Mad about Macs!

Since my husband bought me a new oven, I've been much more enthusiastic about baking... cakes, cookies, bars, and even brought me to venture to making roast chicken, pot roast, etc. But one thing that I've been dying to experiment was making macarons.

In the past 2 1/2 years that I've lived in Indonesia, I've tried making macarons several times prior to my new oven and 8 out of 10 came out disastrous. My old oven was small and has a mind on its own when it comes to temperature. Although my new oven is not a convection oven in which one can set and maintain temperature, it's been great! I did have to do a few test runs that resulted in failed macarons, but I finally got the right formula for my oven!

Since then, I've been in macaron madness for the past month!

I'm very happy to say that now I'm not afraid of making macarons anymore. In fact, it's such a joy watching the little feet develop in the oven.

Here's the macaron recipe that I used:
(adapted from Laduree Sucre)

68g almond powder
62g powdered sugar
50g egg whites
50g granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Sift almond powder and powdered sugar together and set aside. In a very clean bowl, whip the egg whites until foamy and then slowly add in the granulated sugar. If you want to add coloring, add it now. Add the almond mixture to the meringue all at once and fold the mixture using a spatula until the batter is shiny and has the consistency of lava. Pipe the batter on a silpat or parchment paper and leave to dry for about 20 minutes (depending on the humidity, the time will vary). Bake for about 15 minutes. Once done, remove from the oven and let it cool to room temperature before attempting to remove the macarons from the silpat or parchment.

For the filling, go wild! I've used ganache, buttercream, jams, peanut butter... whatever you feel like eating :)

Enjoy!

Lemon Butter Cookies

Thinking about baking makes me happy. Reading good cookbooks makes me happy too. Actually being able to bake something good makes me ecstatic! :)

That is the case with these little rounds of buttery goodness. Since I love my Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, I went ahead and purchased abother baking book by Dorie called Paris Sweets. This book is different in that there were no photographs of the desserts at all but instead, Dorie shared stories of the different pastry shops where the recipes were born. :)
Since work has been really busy these few weeks, I haven't had a chance to try the more elaborate recipes from the book. So I picked this lemon butter cookies recipe to try last Friday. The recipe is really simple and Dorie's instructions are always very clear. So I followed the directions step by step and I am VERY satisfied with the results. :)

The cookies crumbles pretty easily. They are not too sweet and when you bite into it, it almost felt like they were melting in your mouth. Yumm! I didn't have the book right in front of me now, so I don't have the recipe to share. But if anyone is interested, let me know. :)

PS: the pictures are courtesy of Alvin. :)

Introducing Two Bites

October is nearing to an end and if you look at the number of blog posts I have this month, it looked like I haven't been baking much at all. Although it is true that I've been trying to cut back on the amount of time I spent baking, I still baked a fair share of cakes and cookies. But since they're simple cakes (like Chiffon or pound cake or black forest cake) that I've blogged about before, I decided to keep them to myself. :p

During the low period in October, several major events happened to the baking aspect of my life. First is the wedding favors that I made for our Pastor's 25th wedding anniversary:


I made about 200 of these cupcake pops as their edible wedding favors. :) This was a very interesting task for me because of many reasons: (a) we're talking about quite a large quantity, (b) it's for my pastor's 25th anniversary, and (c) it's my first "experience" of what it would be to open up my own place.

I started preparing for the cupcakes pops one week before the anniversary. My work had been demanding a lot of my time then (and now still) and so I had no choice but to bake late at night and pull 2:30AM nights in order to finish the order. The strange thing is that I didn't feel tired a all baking the cakes, making the frosting, crumbling the cake, rolling them into cake balls, shaping them into cupcakes, dipping them into chocolates and wrapping them up in their plastics. :) In fact, I felt very energized. It felt like my endorphin levels are high! By the time I wrapped the last of the cupcake pops (with the help of Alvin), I felt very accomplished. :)

Alvin and I couldn't make it to the party since we had to fly to San Jose for our bridal shower; so I didn't get a chance to gauge people's reaction to the mini delight. I just hope that my little pops were well received and well loved. :p

The second big thing that happened this month is two bites.

For now, two bites is an idea, a concept, and a dream.

The idea is mini bite-size desserts that are irresistible.

The concept is two fold: is a small cozy shop that serves mini desserts that are to be enjoyed with a good cup of tea and an ounce of conversations as well as catering for edible favors for weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and more.

The dream is for me to bring the idea and concept together as a reality in my life. :)

I need to be praying about this more seriously. I need to be planning about this more realistically. I need to be practicing more often.

If you have any comments/suggestions/ideas about this, please let me know. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated. :)