Arlequin Macaron - 4 Coloured Macaron

Guess what made me so excited this week ? Holiday season ? Naa... I was looking and browsing at Blurb.com and suddenly somthing caught my eyes. It was my Macaron Fetish book being featured on the front page as Staff Pick !! I never thought this would happen heheh, just so so happy to see that.





So what's up in this cold and grey months of December? I had been thinking to experiment new macaron flavours with some French candies... Here's the first one - Arlenquin (for those who isn't familiar with the term, Arlequin is a Franch candy that is sour and fruity at the same time). I was itching to try out 4 coloured macaron shell as I wasn't suscessful on the first trial. Pair up with white chocolate the sourness and sweetness blended perfectly.








Hope you like the entry. Enjoy!

For the shell
1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. yellow, red, green, white colouring

1. Prepare4 freezer bags, 1 piping bag and 3 extra bowls. To see the illustration on how to prepare the freewer bags please follow the link .In a blender, mix up the almond powder and icing sugar, sieve it and set aside.

2. Beat the egg white until frothy, add in half of the sugar, keep beating till you get a soft peak and then add in the rest of the sugar. Beat to stiff peak.

3. Add the blended dry ingredients to the stiff egg white. Mix until the mixture is roughly combien. Devide the mixture into the extra bowls. Add each food colouring in each bowl, start folding.

4. Keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50-60 folds. The mixture should be uniformed and shiny. When lifted, it should flow down and form a thick ribbon.

5. Pour each colour in each piping bag. Press down slightly to remove air. Snip off the tip of the begs before placing them carefully together in the piping bag. They might be needed to be adjust slightly so they are at the same level in the piping bag. Pipe the mixture.

6. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's no longer stick to the fingers when touched. Depending on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.





7. Pre-heat the oven on 150 C with top and bottom heating.

8. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons. Increase to 160 C after 2 minutes and continue baking for about 4-5 minutes, be sure to work with your oven and you might need a few test to know how much your oven heats up. The feet should already be forming after 4-5mins. Decrease the temperature to 150C, open the oven door quickly to allow hot air to escape. bake for another 6-8 minutes until the shells are baked.

9. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should no longer slide against the feet.

10. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

11. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet. You could speed up the process by lightly wetting your working area with a sponge and drag the baking sheets over.



12. Match up all the similar size shells, and get the ready for filling.



Ingredients

1. 5 Arlequin candies
2. 1 tablespoon water
3. 50g white cooking chocolate
4. 20g fresh full cream

Methods

1. Crush the candies with a pestle and mortar.

2. In a small pot, melt the candies with some water. Watch closely so it doesn't burn.

3. When the candies are melted, add in fresh cream and warm it up.

4. Remove the cream from heat, pour over white chocolate, mix until the chocolate is melted completely and a smooth texture is obtain.

5. Let cool in room temperature and set in the fridge for about 1-2 hours, check back from time to time. The ganache should be soft but not runny.

6. Fill up the shells. The macarons are best eaten the next day.

Speculoos Macaron

Wohoo... follow by the macaron curse week, the Macaron God is with me this week YAY!!! Praise the Macaron Lord lol!

So what am I up to is baking up batches and batches of shells for some order for this weekend :) I have NO failed batches! I was surprised. Guess I am getting use to work with my oven baking few batches in continuous manner. My oven is one of those kind that heat up A LOT when it reaches its temperature. I guess letting some cold air and lower the temperature before putting in the next batch does help. I am glad that I find a way to work better.

I bought a second grill for the oven thinking i could do 2 batches in one go but it doesn't seem to work for those in the bottom rack, there is just not enough heat to rise the macarons on the bottom shelf. So I think I am going to bake them in chain and I could have better control over baking.

So what's up in Dec? Well the idea of making Speculoos macaron had lingering on my mind. My brother in law told me maybe some people would be interested. So I decided it's time to make some today. For those who doesn't know what Speculoos is, it's a Belgium cookies / biscuits made with butter, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. In Belgium it's available in spread too, just like Nutella. Here we started to see them in fine grocer not long ago - the price tag is ahem... about 6 euros for a small pot.

Having eating much better and more careful of what we use since 2 years ago, I refused to buy industrially made biscuits or Speculoos spread that might be full of unknown preservative, coloring, sugar etc etc .. Before this I've only known store bought Speculoos, I made the biscuits then the spread, it was just delicious - definitely nothing like the sugary one from the store :)

Enjoy the baking! Don't worry it might seems like a lot of work but it wasn't that difficult :0)


For the biscuit (to obtain 50g biscuit)


1. 50 g flour
2. 30 g brown sugar
3. 25 g butter (or margarine)
4. 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
5. pinch of baking soda
6. pinch of salt

1. Melt the butter.
2. In a mixer add in all ingredients above, pour in the melted butter and mix until it forms a smooth dough.
3. Form a ball, cover with a humid tea towel and let rest in the room temperature for 1 hour.
4. After an hour, preheat the oven to 190 C.
5. Flatten the dough to 3mm thick. Cut out with cookies cutter.
6. Put the cut out dough on a sheet of baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.


For the Speculoos Spread


1. 50g of Speculoos (crushed into powdered form in a blender)
2. 20g honey (or aloe vera syrup)
3. 10g sugar
4. 30ml soy milk
5. 30g de good quality white chocolate (chopped finely)

1. In a small pot, heat up soymilk, sugar and honey but do not let it boil.
2. In a bowl, put powdered speculoors and chocolate together.
3. When the milk mixture is warm, pour in 1/3 of the mixture into the bowl, mix well, repeat until the mixture is used up and a smooth paste is form.
4. The mixture would be a bit liquid when warm but it will harden up slightly as it cools.
5. Pour in a jam pot, close the lid and let cool. Once cooled, place in the refrigerator.

