Strawberries and Cream Macarons

The title of this post says it all. These macarons are filled with a custard-cream that encases a hidden dollop of the best quality strawberry jam. You might have seen these from my last post on how to make macarons. You might have not. Either way, these delicate treats are certainly delicious when filled with a creamy, vanilla-y thick cream. Just what I need to serve an elegant afternoon tea with the girls. Oh, and some organic tea or hot chocolate to go with it too.

 

Instead of using strawberry jam, you could use fresh pureed strawberries with a little sugar added to it to give it a fresh strawberry scent that is perfect when paired with the cream in the macarons. I must admit that I am a little disappointed with the colour of my macarons since they were over-baked. It makes them look brown and ugly, hiding the real beauty of the macarons. But putting them in pretty cupcake liners adds a touch of cuteness and probably also hides my mistake, right? Next time when I make another batch of macarons, I will be in the kitchen watching closely at the oven door the whole time. That should solve my problem of over-baking macaron shells.

For the macaron recipe and a tutorial on how to make them, click here.

Vanilla Custard Cream Filling
Adapted from the book, Macarons: Chic and Delicious French Treats

Ingredients:
3 egg yolks (saved from the last batch of macarons)
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of cornflour/cornstarch
1 cup of milk
1 vanilla pod/bean or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1/2 cup of thickened cream

Method:
1. Whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a heatproof bowl until combined.

2. Heat the milk with the vanilla in a small saucepan until it just starts to boil.

3. Pour the hot milk over the egg yolk mixture and stir until incorporated.

4. Put the mixture back into the pan and simmer gently over a low heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens and will coat the back of a spoon. Heat it slowly and gently and remove it from the heat immediately after it is ready. Be careful not to boil it too much otherwise it will curdle.

5. Strain the mixture into a clean bowl and add the butter, stirring until it has melted and incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside to cool before refridgerating.

6. Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks and fold it into the custard. Chill before filling the macarons.

When done, the custard/cream should look thick and creamy like the one in the picture above. The colour of the filling depends on the type of sugar you use. My filling is kind of a brown colour because I used brown sugar so if you use white sugar, it should look like whipped cream.

After filling the macarons with the cream and strawberry jam, you should refridgerate them for 30 minutes before serving. Don't store the filled macarons in the fridge otherwise they will go soggy from the custard. Store them separately and fill them before serving.

How To: Make French Macarons

So I have been away for a while... to be more specific, that was 2 weeks. I know. Apparently my school work keeps on pilling up and I simply didn't have the time to bake. But now I am back (unfortunately for a short while) with a little how-to on making French macarons! I won't go into all of the details on how to make a perfect batch of macarons but I will show you how to make them step by step. Since these delicate treats can be pretty tricky to make, I suggest you go to this website by Food Nouveau which I refer to when my macarons are cracked, have not developed feet or are just not looking like macarons should.

Let's get started on some macaron-making!

You'll need the following ingredients:

From the cookbook, Macarons: Chic and Delicious French Treats
Makes about 20 filled macarons

200 grams (1 and 1/2 cups) icing/confectioners'/powdered sugar
100 grams (2/3 cup) ground almonds
3 large egg whites (put the egg whites in a microwave for 10 seconds to speed up the aging process)
a pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of sugar

Start by sifting the icing sugar and ground almonds together.

And mix them together well. Alternatively, you could do this in a food processor.

Then whisk the egg whites together with the salt using an electric mixer in a clean mixing bowl.

Keep whisking until it just holds a stiff peak. Try not to overwhisk or this can affect the outcome of the macarons.

Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites, a teaspoonful at a time until incorporated and becomes thick, white and glossy. Try turning the bowl upside down on top of your head to see if it stays in the bowl. If it doesn't and is still runny, continue whisking until it forms stiff peaks.

Then add any food colouring paste to the meringue mixture. I added a combination of two colours, Americolor super red and Americolor deep pink to create a kind of girly look. Mix thorougly to ensure that the colour is evenly blended.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the icing sugar and ground almonds mixture into the egg whites a little at a time until combined.

Now your mixture should look smooth and drop from the spatula like molten mass.

