Salty Mint Choc' Macaron

Time flies and soon we're off for our wedding in my hometown Penang, Malaysia. I can't help but keep thinking the older we grow the faster time flies... Remembering we were planning and looking for venue, ideas for the wedding 2 years ago... and in less than 10 days the wedding is on!

Ok let's get to the topic. I have to admit that in the last few months I hadn't bake macaron that much. So here we go for this month Mac Attack - Chocolate Macaron with twists.

I recentlty had a chocolate with some fine salt - which inspired me : Salty Mint Choc' Macaron. I decided to make use of the pot of himalayan salt that is sitting in the cupboard for a while. Pairing up with fresh mint leaves from the garden... the combination is surprisingly devine :)

I will be back to participate another Mac Attack in July since I will spend the whole May in exotic Asia :)

I hope you'll enjoy this post. Please do not forget to check my new book in previous post.

Happy MacBaking




For the shell

Ingredients

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


Methods:
1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, food colouring and 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. Add dry mixture to the stiffed egg white. 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. Stop folding or else it would get too liquid to pipe.

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

7. 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.

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

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

10. 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.

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

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

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





For Salty Mint Choc' Ganache

Ingredients

1. 50g dark chocolate (chopped up)
2. Few springs of mint Peppermint would be the best - use only the leaves
3. Himalayan salt / French sea salt "Fleur de Sel" - See note
4. 10g fresh liquid cream

NOTE: I use Himalayan salt, if not French sea salt can be use, I dont think this is the right translation annd do not think this term exist in english. Fleur de sel, literally translate as flower of salt, it's a very fine salt that is retrieved on the surface of sea water when they're concentrated.


Method

1. In a small pot, over low heat, warm up liquid cream

2. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Add in dark 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 one macaron shell, sprinkle salt over the chocolate, press a mint leaf on top, on the shell, pipe a pea size of choclate ganache on it, this help secure the shell to the mint leaf.

ENJOY :)

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)

Macaron Fetish Book is out, now available to be ordered

I'd like say thank you my fellow followers on my blog. When I first created this blog, I had never imagined that it would draw in people around the world :) I am really glad that I have this opportunity to share the recipes and methods, internet is really an amazing discovery!

Please feel free to have a look and the preview of some pages of the book. This book contains 40 pages and is fully coloured. If you have any questions please feel free to ask :)

Thank you again
Kim

Macaron Fetish by Kim Chodkowski

Update

Hello

It has been a while since I posted something. Just so much to do in preparing the coming wedding and trip to Malaysia in May.

I had been working on my very first macaron book. It will be available soon after I receive my proof copy :) so please stay tune

This is a teaser of what to come

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