For the shell
1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 5g cacao powder (unsweetened)

1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, icing sugar,and cacao powder, sieve it and set aside

2.Beat the egg white until frothy, add in half of the sugar, keep beating till you get a soft peak and then add in the rest of the sugar. Beat to stiff peak.

3. Add the blended dry ingredients to the stiff egg white.

4. Keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50 folds. The mixture should be uniformed and shiny. When lifted, it should flow down and form a thick ribbon.

5. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture. Sprinkle some crushed biscuit over the shells


6. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's no longer stick to the fingers when touched. Depending on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

7. Pre-heat the oven on 150 C with top and bottom heating.

8. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons. Increase to 160 C after 2 minutes and continue baking for about 4-5 minutes, be sure to work with your oven and you might need a few test to know how much your oven heats up. The feet should already be forming after 4-5mins. Decrease the temperature to 150C, open the oven door quickly to allow hot air to escape. bake for another 6-8 minutes until the shells are baked.

9. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should no longer slide against the feet.

10. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

11. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet. You could speed up the process by lightly wetting your working area with a sponge and drag the baking sheets over.

12. Match up all the similar size shells, and get the ready for filling.

Snowman Macarons - Cinnamon Anise Chocolate & Wine Jelly Macarons

Can't believe xmas is in 1 month!!! doesn't really feel that it has been the whole year!
End of the year is surely one of the most hectic time for many people - well not much for me as I am not working :) For me I prepare the gifts early and most of the time finish up the bits and pieces by purchasing online.

Just been selling some macarons to colleagues of brother-in-law. this is the second week and I am making the 3rd and 4th batch. God knows what was wrong in my first and second batch last week - everything was cracked, flat or no feet - feel like that particular day I was having a macaron curse. I finally gave up and tried the day after and it went well... i think there's certainly a macaron curse day!!

Up for this last MacTweet entry for the year, I might have more entry coming soon as I am baking up for xmas order.

This is a recipe which is in my new book : Macaron Fetish - C'est la Fête (It's Party Time). It's actually a macaron fetish based on special occasions and holiday theme. I am including some pages for a sneak peak at the end of the post. Mean while I hope you like my Snowman Xmas Macaron!



For the 6 Snowman shell

Ingredients:

1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1/2 tsp white food colouring
6. 1/4 tsp blue food colouring (optional - unless you are looking for BLUE LIPS FUN)
7. icing colouring pen (to draw the eyes, hands and nose)

1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, icing sugar,and white food colouring, sieve it and set aside.

2.Beat the egg white until frothy, add in half of the castor sugar, keep beating till you get a soft peak and then add in the rest of the sugar. Beat to stiff peak.

3. Add the blended dry ingredients to the stiff egg white.

4. Keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50 folds. The mixture should be uniformed, shiny and when lifted it should flow down and form a thick ribbon. Scoop out 2 tablespoons of the mixture in an extra bowl, add in blue colouring, mix well and set aside.

5. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe a small circle about 2 cm, a the bottom of the small circle, pipe another circle of 3-4cm. Repeat until all mixture is used up. Using a fine stick ( I used chopstick ) dip in the blue mixture prepared earlier, then drag over between 2 circles to make the scarf.

6. Let the macaron sit until a skin is formed and it's no longer stick to the fingers when touched. Depending on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

7. Pre-heat the oven on 150 C with top heating.

8. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons. Increase to 160 C and continue baking for about 4-5 minutes, be sure to work with your oven and you might need a few test to know how much your oven heats up. The feet should already be forming after 4-5mins. Decrease the temperature to 150C, open the oven door quickly to allow hot air to escape. bake for another 6-8 minutes until the shells are baked.

9. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should no longer slide against the feet.

10. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

11. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet. You could speed up the process by lightly wetting your working area with a sponge and drag the baking sheets over.

12. Match up all the similar size shells, draw the hands, nose and eyes. Get the ready for filling.




Cinnamon Anise Chocolate & Wine Jelly Macarons

Ingredients :

1. 50g fresh cream (35% fat) / soycream

2. 50g dark chocolate (chopped finely)

3. 1/4 tsp cinnamon + 1/4 tsp anise (powder )

4. 50ml red wine

5. 1/4 tsp agar agar powder




Methods:

1. Mix red wine and agar agar in a small pot, bring to boil for 3 minutes.

2. Pour over a flat plate, let cool before putting it in the fridge.

3. Place dark chocolate in a big heat proof bowl. Place the bowl over a smaller pot with boiling water to melt the chocolate (water bath).

4. In another pot, boil up the cream with cinnamon and anise powder. Remove from heat and infuse for 10 minutes.

5. Rewarm the mixture and pour over chocolate . Incorporated the mixture together, let the ganache cool down then put it in the fridge.

6. Cut the jelly into small square, fill up one macaron shell with chocolate ganache, top up with the jelly, and put a pea size chocolate ganache on the jelly, close it up with another shell.

HAPPY HOLIDAY !!

Macaron Fetish - C'est la Fête (It's Party Time)

Macaron Fetish - C’est la fête by Kim Chodkowski | Make Your Own Book

10USD OFF on any book purchase on Blurb till 30th Nov 2011

GOOD NEWS - Until 30th Nov 2011, Blurb.com is giving up $10USD discount on every purchase!

if you're interested, here is the discount code to use upon check up



Front Cover

Back Cover

Hello all,

I am so excited, the first proof copy of my book is finally here yay!! After working on it for a few months, I have been anticipating for so long to see the real tangible book :)

So here is some sneak peak for the book, for those who had contributed your input on "what's your flavour" post, I'll send you guys a promo code shortly in case you'd like to grab a copy.

Thank you all again :)

Macaron Fetish - The Luxury Collection by Kim Chodkowski |