Mac Attack Entry - Macaron de saison

Oh, time flies~~ really it does, in a blink of the eye the end of September is approaching and today is the last day of summer.

To me the summer seems to already end a week ago, chilling winds and temperature, my skins starts to itch and lips start to crack from the dry air... The season that is certainly not my favourite is IN! How I just miss the tropical weather and can just pop down on the street without having to check the temperature to get dress accordingly.

A hot pot of ginger tea with dark sugar is cooking in the kitchen to warm me up - even my nose is cold! Oh well, guest all I will do now is start counting down until winter ends.

Macaron de saison, I first wanted to create macaron with some seasonal fruits or nut, but second thought, what is the very one thing I cannot live without in every season? The answer has to be CHOCOLATE!!! Chocolate is great to work with and the versatility is endless.

So I have decided to create 4 flavours based on dark chocolate theme but adding a little something different for each season.

May I present you

Spring Lime Chocolate Macaron :
Green - Colour of first sign of spring is coming.


Summer Rose Chocolate Macaron :
Red - Full bloom roses and the smell of summer.



Autumn Ginger Chocolate Macaron :
Yellow - Colour of autumn, ginger to warm up the spirit and mind!



Winter Spiced Chocolate Macaron :
Blue - Cold air & snow, cinnamon and cardamom to chase away the winter blues.



Hope you enjoy the entry :)



For the shell

Ingredients (for each colour)

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

Methods:

1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, icing sugar and food colouring (use one colour), 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.

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.

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

6. 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.

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

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

9. 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.

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.





Spring Lime Chocolate Macaron Filling

Ingredients:

1. 1 organic lime (wash, dry well, grate rimd - set aside)
2. 1 tbsp lime juice
3. 50g dark chocolate
4. 45g fresh cream

Methods:
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, lime rind and lime juice.

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

4. 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.

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Summer Rose Chocolate Macaron Filling

Ingredients:

1. crystalised rose petals (optional)
2. 1 tbsp rose water
3. 50g dark chocolate
4. 45g fresh cream

Methods:
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 rose water.

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

4. Add in crystalise rose petals if used, let it sit in room temperature for 30min and place into the fridge for at least 1 hour for it to harden up.

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Autumn Ginger Chocolate Macaron Filling

Ingredients:

1. 1-2 strips of candied ginger (cut into small slices)
2. 1 tsp ginger powder
3. 50g dark chocolate
4. 50g fresh cream

Methods:
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 ginger powder.

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

4. Let it sit in room temperature for 30min and place into the fridge for at least 1 hour for it to harden up.

5. To fill macaron, simply pipe the choclate ganache on one shell then top up with a slice of candied ginger before closing up with another shell.

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Winter Spiced Chocolate Macaron Filling

Ingredients:

1. 2 cardamom seed
2. 1 cinnamon stick
3. 50g dark chocolate
4. 50g fresh cream

Methods:
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, infuse cinnamon stick and cardamom seed. Set aside for 15 mins. Remove the spice before reheating the cream again.

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

4. Add in crystalise rose petals if used, let it sit in room temperature for 30min and place into the fridge for at least 1 hour for it to harden up.

I'd like to introduce my new family member - Papy Nestor, prince charming of Miss Evil Eddy :) He had been here for about a week now, he is old and abodoned on the road side to fend or himself before the shelter found him. He spent close to a year in the shelter and is getting depress because noone is interested in him. I am glad that he is here now to spend his golden year with us, he is surely one very intelligent bunny.

Miss Evil Eddy with Papy Nestor

HAPPY MAC-BAKING!

Sweet, Spicy and Fruity - Swirly Strawberry Macarons with Green Anis

Oh gosh, it has been so long since I last participated in the MACTWEET challange! I am back. Still going crazy with all the last bits and pieces for the wedding...however I managed to find sometime last week to finally bake some macarons :0)

Spiced & Sweet with anything Fruity is the theme for this month challange, with fresh strawberries everywhere in the season now, I thought it would be great as the filling.