  

Fill the piping bag with the macaron mixture using a 1 cm wide tip (I just used a plain coupler). Pipe evenly sized rounds on 2 baking trays lined with baking/parchment paper about 5 cm/2 inches across. Also make sure to leave some space in between the macarons otherwise they will stick together after piping. If you want to be sure that every macaron shell is the same size, you could use a round cookie cutter as a guide by drawing circles on the baking paper and flipping it over to pipe on the other side. I piped the macarons myself without a guide but instead tried counting 2-3 seconds for each one. It didn't always work but at least all the macaron shells looked similar in size....

Tap the bottom of the baking trays once on a work surface to remove any large air bubbles. Do this sharply but don't be too harsh. You don't want the macarons to end up losing their shape. Smooth any peaks on the tops of the macarons with a wet finger. Let the macarons set and form a dry shell for at least 15 minutes and up to an hour, until they are not sticky or wet when tested with your finger.

When they are ready, bake the trays in a preheated oven of 170 degrees C (325 degrees F) for about 10 minutes. The tops of the macaron shells should be crisp and the bottoms dry. They should also peel off the baking paper easily but if they stick, put them in the oven again for another 5 minutes. Leave them to cool completely before filling and serving.

Here are my baked macarons and yes, there are some problems with it. Firstly, I overbaked them a little which gave them a tanned colour so make sure the oven is not too hot and don't let them bake in the oven for too long. Secondly, the tops of some macaron shells were cracked. Probably because they have not set long enough to form a dry shell unlike the other ones. Thirdly, there were some shells that stuck together because I piped the shells too close to each other. As I have said before, leave some space in between the shells when piping as they do expand a bit. Try not to make the mistakes I did!

They didn't come out as perfect macarons but they did form feet/crown and were delicious when filled with a home-made vanilla custard. Practice is the key to success! They may be a little tricky to perfect, but when made these treats are certainly rewarding. They are also so versatile and can be matched or combined with different flavours, fillings and colours to suit your theme or preference. Scattering the macarons with sprinkles, other edible decorations or liquid food colouring can add a touch of sparkle to your macarons and turn them into special little treats.

I'll be back soon with another post featuring these macarons I made from this tutorial!
Click here to see the post featuring these macarons from this tutorial.

Chocolate Cupcakes & Mint Chocolate Macarons

At the moment, mint and chocolate seems to be the flavour combination of my latest obsession. I didn't realise how popular they were until I saw them featured in ice cream, biscuits, slices, whoopie pies, cakes and even cupcakes! I wasn't a fan of them either. That is, until I tried a mint slice which is a chocolate-covered biscuit filled with a layer of mint cream inside. They worked so well together, and the mint was a refreshing component that perfectly assisted the sweetness of the chocolate. I also tried eating fresh mint leaves with blocks of chocolate just for fun, but that didn't work well like eating one of my favourite chocolate bars, Mint Aero.

I decided to feature my new love for mint chocolate in the form of macarons when I saw them in the book, Macarons: Chic and Delicious French Treats. I have been wanting to make these ever since I bought the book, and I was further inspired by Raspberri Cupcakes once again, with these adorable Heart Polka Dot Macarons & Vanilla Bean Blueberry Cupakes. I actually attempted to pipe heart shapes with the macarons but failed when they looked like deformed hearts. I'm going to stick with the regular round shapes for now until I perfect my piping skills. Using David Lebovitz's Devil's Food Cake recipe, I made a small batch of chocolate cupakes which were moist and chocolatey, perfect for pairing with mint.

The real star of the cupcakes are of course, the macarons which are filled with a lovely minty milk chocolate ganache. I used a bunch of fresh mint leaves I bought from the shop, just because I didn't have any peppermint extract on hand. The key to getting as much flavour from the mint possible is by letting the leaves infuse in the syrup for at least an hour. I let mine sit for about three hours, which was enough to bring out the minty-ness, but no too overwhelming as not to mask the flavour of the chocolate. And when it came to the macarons, I was sure to let them set until they formed a skin. But even that, a batch of the shells came out cracked and ugly. I was lucky to have another batch perfectly baked (maybe a tad over-baked) with feet and no cracks!

