocolate hard if used instead of the gel food coloring. I said no way but turns out it is in fact true. I was using up a started jar of blue gel food coloring but ran out halfway through and used liquid blue to finish up. The consistency of the chocolate was definitely different. It hardened very quickly and was difficult to get smooth. Had to add a lot of shortening  to make it work. Don't use liquid food coloring! 


The Stand
To make the stand wrap the styrofoam in matching wrapping paper for a nice display (this one was actually made from conveniently shaped packaging from a box)
   

First Post!!!

Hi I'm Kasia and yes, I'm finally doing this. I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to start a blog and looks as if I finally did.


I love my home and I spend a lot of time at it keeping busy, or at least trying to. Which is why I have decided to create this blog to share the things I spend my time doing with you so that you might do them too. I'm not really sure what's in store for this blog but I plan on lots of crafting tutorials, pictures of food, and other miscellaneous awesomeness.