On the spicy side, i am not keen on any other spices that would be too overwhelming. I decided to choose green anis.

Here we go the recipe


For the shell

Ingredients

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


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

2. Using an electric beater, beat up the egg white till 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. Gently give it a few fold, scoop up on tablespoon of the mixture into an extra clean bowl.

5. At this stage, add in the red colouring, keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50 fold. The mixture should be uniformed, shiny and when lifted it should flow down and form a thick ribbon.

6. Stop folding or else it would get too liquid to pipe.

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

8. When you're done, to make some pretty swirl on the shells, use a toothpick, dip into the plain white mixture that was set aside earlier, and then dip it into the piped shell then make a stir. The point or any lines would disapper in the next few seconds eventually.

9. 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.

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

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

12. 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.

13. If the macaron is not baked yet, extense the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

14. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet.

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



For the Strawberry Spiced Ganache

Ingredients

1. 20g dark chocolate (chopped up)
2. 40g white chocolate (chopped up)
3. 1 teaspoon of green anis powder
4. 3-4 strawberries halved
5. 1 teaspoon corn starch

Method

1. In a small pot, over low heat, add in strawwberries & corn starch, cook them thouroughly until it forms like a puree and thicken up

2. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Add in dark and white chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth texture is obtained

3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min - 1 hour to cool down.

4. Fill your macaron shells and sprinkle with green anis powder before closing it with another shell

Enjoy :0)

Festive Choco-Spiced Macaron to celebrate the end of 2010!

2010 came and going to end so soon.

I could hardly make myself believe that 2010 is really going to end in 2 weeks time!! 2010 was a year that I had always looked forward to for our honeymoon in last September. Time passes so fast and everything arrived and finished in a blink.

2010 has been a memorable year for me. We brought home 2 rabbits earlier in the year - Myrtille and Réglisse (Blueberry & Licorice). They had brought us so much and by observing them we learn a lot. They also had opened my heart and eyes in a new window. I was always preferred to ignore or deny, well should I say, wasn't even awared of animal cruelty in everything I use in daily life. I am now a lot more concious about this issue and make my choice when doing my shopping very carefully.

Our honeymoon in Australia also brought me many great precious memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life : Cuddling up an orphan baby wombat, being in complete wilderness with only sound of the ocean, watching stars in southern sky with plenty of wild wallabies eating next to us....

2010 is definitely a year when my life goes into a whole new dimension. Oh well, it's soon time to say good bye to 2010, so let's do that by celebrating it!!

Enough story telling and now straight to the macs. they're inspired by the end of year 'Pain d'Epice' (spiced bread) for Festival of St Nicolas celebrated in north part of France & Europe in 6 Dec everywhere.

The savour of the chocolate : hint of cinnamon & orange zest, top up with candied nutmeg that I brought back from Malaysia. I hope you'll like it.

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I won't repeat the recipe for the shells in this post since the method is always them same. The only difference is that I painted them with help of a pre-cut shape paper when the macarons are baked.

For the Choco Spiced Ganache

Ingredients

1. 50g dark chocolate (chopped up)

2. 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
3. 2 tablespoon of fresh cream

4. enough candied nutmeg (I use 2 small pcs for each macs)

5. shaved organic orange zest (please use ONLY untreated orange as most fruits skin are sprayed with pesticide)

Method

1. In a small pot, over low heat, add in cinnamon, orange zest & cream, warm up the mixture up lightly

2. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Add in chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth texture is obtained

3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min - 1 hour to cool down.

4. Fill your macaron shells and top up with candied nutmeg before closing it with another shell

Enjoy your festive macs!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thanks every followers in my blog and all others that spend time to visit my blog. Special thanks to MacTweets for making baking macarons so much fun every month!!!

Have a Merry Xmas and wonderful New Year!! See you all in 2011