The frosting I used is new to me, and it is a cooked flour frosting from Tasty Kitchen that I actually wanted to try before I discovered the Best-ever-frosting. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for me as the mixture split and there was still lumps of flour present in the frosting. It also kind of melted a bit which did not hold its shape very well as shown on the cupcakes. However, it did taste delicious and wasn't too sweet or buttery at all, but I will go back to my favourite recipe for now as my go-to frosting.

Chocolate Cupcakes adapted from David Lebovitz's Devil's Food Cake.
Makes 10 cupcakes (double the recipe if you want 20 cupcakes)

Ingredients:
4 and a half tablespoons of cocoa powder
3/4 cup of cake flour (or plain flour)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/8 teaspoon of baking powder
57 grams of unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup of sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 cup of milk
1/4 cup of water

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F). Line a cupcake tray with cupcake liners.

2. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside. Mix the milk and water together in a bowl and set aside.

3. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes until fluffy and creamy. Add the egg and mix until combined.

4. Stir half of the flour mixture into the butter and add the milk and water to the batter. Stir in the other half of the flour mixture and mix until incorporated.

5. Fill the cupcake liners until half full. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cupcake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool in tray for 5 minutes, before placing the cupcakes on a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

Mint Chocolate Macarons adapted from Macarons: Chic and Delicious French Treats by Annie Rigg
Makes 20 macarons

Ingredients:
200 grams (1 and 1/2 cups) icing/confectioners'/powdered sugar
100 grams (2/3 cup) ground almonds
3 egg whites
3 tablespoons of sugar
30 grams (about 1 bunch) of fresh mint leaves
Extra 3 tablespoons of sugar
200 grams of dark/milk chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup of water
Green food colouring paste


Make the mint-infused ganache first,

1. Lightly crush the mint leaves with your hands and add it to the extra sugar and water in a small saucepan.

2. Slowly bring it to the boil until the sugar dissolves and then simmer for about 3 minutes. Remove it from the heat and let it infuse for at least 1 hour (The longer it infuses, the more mint flavour will come out).

3. Bring the mint syrup back to the boil and and then strain the leaves into a heatproof bowl. Immediately add the chocolate to the syrup and mix well until smooth and melted. Let the mixture cool before putting it in the fridge for it to set and thicken up slightly.

To make the macarons,

1. Sift icing sugar and ground almonds in a bowl and set aside.

2. Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer in a clean bowl with a pinch of salt. Whisk until it just holds a stiff peak.

3. Add the sugar to the meringue while beating at a medium-high speed a teaspoonful at a time. Mix well between each addition. Add the green food colouring to the mixture and stir well until the colour is evenly distributed.

4. Fold the icing sugar and almond mixture into the egg whites until incorporated and smooth.

5. Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe evenly sized circles of about 2 inches wide in diameter on a baking/parchment paper lined baking tray.

6. Tap the bottom of the baking trays sharply and leave the shells to set for about 1 hour or until they have set and formed a shell. They should not be sticky or wet when touched with your finger.

7. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (325 degrees F) while the macarons are drying. Bake the shells for about 10 minutes, until they are crisp and dry. Cool completely before filling with the ganache.

8. Take two similar sized shells and sandwich them together with the prepared mint ganache filling. Repeat with the rest of the shells.

Vanilla cooked flour frosting adapted from Tasty Kitchen
Double the recipe if you like lots of frosting

Ingredients:
2 and a half tablespoons of plain flour
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup of sugar
113 grams of unsalted butter
Green food gel colouring

Method:

1. Pour milk in a small saucepan and whisk the flour into the milk until combined.

2. Heat the mixture over a medium heat until it is very thick and creamy. Cool the mixture completely by letting it cool in the fridge or putting it over an ice bath.

3. Add vanilla extract to the cooled mixture and stir to combine.

4. Beat butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

5. Add the cooled flour mixture to the butter and whip on a medium-high speed until it looks like whipped cream. Add colouring and mix well to distribute the colour evenly.

To assemble the cupcakes, pipe a swirl with the frosting and top with a mint chocolate macaron.

