The Macaron

Yes, yes, I know. It's been a little while since I've  posted. Things have been hectic lately with the new job, all the snowboarding that needed to get done, and the little baking orders along the way. Posting just got away from me. So where do I begin. Let's dive right in with the bane of my baking existence then, shall we? The macaron is such a finicky little pain in the creation. Who the heck came up with such a high maintenance dessert? I swear, if you even look at them the wrong way, they will produce no feet. If you know macarons, you know the importance of proper feet. Read: feet = good. I know my feet are a bit uneven still, but I'm not unhappy with them. Um, that's probably enough talk about my feet...

In the beginning, I made lots of mistakes:

1. Using a thin, warped baking sheet. Go for good quality, thick & heavy, aluminum ones.
2. Parchment. I had trouble with this, but luckily, I went crazy buying multiple silicone mats at an after-Christmas sale one year. I © Silpat.
3. Over-mixing - I got a chewy, flat cookie that was impossible to get off the parchment.
4. Over-blending the almond/confections sugar in the food processor - I think I got some sort of gummy goo paste from the machine overheating the ingredients.

OK. Now that I've come clean of all things mistakes I've made and learned from, I can say that I've had much success the past few times with the Italian meringue method. As if making these cookies wasn't stressful enough, you get to make syrup to incorporate into your perfectly peaked egg whites too. This method will produce beautifully domed shells for you. For me, only the rear half of my baking sheet will yield gorgeous shells as my oven is around 30 years old, is typically 50°F too hot, doesn't close properly nor has a door handle. No matter. It's probably a good thing. A convection oven is the only standing between me and a complete obsessive compulsive baking disorder.

I've searched high and low for a good tutorial and Mrs. Humble has the best one. She breaks it down to a science... literally. Her tutorial is complete with scatter plots and comparisons of ingredients adjusted by time, mass and temperature. I could have been in Biochem lab really. So I'm not going to post a recipe or instructions, because really, who am I to be telling anyone else how to make macarons.  But if you are having trouble making them, check out the tutorial. It changed my life.

Anyone for a game of Chess?

Why don't you put on your smoking jacket, sit by the fire in your wing-backed chair with brandy snifter in hand, and enjoy an engaging round of chess while your Great Dane slumbers at your feet. You go and do that. I'll be here, playing checkers, hangin out with my pudgy piggy-dog, who snorts and makes paddling motions in her sleep.

These checkerboard cookies are both casual and elegant, simple and complex. It takes some tactile competence to get all the squares in place, but the easy party is being able to make them ahead of time. In fact, I might have forgotten this cookie dough in the freezer for almost a month. Hey, that still counts as fresh baked! They keep really well and have a great buttery flavor and isn't overly sweet - perfect for tea time.

The only catch is, if you're in the mood for something right now, this isn't it. You have to mix the dough and let it chill. Then you roll the dough, chill it some more. Cut into strips and layer into a log, chill it some more.  And if you have a large enough attention span to not forget the completely chilled out dough in the freezer, the easiest and funnest part is slicing up the log to reveal the patten inside. I thawed the cookie dough log in the fridge overnight and then used a super sharp knife to slice and immediately bake. That's as fast as buying pre-made cookie dough in tubes from the supermarket. (I've heard they have such things for sale out there nowadays!)  See? I did it on purpose.



I'll draw you a diagram and give you a blow by blow of how to assemble the checkerboard Baking Obsession does a great job of explaining the assembly, complete with Ikea instructions flow chart.

Let Them Eat Cake

There's something formal about cake that makes it so special. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the down to earth cupcake. But the celebration cake is so exclusive and ceremonious.  You can't just grab a piece without doing the whole presenting, maybe some singing and then the cutting by a designated person. And then once it's been cut, you've got to pass the slices around and wait for yours, and hope you don't get jipped with a smallish slice. You possibly grab a second slice if no one's paying attention, and sneak a third for a midnight snack if your lucky enough to take some home. You hide that piece from whomever lives at home with you. Stick it way back in the fridge, push cartons of milk and heads of lettuce in front of it. So you can have the perfectly proportioned layers of cake and frosting later, and not share... Hypothetically speaking. But I digress.

I love the fussiness of it all, and I wanted to try doing a frilly cake with royal icing and fondant. I'm not a huge fan of the cliched fondant covered cake because I love my Swiss meringue buttercream. However, you just can't deny the clean, elegant look you that comes with a pale colored fondant backdrop contrasted to a crisp white ornate piped royal icing.

The gorgeous Martha-Stewart-esque wedding cakes in all the bridal magazines have always made me want to attempt doing one. So here it is. My attempt. It's so much harder than it I thought it would be. Try to ignore the smudges and the crooked lines. I'll do better next time, Kerry Vincent. Practice makes perfect.

The cake itself is chocolate and red velvet vertical layers. You can see how i am baker does it. It's spectacular if you chose cakes that really contrast in color such as vanilla and chocolate.  I frosted with a thin layer of Swiss meringue buttercream (you knew I had to work that in) and covered with some homemade marshmallow fondant. You'd better believe I ate that slice as soon as I put the camera down. The cake smelled amazing. I must say, however, my heart still belongs to Swiss meringue buttercream, if I get to have my cake and eat it too.

Cake of Roses

Happy Monday! Here's just a random bouquet of pink roses. Aren't they pretty? Oh, is it Valentine's Day too? Ok fine. Happy Valentine's Day! I suppose they could pass for a Valentine's cake - if you do that sort of thing.

But I think I would love to see this cake on any day of the year. Even if there isn't chocolate and red velvet vertical layers inside. But who's even thinking of what's insde (more on that in another post). Plus, I don't get to cut into this cake because it's for a birthday... which juuuust happens to be on Valentine's day.

I think the roses would look just as amazing in ivory, for a bridal occasion. This decoration is actually deceptively easy and fun. I just used a large star tip and made circles starting from the center of the rose and going around twice. You can find the tutorial from i am baker.

My little Valentine <3...