Tuesday 12 June 2007

My Without Feet Macarons

Wow..... finally after so many tried and error, I managed to get my macaron a decent look and sandwich it with cream and give it a bite. Although I still have not master the perfect macaron with those little "feet" that original macaron had. I still already very happy with my end result, at least it's getting better each tried.


This round, I used another recipe that is different from the previous 3 unsuccessful macaron. I got this easy and well explained recipe from Tamami's blog through a forum. I have half her recipe and managed to come up with about 8 macarons which measure around 1.5". I had pipe the macaron batter on a Silicon Baking Sheet instead of the normal baking paper as from some comments it shows that Silicon sheets do give better "feet".

I bake these macaron at 160 degree for about 10 minutes then removed, leave it aside to cool then sandwich half of them with chocolate cream and the other half with peanut cream.

My son and mum loves both the favour but their find that the peanut cream goes better with this almond macaron shell. I guess it because of the almond taste. The case is very crunchy and chewy and I am very happy with the end result. So I will continue to carry out the experiment until I find a good way to develop the "feet" so that I can make a perfect macaron too......Posted by Picasa


Sunday 10 June 2007

Double Chocolate Chips Cookies With Nestum

This is Reyon's favourite Chocolate Chips cookies that had a mixture of Black and White Mini Chocolate Chips together with Nestum. The texture of this cookie is very crunchy due to the adding of the Nestum. You use any kind of chocolate chips, chopped dark chocolate or even with some extra nuts to create different favour and texture.


The recipe is introduce to me by my best blog pal Tracy, but I had used only half of the original recipes to make and add in some extra RUM for some extra fragrant. Posted by Picasa

Ingredients: (make about 30 - 35, 3cm cookies)
90g Light Brown Sugar
90g Unsalted Butter, cubes
95g Plain Flour
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
50g Nestum(instant cereal)
50g Mini Chocolate Chips
1/4 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
Pinch Of Salt
1/2 Egg, Light Beaten

Methods:
1. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and set aside for later use.
2. Cream butter and sugar till pale, beat in egg, vanilla essence and RUM(if using) until well combined about 1 minute on medium speed.
3. Fold the flour mixture into the ready butter mixture.
4. Next stir in Nestum and Chocolate Chips with wooden spoon or spatula.
5. Drop teaspoonful of dough onto baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for 15 - 20 minutes at a preheated 180 degree oven till slightly browned at the edge.



Notes:
a) I added about 1/2 Teaspoon Of RUM liquor to give the cookies an extra fragrant.
b) Nestle Nestum can be found in most local supermarket under the cereal or coffee/tea session.


My Unsuccessful Macarons

A Macaron is a traditional French pastry, made of egg whites, almond powder, icing sugar and sugar. This sweet pastry came out of the French courts' baker's oven as round meringue-like domes with a flat base. I had eaten beautiful and tasty Macarons from one of my blog pal Evan(for those who are interested can take a look at her blog atBossacafez) And after seeing a lot of macaron fans making different favour of macarons from all over the blogsites, I began to love them deeply.......there is one site that I love her Macs too is Karen's(Mad Baker).


From all those wonderful and drooling photo of macarons, I starts to develop my interest in making them. I knew it's pretty difficult to handle these macs in term of all the ingredients measurements and the whipping of the meringue and folding of the dry ingredients and even to the temperature of the oven. All those little details will cause either a success or failure of baking a perfect macaron.

So based on those macaron recipes that I had research from the websites. I decided to try out 1 which most people had succeed making in it. But unfortunately out all the 3 tried that I had are all failure. I can't get the macaron to bloat up and stand with a feet like the normal one. Mine are just flat, round and feetless piece of cracker. I knew I have not did well in whipping the egg whites as well as the folding portion. And I guess my oven temperature are far too hot to cause the macaron to be burnt. But I will not give up on that, I had already seen improvement of the 3rd batch with smooth shiny surface and some feet form. So I shall continue experiment on these with those advice and guideline that I had gather.Posted by Picasa


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