Candy Bar, Strawberry Cake & A Dead Mixer

Apologies for the lack of posting. It's been pretty hectic the past few weeks with work and friends' weddings. Just this past Friday was Miss Ene's wedding and I was pretty tied up helping out as a jiemei and general planning. It was a great wedding and there were lots of fun moments! The full set of pics that I took are over on Facebook for those who are on my FB. Pulled out the below photos of the candy bar that I designed and set up for the happy couple :) I'm glad to see that people enjoyed it and there was hardly any candy leftover. Lots of kids on sugar high that night!

Finally got round to baking today. If you haven't noticed, yes I haven't made macarons in a while, nor even baked. I had wanted to make macarons but alas, once again the macaron gods are not in my favour. As I was separating the eggs last night, the stupid yolks slipped into the whites, which meant that the whites were tainted and won't whip well. I decided to just mix the yolks with the whites and find something else that will use whole eggs instead.

Inspired by the Patisserie Glace Strawberry Shortcake I had yesterday, I decided to do a strawberry cake. By the way, for those who've not gone to Patisserie Glace at Chinatown Plaza, you must!! It's got really yummy cakes! Anyway, so I bought some strawberries and attempted my very first layer cake. It was a good excuse to finally use the cake ring I bought.

I couldn't find a light strawberry sponge cake recipe that used whole eggs, since most of them called for beating the egg whites and yolks separately to maximise the volume of the cake. So I decided to just go with a Victoria sponge recipe in my James Martin Desserts cookbook, which I suppose was just a pound cake recipe (i.e. equal parts of butter, eggs, sugar, flour). I then whipped some cream with icing sugar to make the filling and spread it over the strawberry quarters.

Pardon my lack of cake decorative talent. I did have slightly more creative ideas but I didn't have enough whipped cream leftover to pipe a mound to plonk my strawberries on so I had to just stick them right onto the cake. The cake itself was a bit too heavy for my liking (I'm still dreaming of the airy light sponge cake from Patisserie Glace) and whipped cream melts pretty fast. One more thing to master - a good light sponge cake.

Oh... and I had so much trouble creaming the cake batter and whipping the cream using my handheld food processor whisk attachment. Why? Cos my Kenwood mixer has DIED on me. It refuses to turn on. The last time I used it, I had to cajole it for 15 min before it started. This time, when I turned it on initially, I heard a whir for maybe ONE second and it died... Sigh. And the warranty is over since I got it just about over a year ago during my birthday. Bah. Maybe it's time to finally invest in a Kitchenaid. Guess I can't really make anything for now, let alone macs. Boohoo.

Flowers for Juliana

Jul and I went flower shopping so that I can make her a bouquet for her photoshoot. Had a lot of flowers leftover so made 2 other arrangements.

I had planned for her bouquet to be mostly green with a little bit of pink, but the white roses turned out a lot more white than greenish. The bouquet was made up of lime green hydrangeas, kermit poms, viburnums, lime green argenteas, light pink ranunculus and white roses. Wrapped the stems in pink ribbon and finished it with some pearls for a more elegant look.

Uninspired

I've been quite uninspired of late to bake or go for flower classes or anything in particular. Maybe I'm burnt out. Or tired. Or both. Sadly many eggs, butter, macaron shells are sitting in the fridge unused. Been pretty pms-y and easily irritated.

I also really need to get my ass to the gym more as I'm rapidly putting on weight, no thanks to many good meals and slowing metabolism. Bah... growing OLD is no fun boo.

The Great Macaron Construction Adventures Part II (in pics)

As I mentioned, here are the pics from my last successful batch of macarons - Mango & Black Sesame flavours. Till the macaron gods smile on me again, savour these... was too lazy to set up nice backdrop...

Macaron Failure

I know I haven't blogged about Part II of the Great Macaron Adventure cos I've been lazy about putting up the pics. Those were pretty good tho a little chewy according to the taste testers. In fact they were my last successful batch of macarons. My last 2 batches have been catastrophic failures :( Ok, the one today wasn't that catastrophic but the one before that was super runny, no feet, cracked tops, wet, blobby. Whatever could go macawrong went macawrong. Today's one was overmixed slightly and thus spread and stuck to each other but at least they had feet (phew!).

The macaron gods must be not happy with me. I just can't seem to get the french meringue recipe down. The last successful batch had ratio of 1:1.3:1.7:0.6 eggwhite:almond meal:icing sugar:granulated sugar. Since comments were that it was too cakey/chewy, I followed another recipe which was more like 1:1:2:0.5 which meant it had a lot less almond and more sugar, which would hopefully make it lighter? I'm not sure whether I'm overmixing the batter, or perhaps I've got too much wet ingredients to dry ingredients ratio. 

Ahh... this is perplexing me. I need to GET. IT. RIGHT.

The Great Macaron Construction Adventure Part I

Yes, yet another macaron post. I actually lost half of the post due to my fat fingers. Anyway no pics today cos it's only Part I.

Due to the broken state of the eggs I bought the other day, I was forced to crack them all and store them in bowls, for almost immediate usage. I used 4 eggs that very night to make a batch of simple Vanilla Cupcakes and separated the other 4 into whites and yolks for, you guessed it, macarons!

So thanks to the aged egg whites I now had on hand, I tried my hand at French meringue macaron shells last night. I made yellow and grey shells, can you guess what flavour I'll be attempting this round? The shells had good feet and rose quite nicely, although the shells came out rather large at 5cm instead of 4cm cos I was a tad over-zealous in piping them. They also were a bit burnt. I really need to work at lowering the temperature but still getting the bottoms dry somehow. Anyway, after they were done, I popped them into the freezer, awaiting Assembly Day.

Today I embarked on second part of my macaron construction adventure. Despite searching valiantly for a mango puree/compote recipe, I could not find a single satisfactory nor comprehensive one. Most just said to puree the mangoes - which I felt would be too watery. Others, if it called for cooking, was to make jam i.e. a lot of sugar involved.

So I decided to improvise and adapt a recipe from an apricot compote. I diced, sliced, and ate some, mango. Added sugar, lemon juice and stirred away by the stove. Lo and behold, it started thickening and coming together quite nicely. I resisted the temptation to experiment with the pectin that I had newly bought, as I didn't really want it to set like a jam/jelly. However, I added too much lemon (1 lemon instead of the half I originally used cos I didn't want to waste the other half) and it's a little more tart than I like it. Cooled it and then popped it into the fridge. Still thinking if I should add it to a whipped cream filling (lighter, not so sweet) or a buttercream (which version? American, French, Swiss or Italian??)

Tomorrow I shall endeavour to make the other filling flavour. I didn't manage to buy the
ingredient I needed so will have to improvise again. Stay tuned for The Great Macaron Construction Adventure Part II!

Pistachio Macarons

Made some more macarons tonight - pistachio ones. Shells came out well at 150C@14min. I managed to reduce the sugar amount as well so they're not so sweet. I followed Cannelle et Vanille's Pistachio Buttercream recipe to make my filling (by the way, I adore her blog, and am very inspired by her photos and recipes!) which turned out a bit soft. That's my problem with buttercream always, it being soft at room temperature. I stuck it into the fridge to set, but how am I going to bring it around?