Raspberry Vodka Jelly Dark Chocolate Ganache Macaron

Wow, time flies it's pass mid August already... Been baking so much macarons in the past 2 months for the next books, playing with flavours, colours, fillings.... it's just so much fun.... baking macarons is almost addictive, or it is in fact addictive??

I was so excited for the challenge for McTweet this month - Liquor, as I had also been working on the on my coming books. We found a bottle of Raspberry flavoured Vodka and a bottle of Creme de Casses bought a long time ago that has been sitting in the cupboard of my in laws'. I was like coooool I get to play with those in my next macaron flavour hehehe..

I was lucky to still find some raspberry yesterday as it's really the end of the season. I also bought some new paste colouring -brand 'Sugarflair'. I find that paste colouring gives more intense colour but certain colour come off and could possible stains the teeth... so I am not sure how I feel about them... for now the black and purple colour seems fine but I think this particular red one I used to make these macarons left big stains on my baking sheets ....

Anyhow, here is the Raspberry Vodka Jelly Dark Chocolate Ganache Macaron. Hope you guys like it.



For the shell

Ingredients

1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1/4 tsp of red colouring



Methods:

1. 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 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. Mix them up roughly but do not fold yet. Scoop one table spoon of the mixture into a small bowl, mix it well until it becomes quite runny. In the main bowl add in red colouring and start folding.

5. 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.

6. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture.

7. Using a toothpick, dip in the white mixture set aside earlier, the dip on the shells lightly making some random stripes. Do not worry too much on how it looks right now, repeat until all shells are done. Now using the same toothpick, dip on the shells and drags the white mixture around to make random swirls and pattern.


8. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's nolonger sticked to the fingers when touched. Depanding on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

9. Pre heat the oven on 160 C with only top heating.

10. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons, bake for 8 mins, the feet should already start forming at this stage.

11. Change the heating to bottom only, bake for another 6 minutes. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should nolonger slide against the feet.

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

13. 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.

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





For Raspberry Vodka Jelly & Dark Chocolate Ganache Filling

Raspberry Vodka Jelly


Ingredients
1. 12 fresh/frozen raspberry
2. 1/4 tsp of agar-agar powder
3. 1 tablespoon of raspberry flavoured vodka

Methods:
1. Add raspberries, agar agar powder and raspberry flavoured vodka in a pot over medium heat. Bring to bowl while stirring constantly for 2-3 minutes. Watch closely so it wont BURN!!

2. Filter the mixture over a sieve to remove the seeds and any other impurities. On a shallow glass/metal plat, pour over the mixture. Let cool in room temperature then put in the fridge to let it set.

3. It should take about 30mins to for the jelly to set. Cut it into rectangular stripes. If not use immediately, put it back in the fridge.



Dark Chocolate Raspberry Vodka Ganache

Ingredients:

1. 50g High grade cooking Dark Chocolate
2. 40g fresh liquid cream
3. 10g raspberry flavoured Vodka


Method

1. Put chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place it over water bath to melt it

2. In a small pot, over low heat, warm up liquid cream and vodka

3. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Pour over chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth, shiny ganache is obtained

3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min and place into the fridge for at least 1 hour for it to harden up. Place a cling wrap on top touching the ganache prior putting it into the fridge to prevent any crystalisation on the chocolate ganache.




PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

Fill your one macaron shell with chocolate ganache, put one rectangular jelly on top the, on the other shell, pipe a pea size of choclate ganache on it, this help secure the shell to the jelly. Close it up and viola!


ENJOY :) and ohh, this is my little setup for each of my photo sessions with macarons. I go addicted with my hubby's Sony Alpha 900 :P and he took a photo of me working hehe.

Lady Gaga Telephone Inspired Macaron - Mac Attack 9 : Sing a song

A song, well I just can't get Telephone by Lady Gaga & Beyonce from the first time I listened to it. I love the clip, the use of bold colours, the concept and the storyline, it's different and this just make it so memorable. So I created some macs using the similar bold colours used in the clip. Primary colours - red, yellow and blue.

