Daring Bakers

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

I used way too much caramel!

Daring bakers

The daring bakers challenge for march was an orange Tian.

I made the Tian but unfortunatly forgot to take a photo befor it was all eaten!
However it was very nice and refreshing and not too difficult to make.

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

MACTWEETS: SPRING FLING ... Mac Attack 5

The theme for this Mac Attack was "spring flowers", which can be found here: http://mactweets.blogspot.com/2010/02/spring-fling-mac-attack-5.html
To go with this theme I made yellow and green macarons, to symbolise the daffodil, THE spring flower!

The yellow one was filled with a banana buttercream.Unfortunetly I dont think it was that impressive. To make it i dried out some foam bananas in a low oven for an hour or so and then ground them into a dust. I then made a normal american buttercream using this dust in place of icing sugar. IT did taste nice but went too hard after a day or so. The green one was filled with a mint chocolate ganache which I enjoyed more.

Daring Bakers!

Here is my first daring bakers challenge (the only real reason I have this blog!)

It was a great experience and I learnd a few things along the way, like buy mascapone dont bother making it!



The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

RECIPE SOURCE:

Mascarpone Cheese – Vera’s Recipe (Baking Obsession) for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese.
Savoiardi/ Ladyfinger Biscuits – Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home
Tiramisu – Carminantonio's Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007

Mac Mac Macky Mac! Blueberry Macarons

The other day I made some Blueberry Macarons. I really wanted to make some strong coloured macarons since that's what drew me to them in the first place. I had to use a gel colouring rather than powder, which isn't idea as it can add too much moisture. However I found that it was fine because the colour was so concentrated you only needed a very small amount. I have since ordered and received some powdered food colouring so I will soon be trying that out. I ordered them from here. I am a bit dubious to how well they will work as you only get a small amount, so I'm not sure if it will be economically viable to use powder!

If you want to make your own Macarons then read this. They are very fun to make so give it a go!

Here is the results of my efforts:
You may or may not be able to tell that my batter is a tad thin. This was because I gave it a few too many folds. I still haven't got the consistency quite down but I'm getting closer each time. I made these macarons a much better size, although they look big in the picture they are actually the size if a milk bottle top.
As you can see some of them caught a bit in the oven. As I'm using a different oven I'm trying to find the best way too cook them. Initially the oven was too high (about 170) and i turned it down to 160 but i think it needs to be at about 150 with a wooden spoon in the door to keep it slightly a-jar.I was quite pleased with the end result. Although the best coloured ones were slightly undercooked and the best textured ones had browned slightly on top.

I filled my macarons with Bonne Maman's blueberry jam to fill them. I love this jam and I like to filly my macs with jam because its easy and if the macs don't work I've not wasted money on ingredients for a filling. I also like the contrast in textures.

I've just purchsed a mini food processor, so now i can start making hazelnut and pistachio macarons. I cant wait to try out my new colours and a new filling!

Examage!

Its that horrible time of year again, Exam time :-(
Saying that the revision isn't going too badly, apart from maths which I'm just ignoring and hoping will disappear off the face of the earth!

Anyway I havent posted since before Christmas so here I am.
The Gingerbrad house went down well with Chri's parents, they were impressed with it although when it arrived in their lovely warm (as appose to my icebox) homethe roof collapsed. I knew it wasnt that structually sound as i wanted to make it nice to eat rather than rock hard.
On Boxing day i made a chocloate "cake" from my new "Green & Blacks" cook book wich Chris parents got for me. It was nice but so incredibly rich! You only needed a tiny ammount to satisfy any chocolate cravings.

I also made macarons again! This time they turned out better :-) but still waaaaay to big!
I tinted them red and filled them with a dark chocolate ganache. The were tasty and went down well with the kids at our Boxing day party.
Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope everyone has a great 2010 :-)

All I Want for Christmas Is Yooooou!

So its actually Christmas Eve and Its come so fast I dont beleive it!
Ive had a nice week back home, spent lots of time with chris and just been relaxing. Ive done some baking too! First me and chris made a sweet potato pie! It was incredibly scrummy but maybe we put a bit too much sugar in it was a bit too sweet.
Next I took on the macaron! I must say the results were much better than I thought! The batter was a bit too runny tho and so the macarons were a bit flat, and also the oven was too low so they didnt cook correctly and were way too chewy. I am however going to try again tonight, and hopefully I can rectify these little errors :-)
I made plain shells and was going to fill them with white chocolate ganache, but as i didnt expect them to work i didnt make the filling and just filled them with strawberry jam, which was nice.

As a present for Chris' family I made a gingerbread house! I had already made the plans for it a week or so ago and just had to make the gingerbread, cut it out and stick it together! I was really happy with how it turned out. To begin with the gingerbread just fell apart after i rolled and cut it, but after rolling it thicker and cutting out the detail when its on a peice of grease proof ready to go in the oven helped alot. I also made some pepermint buttercream christmas trees!

Wll thats all I can be botherd to write, So Merry Christmas and I will update soon with the second Macaronage!