White Vanilla Cake with Macarons

This may be one of the best cakes I've ever made. It's pretty, elegant and most of all, really delicious. And I made it within 3 hours, which was a mad rush to bake the cake layers, make the macarons, whip up the frosting, assemble the cake and frost the whole thing before my friends came over. I know, I should have planned it earlier and started a day ahead because my macarons didn't turn out right. I was devastated to see the poor, cracked with no crinkly feet macarons looking like mini whoopie pies when I took them out of the oven. But in the end I still used them, because they just tasted so good. I didn't let them set long enough to dry as I didn't have enough time. Lesson learned.

The main inspiration for the macaron topping came from the Balsamic Strawberry Butter Cake by Steph of Raspberri Cupcakes (I am her no.1 fan of her blog!). My cake is no where near as perfect as her cake (and all of her other amazing cakes) and I should have topped the cake with more macarons too. The frosting on the cake isn't super smooth because I didn't bother spending more time on that, and those air bubbles from whipping so much made it even harder to smooth out. Speaking of frosting, I used my go-to recipe: Perfect buttercream frosting, minus the cream cheese. This never lets me down and always impresses with its light and not-too-sweet whipped cream taste...yum.

For the cake, I used the recipe from Joy of Baking, which is great for me because it uses the egg whites and egg yolks. It is more complicated than just mixing the ingredients together, because you have to beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold it through the cake batter. But, it's totally worth it when it comes out of the oven, because it creates a beautiful light, moist and buttery crumb that tastes oh so vanilla. I also carefully increased the recipe by 1.5 times, so that I could have a third layer. And it turned out just as it should which made me really happy, unlike my attempt at a third layer on the Chocolate Delight Cake.

The macarons are the star on this cake even though they weren't as perfect as I had hoped. I recently bought the "Macarons Chic & Delicious French Treats" book by Annie Rigg from the bookstore, and it is an beautiful little book full of stunning pictures and ideas for making various flavours of macarons. I adapted one of the ideas to flick some red liquid food colouring on the unbaked macarons (a genius idea!), which gave it a Jackson Pollock effect. It gave it a pretty colour on an otherwise plain macaron. I was also going to make heart shaped macarons but I ended up piping the regular round shapes, so I'd love to try it the next time I make another batch.

White cake recipe adapted from Joy of Baking.

Makes one-3 layer 8 inch cake.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs, separated

262 grams cake flour (about 2 and 3/4 cups) or use plain flour and replace 4 tablespoons of the flour with cornflour

3 teaspoons of baking powder

1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon of salt

170 grams of unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 and 1/2 cups (300 grams) of sugar

1 and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

3/4 cup of milk

1/8 plus half of 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

Macarons recipe from 'Macaron Chic & Delicious French Treats' by Annie Rigg.

Makes about 20 filled macarons

Ingredients:

200 g (1 and 1/2 cups) icing/ confectioners'/ powdered sugar

100 g (2/3 cup) ground almonds

120-125 g egg whites (about 3 eggs)

a pinch of salt

3 tablespoons of sugar

For the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 177 degrees C (350 degrees F). Grease and line three 8 inch round cake tins with baking paper.

2. Separate the eggs, reserving both the egg yolks and egg whites and set aside in covered bowls.

3. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.

4. Beat butter with an electric mixer until soft and add 1 cup of the sugar. Continue to beat until creamy and fluffy.

5. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing after each addition and add the vanilla extract to beat until combined.

6. Add the flour mixture and milk in three additions, alternating between each to make sure the flour is added in the beginning and end.

7. Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl with an electric mixer until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat until soft peaks form.

8. Gradually add the remaining sugar (1/2 cup) and keep beating until it forms stiff peaks.

9. Gently fold a little of the egg whites in the cake batter with a rubber spatula and then add the rest, mixing until combined. Be careful not to overmix the batter otherwise it will deflate.

10. Evenly divide the batter between the three prepared cake tins (weigh the batter if you want to have exactly even layers) and bake in the preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted in the center is clean. Cool the cakes in the tins for 10 mins and let them completely cool. Cover the layers with plastic wrap and place them in a freezer for at least an hour to make it easier for assembly.

For the macarons:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (338 degrees F). Sift the icing sugar and ground almonds in a mixing bowl and set aside.

