Blueberry, cotton candy and mango macarons

Macarons – Teal, Purple, Yellow, a set on Flickr.

What would you do if you had green and pink coloured macarons in the freezer? What kind of photo would you want to build next?

Well naturally I wanted to do a ‘rainbow macarons’ photo.

So I need to start hogging the best shaped macarons for my photo shoot and start making more for this to work!

This was my plan:

Red: [not going to reveal this yet as this is going to be a special one]

Orange: orange

Yellow: mango

Green: mint chocolate chip

Blue: blueberry

Purple: cotton candy

This time I decided to tackle blueberry, cotton candy and mango.

I’ve used my normal macarons recipe, as below.

Macarons shell ingredients (for each colour)

150 g icing sugar

150 g almond meal

110 g egg whites, split into 2 bowls of 55g each

150 g caster sugar

38 ml water

1 g meringue powder

a few drops of gel colourings

Making macarons shells

Sift the almond meal and icing sugar, set aside in a large wide bowl.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your stand mixer.

Clip the sugar thermometer according to manufacturer’s instructions to a milk saucepan, put the water and caster sugar in and dissolve the sugar over a low heat. Leave it to heat up and don’t stir it.

Cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 70°C. You should monitor your sugar thermometer, and as it reaches this temperature, add the gel colourings and add the meringue powder to the egg whites and whisk in medium speed until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, keep the mixer speed on medium and slowly trickle the sugar syrup in, down the side of the bowl. (Be warned not to get the syrup onto the whisk as you will then have spun sugar.) Increase speed to high and whisk until the bowl is warm to touch, about 8 minutes.

Add the second lot of egg whites to the almond meal mix, then add the meringue and use a large spatula to thoroughly combine it. Continue mixing the mixture to soften the meringue. Don’t be afraid to slap the mixture down.To achieve “macaronnage”, I mixed the batter about 25 times. Don’t over do this.

[this is a picture from my other macarons recipe, showing the same stage]

Scoop half into a piping bag fitted with a #12 Wilton tip, and pipe. To get even rounds, hold the piping bag above the baking sheet, with the tip at a 45 degree angle. Squeeze the mixture in the centre of the rounds and as it is close to filling the circle, stop squeezing and flick the tip from three o’clock to 6 o’clock. This ensures a smooth top.

Allow 30 minutes for a skin to be formed.

Fan-bake them at 125°C, for 20 minutes. After a few minutes in the oven, you should see them rising nicely.

Once out of the oven, the macarons were left for 2 minutes on its trays before I checked them. They should peel off the baking paper quite easily. Slide the whole sheet off the baking sheet onto a cool counter top. This causes a thermal shock and will make it even easier to peel off.

I paired these with a dark chocolate ganache of different flavours

Filling Ingredients:

250g white chocolate

125ml cream

3 drops each of blueberry, cotton candy and mango oil flavouring

Instructions:

Break up chocolate into small chunks. Bring cream up to a boil in a pan, and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit for a minute before stirring. Let it cool, and pour into 3 separate bowls. Add 3 drops of flavouring into each bowl and let it thicken in the fridge.

Spread a teaspoon of ganache on half of your shells and top them with the remaining half of your shells.

The filled macarons need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! These freeze well (up to 3 months).

yellow and purple macarons with white chocolate ganache and mango flavouring

teal, purple and yellow macarons on white porcelain egg case

teal, purple and yellow macarons on white porcelain egg case and white cake stand

I’m completely in love with this colour combination – so what do you think?

Lemon Slice

I’ve been challenging myself to do different things in the kitchen. I’ve never really been into slices and I thought I should start with some basic and simple recipes. Since I have cans of condensed milk and lemons at home, I thought to give this recipe a try. It turned out quite nicely and this is definitely a welcomed change from the long hours spent in the kitchen for my macaron production.

Ingredients

Base
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
150 g unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk, 400g
3 eggs
1 tbsp lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
3 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup icing sugar, for dusting

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line a 18cm x 28cm slice tray or lamington pan.

2. Combine ingredients for base, mix well. Press mixture into pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

3. Place Sweetened Condensed Milk and eggs in a bowl, beat well. Add lemon zest and juice, extra flour and baking powder, beat until combined. Pour over base. Return to oven, bake a further 25-30 minutes until topping is set.

