The Macaron Chronicles... Part 1

So the macaron scene is blowing up. Cupcakes are so yesterday.

Whatever, I always like a challenge. Apparently they are really hard to make. Challenge accepted.

Yvonne told me that she attempted it 16 times and failed 16 times. That kinda scared me from making it and I resisted for a bit. But then I promised to make Miss Anna Banana a farewell cake and it was a cake for her and Josh. And therefore, it had to be (well, should be unisex). Her words to me were "If all fails, make a pink cake".

I came across this cake, from make-fabulous-cakes.com and I thought that it was amazing! While it was pink and girly, I thought that it was elegant and fabulous enough to get me over the line. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to attempt macarons. No time like the present though!

Photo credit

So first, as with most things, I did my research. I watched some "How to make macarons" videos on youtube, and went looking for a recipe. I finally found some for some chocolate macarons (I decided to make a pink cake with chocolate macarons as I didn't have any pink food colouring) and I found this recipe from David Lebowitz's website. The taste of the batter was delicious! And the end taste was delicious as well. Unfortunately, the macarons failed because:

a) I could not follow a simple instruction; and
b) I adopted the Australian "She'll be right" approach.

The result was an epic fail. They were starting to show some feet though - so I must try again.

Cracks and the tiniest sign of feet - hmmmm....

So why does my macaron have this shape? It was because I only had the swirly nozzle, so I thought that it would be fine to use. As you can see from the photo, it was NOT.

I liked the taste though.

My second attempt was thwarted by a rogue oven, who refused to work (but if I wanted to tell the truth, I stuffed up the timer). All I got were rock hard chocolate buttons and I nearly took out a tooth tasting it!

Hard. As. Rocks.

So is third time the charm? Sort of. Once again, the stupid nozzle got the better of me. I had the tiniest nozzle and I had massive problems trying to squeeze the batter out (which could be an indication of crap batter, but this was the same recipe as the first one - and it was delicious!). So my patience got the better of me, so I ditched the piping bag and grabbed a couple of spoons ( I don't actually know why I think that my method would be better than proven tried and tested methods!!!) and plonked them on the baking tray. And behold. They failed too.

Although two of them (which I piped with great difficulty through a stupid tiny nozzle) grew feet! Looks like I have to attempt it one more time!!!

Photographic evidence:

Feet! They have feet!!!

It better work on my fourth try.

Oh, and in case you guys are wondering - this was the farewell cake I ended up making (sorry Josh, but I did put a blue ribbon for you!)





Dead easy cupcakes...

I can actually say that this cupcake recipe is dead easy because we made nearly 200 mini versions of these cupcakes for my engagement party! I have included a photo of the cupcakes we made right at the end of this post. I made the little sugar hearts - just a matter of rolling out coloured gumpaste and using a little heart-shaped cookie cutter.

This recipe has everything that I like in a recipe - quick prep, few ingredients. Perfect recipe, for a kid's first baking project. I thought that I would share this recipe on here as Elizah has been asking me for it!

Lizah - I've put it on this blog because I know if I text it to you, you will lose it again!

Enjoy!

CELEBRATION CUPCAKES

Ingredients

2 cups of self-raising flour

3/4 cup caster sugar

3/4 cup milk (as usual, I used low fat as that's what I have handy at home)

125 melted butter, cooled

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence (I think this is optional - I only use it if I have it handy)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Combine the flour and caster sugar in a bowl.

Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essenve (I just chuck them all in at once)

Stir gently to combine.

Spoon into the cupcake tray

Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Rachel's baby shower cake

So I made this cake for Rachel's baby shower. To be honest, I was quite pleased with it, even though making it was one of the most frustrating processes ever. Cake decoration is never easy and a small kitchen does not help! Either which way, I completely blame the gum paste. It was way too moist and soft and it was just too difficult to manipulate it in the way I wanted to. So while the Copha (copha cabana... that song ALWAYS pops into my head everytime I say Copha. And YES, I know the song is COPA Cabana!) helped alot, I think I got over-excited and used too much of it. My new resolution? Plans my cakes way way way ahead.... colour the gumpaste ahead of time and where possible, make the figurines ahead of time too.

Suppose a baby mouse would have to do!!

For this cake I originally envisioned some baby shoes and a baby giraffe - but then I forgot to print the template for the baby shoes and Luke had gone to bed (the printer is in Luke's room) and then I didn't have any brown food colouring or the materials to make modelling chocolate, so I couldn't make the giraffe either. I didn't know the gender of the baby which makes it a little most difficult to make the cake, but hey, I'm always up for the challenge!



I flipped through the Cake Characters book that Yvonne gave me for my birthday last year, and found a few things I could use. I had made the baby blankie before for Luke's 30th, but because the gum paste was so soft and sticky, it took me an hour to get it right. An HOUR! For the baby blankie, which was the EASIEST thing to make!

Anyway, it all worked out well. For the cake, I made a Chocolate Dump-It Cake with a jammy filling and chocolate frosting. I got the recipe from Honor, who is an absolute baking whiz. She made this cake for a birthday morning tea at work and it was to DIE for!! My cake didn't turn out quite like hers, but I think the taste was almost there. Rachel told me that they all enjoyed it and that she wanted the recipe. The recipe below:

CHOCOLATE DUMP-IT CAKE

Ingredients for the cake

2 cups of sugar

113g of unsweetened chocolate

113g of unsalted butter

1 cup of water

2 cups of plain flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup whole milk (I used low fat though as that was what I had at home)

1 tsp cider vinegar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Pre heat the oven to 190 degrees celcius.

Mix the sugar chocolate, butter and water in the saucepan, place over medium heat and stir occasionally until all of the ingredients are melted and blended.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl stir together milk and vinegar.

Once the chocolate mixture has cooled abit, whisk in the milk mixture and eggs.

Add the dry ingredients - DO NOT OVERMIX.

Pop into the oven for 30-35 mins.

For the frosting, mix 1.5 cups of chocolate chips (melt them) with 1.5 cups of sour cream.

And because I didn't have brown food colouring or modelling chocolate, I decided to make a white teddy bear

Even though it took me forever to make the little figurines, I was pretty pleased with the cake. For once, laying the fondant wasn't a drama, the only downside of that was that I poked a hole in the fondant when I was cutting the sides, which I was pretty annoyed about. But hey, it was 4 in the morning and I was tired! :)

Cutting the letters was hard!!! I think I'm going to get some little alphabet cutters. And for the future, I'm not going to use the black on these colours - it was way too dark.

Hope you liked the cake Rachel!!!