And don't worry it's not poisonous - proof is that my husband is still alive hehehe..:)

So here we go - the recipe

FOR THE MACARON SHELL
2 room temperatured egg white(80g total)
100g icing sugar
60g ground almond
60g castor sugar
1 tsp red powder food colouring
1 tsp yellow powder food colouring
1 tsp blue powder food colouring

Tools:
1. Big piping bag with a noozle no.8 placed inside.
2. 3 small size freezer bags, fold the bottom up to a side, then staple, making a piping bag. Repeat for all 3 bags.
3. 2 extra mixing bowls
4. 2 extra rubber spatulas


Method:
1. Put ground almond and icing sugar in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely.

2. Sift the blended mixture and set aside

3. With an electric beater, Beat the egg white, start from low speed and increase slowly to maximum speed. Beat until frothy (you will see lots of fine bubbles)

4. Now it's the time to add in the castor sugar, add half of the sugar, continue to beat in maximum speed for around 2 minutes, add in the other half, continue until you get very stiff peak.

5. Mix the dry ingredients into the egg whites. Just roughly combine them, because we'll seperate them in 3 parts later.

6. Divide the mixture into 3 parts - this mean you have to scoop out 1/3 of the mixture for each extra mixing bowl you have prepared earlier.

7. Now put in the yellow colouring into one bowl. Start folding

8. When you get smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bowl means you're good to go. You could also check if the lines formed from the lifted mixture, they should slowly disappear in within 30 seconds. At this stage you're good to go. Do not over fold, it will be too liquid and becoming very hard to pipe.
if you're unsure, you could refer to my basic macaron recipe as a guide HERE

8. Do the same for the other two bowls of mixture with red and blue colourings.

9. Fill each freezer bag with each colour. Snip off the head of the freezer bags.


10. Carefully, place all 3 bags inside the bug piping bag. you might want to readjust accordingly so all 3 bags are about at the same level in the bag to make sure 3 colours flow out at the same time during the piping process. The first few macarons might have inconsistant colours, but it should go better as you pipe.











This month the Mac Tweet challange is to create macaron inspired by a song. I had been on and off doing many other stuff this month so I'm late! Just manage to get some macarons bake on the very last day to submit my entry.


11. Let your macarons sit for about 30minutes. This will depend on the humidity in your house and the day. Try touching the macaron softly, after 30mins. it should not stick to your hand.

12. Heat your oven to 150 C on the (heating on the top only). When the oven is ready, put your macaron at the very bottom shelf. Bake for 12 minutes, check them in the mid time of 6 minutes, the feets should already start forming. Turn the baking tray to the opposite direction to allow even baking. When the 6 mins is up, change the heating setting of your oven to Bottom only. This will help cooking the macaron and rise the feet more. Bake for another 6 minutes. You can test if the macaron is cook, touch softly on the shell and when the macaron doesn't slide on the feet, it's cooked. if it's not add another 1 mins each time and check.

(This is the method i found the best that works for me after few trial and error. I baked with heating the oven top and bottom and i had crack macarons. Having said that, every oven is slightly different than another, so please adjust accordingly

14. Let the macaron cool down before removing them. You could wet your working area and slide the baking sheet on it to speed up the cooling process, but do not let it sit there too long, if not the macarons will become soggy. Other wise you can leave them cool at room temperature and remove them.




Raspberry, Blueberry White Chocolate Ganache with hint of Rose

Ingredients
60g white chocolate (fiinely chopped)
70g fresh or frozen mix of raspberrie and blueberries
(If you use frozen fruits, bring them out prior to let them defroze)
1 tbsp rose water

Methods

1. In a medium pot boil some water.

2. Put white chocolate in the heat proof bowl, the let it sit over the pot with boiling water.

3. Stir until the chocolate is melted

4. With a hand mixer, blend the fruits to get the pulp. Then filter them with a sift with a help of a spoon, to remove any seeds that is left for a smooth texture.

5. Put the fruit pulp into a small pot, gently warm it up over medium heat, stir constantly.

6. When it's warm enough, pour it over the white chocolate. Then stir until the mixture is well combine and all chocolate is melted completely.

7. Leave to room temperature then in the fridge for at lease 2 hours for th ganache to harden up slightly.

8. When it's ready, pipe it on the macaron shells.

9. The mcarons are best eatiing 24 hours later. Bring them out of the fridge 10 minutes prior to fully enjoy the flavour.