4. Allow to cool in pan, refrigerate. Cut into squares and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

Maltesers slice

Finally, a recipe that ticks all (almost) the boxes for J to do by herself. With the exception of handling the hot melting ingredients, she did these by herself. I’m so proud!

Ingredients

• 100 grams butter
• 400 grams dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup condensed milk
• 250 grams digestive biscuits (finely crushed)
• 250 grams maltesers (enough to dot over the surface of your pan or tin)

Method

1. Place biscuits in a zip lock bag, and bash them into smithereens. J did this in mere minutes.
2. While that is happening, melt together the butter, chocolate and condensed milk in a heavy-based saucepan, then add the crushed biscuits.
3. Mix together quickly then pour into a lined swiss roll tin.
4. Strategically place whole maltesers on the surface of the mixture.
5. Chill, and cut into squares for serving.

It was so easy and quick, delicious too!

Super easy, child-friendly (but not quite healthy) chocolate mousse

This chocolate mousse recipe was adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Instant Chocolate Mousse. I’ve found that I need a higher cream to chocolate ratio for a more pourable mixture resulting in a silky smooth mousse. This is really quite indulgent and melt-in-your-mouth. What I like about this recipe is there is not much waiting time and is fairly easy to do. It also doesn’t involve raw eggs, hence I wrote ‘child-friendly’ in the title. It is certainly NOT quite healthy as there are large quantities of cream and chocolate involved, so I suggest you make your portions really small. With vessel availability and fridge space in mind, I divided this recipe up into 10 serves. I even go halfs with my daughter! Remember, the better quality chocolate you use, the better the experience!

Ingredients
150 g mini marshmallows
50 g butter
250 g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), I use Valrhona or Callebaut callets
60 ml hot water
320 ml fresh cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste

Method

Put the mini marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan.
Put the saucepan over gentle heat to melt the contents, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat to cool.
Meanwhile, whip the cream with the vanilla paste until thick, and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.
Pour into 10 small glasses or ramekins, and chill until set.

This one is styled by J:

Watermelon, Raspberry and Mint chocolate chip macarons

pink and green macarons on white cake stand

I was being rather greedy one night – instead of just making a single flavour of macarons, I decided I should go all out and see how many I can churn out with only one or two coloured shells.

Deciding that I should go with what I have in the fridge, I checked and found half a wedge of watermelon, a punnet of fresh raspberries and half a container of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I know I know, there is absolutely no connection in those ingredients and can’t see that anyone would attempt to plate up a dish with those things in it, together. Fruit salad and some ice cream maybe? Anyway that wasn’t where I was going.

green macarons on black cake stand with mint leaves and chocolate pearls

The inspiration I got here was for the macaron flavourings.  I know I maybe cheating here but I got fed up with my blueberry macarons not tasting like blueberries despite the large quantites of blueberries I had added into my filling. So I went and got oil flavourings to see if the intense nature of the oil would give the macaron filling a much needed boost in taste. Since I only have 3 hours to do this, I could only do two colours of shells.

pink and green watermelon macarons

Here’s my thinking around the three ingredients:

• Watermelon – pink and green
• Raspberries – pink
• Mint chocolate chip – green

There. By colouring my meringue in pink and green, I will have matching shells for three different flavours!

pink raspberry macarons on white cake stand

I’ve used my normal macarons recipe, as below.

Macarons shell ingredients (for each colour)
150 g icing sugar
150 g almond meal
110 g egg whites, split into 2 bowls of 55g each
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water
1 g meringue powder

Making macarons shells

Sift the almond meal and icing sugar, set aside in a large wide bowl.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your stand mixer.
Clip the sugar thermometer according to manufacturer’s instructions to a milk saucepan, put the water and caster sugar in and dissolve the sugar over a low heat. Leave it to heat up and don’t stir it.

Cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 70°C. You should monitor your sugar thermometer, and as it reaches this temperature, add the meringue powder to the egg whites and whisk in medium speed until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, keep the mixer speed on medium and slowly trickle the sugar syrup in, down the side of the bowl. (Be warned not to get the syrup onto the whisk as you will then have spun sugar.) Increase speed to high and whisk until the bowl is warm to touch, about 8 minutes.

Add the second lot of egg whites to the almond meal mix, then add the meringue and use a large spatula to thoroughly combine it. Continue mixing the mixture to soften the meringue. Don’t be afraid to slap the mixture down.To achieve “macaronnage”, I mixed the batter about 25 times. Don’t over do this.