2. Whisk the egg whites with an electric mixer in a clean bowl. Add the salt and continue to beat until it just holds a stiff peak. Add the sugar a teaspoonful at a time and mix well between each addition. It should form a thick, white and glossy meringue.

3. Fold the icing sugar and ground almond mixture into the egg whites until combined and smooth.

4. Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe even circles on the baking/parchment paper lined baking trays, about 2 inches across in diameter.

5. Tap the bottom of the trays sharply to remove any large air bubbles. Dip a clean toothbrush in some red liquid food colouring and flick the bristles over the macarons to colour them (the food colouring may splash quite a bit).

6. Leave the macarons for at least 15 minutes to an hour, until they become dry and have set. They should not feel wet or sticky when tested with your finger.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes until the tops are crisp and the bottoms are dry. Let them cool completely after baking.

8. Fill the macarons with some buttercream, jam, ganache or frosting (I used some leftover frosting from the cake) and sandwich them together.

To assemble the cake,

1. Fill the cake with about 1/2 cup of frosting on each layer (I used my favourite buttercream frosting here), stacking them layer by layer and frosting the outside of the cake. Put it in the fridge to set for at least an hour. Top the cake with macarons just before serving and serve at room temperature.

Aqua macarons and a brand new blog!

Woohoo! I've finally decided to put myself together and create a new blog to share you my baking creations and adventures as well as my love of photography. To celebrate the grand opening of which I hope to be a successful blog in the future, I recently tried my first attempt at making macarons with a vanilla buttercream sandwiched between them. They're made with mainly almond meal and egg whites that are deliciously crunchy and chewy. If you have never made them before, I suggest that you should make them soon as they're so worth trying!

Here are the aqua macarons:

For the recipe, I decided to follow the instructions of the beautiful and amazing blog, Raspberri Cupcakes. The person behind this blog is Steph, a talented and creative baker known to making lots of macarons.

Instead of the piggy macarons which Steph made, I decided to just make simple round macarons as a first attempt and coloured them with blue and green food colouring for the aqua colour. You can definitely try combining different colours together but don't go too crazy on that!

Recipe from Raspberri Cupcakes:

Piggy Macarons

(makes approximately 10-15 fairly large macarons)
100g aged egg whites (you can use fresh eggs too, just make sure they are room temperature. I always use fresh these days, and zap it in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds)
110g almond meal, dried in a cool (100 degrees C) oven for 5 minutes and sifted
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
Optional: 1 tsp powdered egg whites (available from The Essential Ingredient)


Vanilla butter icing:
100g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
200g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste


To decorate: liquid black food colouring (available from the supermarket) or edible ink pens


Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Place icing sugar in food processor and pulse for a minute to remove any lumps. Stir in almond meal and pulse a few times to combine. Place in a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and egg white powder in a medium mixing bowl until the egg white powder dissolves and it reaches soft peaks. With the mixer on high speed, gradually add sugar and beat until it reaches stiff peaks.


Add meringue (and powdered food colouring) to your dry mixture and mix, quickly at first to break down the bubbles in the egg white, then fold carefully as the dry mixture becomes incorporated and it starts to become shiny again. Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds. Place in a piping bag and pipe rounds of about 4cm diameter on lined baking sheets or silicon baking mats. Gently rap your baking sheets on your bench top to remove any extra bubbles from your piped shells.


Leave shells on bench to dry for about 30 mins to an hour, so that when you press the surface of one gently it does not break. Take care not to disrupt the dried surface of the piped macaron rounds or it will be more likely to crack in the oven.


Preheat your oven to 140-150 degrees C (temperature varies depending on your oven) and dry for a further 30 mins to an hour. Place on top of an overturned roasting tray or another baking sheet if they are not professional grade. Bake for 13-15 minutes, depending on the size of your shells. Remove from the oven and cool on the tray for a few minutes, then gently remove from the sheet and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

To prepare the butter icing, remove butter from the fridge 30 minutes before starting. Beat butter on high speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar and vanilla bean paste until smooth and fluffy. Using a knife or spoon, sandwich between macaron shells, using one piggy decorated shell and one plain shell.  Leave to dry and then refrigerate overnight. Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days. Serve at room temperature.