[this is a picture from my other macarons recipe, showing the same stage]

Scoop half into a piping bag fitted with a #12 Wilton tip, and pipe. To get even rounds, hold the piping bag above the baking sheet, with the tip at a 45 degree angle. Squeeze the mixture in the centre of the rounds and as it is close to filling the circle, stop squeezing and flick the tip from three o’clock to 6 o’clock. This ensures a smooth top.

Allow 30 minutes for a skin to be formed.

Fan-bake them at 125°C, for 20 minutes. After a few minutes in the oven, you should see them rising nicely.

Once out of the oven, the macarons were left for 2 minutes on its trays before I checked them. They should peel off the baking paper quite easily. Slide the whole sheet off the baking sheet onto a cool counter top. This causes a thermal shock and will make it even easier to peel off.

I paired these with a dark chocolate ganache of different flavours

pink and green watermelon macarons on white cake stand

Filling Ingredients:
150g dark chocolate
150ml cream

3 drops each of watermelon/ raspberry / mint chocolate chip oil flavouring

Instructions:
Break up chocolate into small chunks. Bring cream up to a boil in a pan, and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit for a minute before stirring. Let it cool, and poor into 3 separate bowls. Add 3 drops of flavouring into each bowl and let it thicken in the fridge.

Spread a teaspoon of ganache on half of your shells and top them with the remaining half of your shells.

The filled macarons need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! These freeze well (up to 3 months).

Hundred flower chicken – 百花鸡 – Chinese New Year prawn cake

A hundred young chickens? Or a new species of chicken called ‘hundred flower’ that is being cooked here? Don’t be fooled. I’ll let you in on a secret: There is no chicken in this except the skin and the hero of the dish is prawn actually.
I’m sure if you google this you will find some mythical story behind the birth of this dish, involving some ancient Chinese palace kitchen maid who was forced to create something for the king who has demanded a new dish or else heads will roll. Said maid thought long and hard and came up with such a dish – crispy on the outside and springy on the inside. King loved it and everyone was saved. The End. Anyway they all seem to have similar stories like that.
This isn’t one of those recipes that then passed from the palace kitchen to the general populace, from one generation to another in the family home. At least not to our family home. It was a case of ‘wow that’s an expensive dish! Should we try to make it at home with ingredients on hand?’
My mum went about trying it and it became one of those special dishes we do for special occasions or guests. I’ve simplified it a bit here by removing the crushed cashews – they just burn too easily and I reckon I could save on the calories for dessert instead!

Ingredients:
500g raw prawn cutlets
1 ‘sheet’ of chicken skin from two chicken breasts (tear the skin off a double chicken breast)

Marinade:
2 tsp chicken powder
2 tbsp mirin
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp ground white pepper
1.5 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp cornflour (corn starch)

Drain excess water from prawns and tip them onto a chopping board.
Stand tall, roll your shoulders back and prepare yourself (well your arms at least) for a good workout. Using first 1 knife chop the cutlets small. Best to use a chefy technique where you hold the tip of the knife down with your left hand while moving the blade up and down with your right.

When they have been all chopped, proceed to use two knives to give the prawn meat a good hammering. This is also good for your mind as you channel all your negative energy into moving your arms and mincing the prawns.

Scrape the flattened prawn meat into a heap and give it another hammering.

Repeat for a few times until you feel calm and all zen-like. I would suggest 4-5 times is enough. If not, you may benefit from some kick boxing classes!!

Put the prawn meat into a bowl and add the marinade in. Give it a few crazy stirs and when your arms are tired, leave it for 10 minutes.

Dry the chicken skin and pat a good amount of cornflour on the inside of the skin, covering it all over.

Using a large soup spoon, smear the prawn meat onto the chicken skin. Smooth it down and even. Now you have a large pattie.

Heat the pan up and add a tiny teaspoon of oil. When it is hot, place the pattie in, skin side down.

Pan fry for 1 minute on high and then 2 minutes on medium, till golden. Turn over and fry for another 3 minutes. Watch it to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Remove from pan and cool on some kitchen paper. (the edges look a bit dark and it is really just the lighting!)

Slice and plate up.

Served here with some magic sauce – better known to most children as tomato sauce.
Wish you all a joyful and bountiful year of the Snake! (like what I did with the sauce squiggle?)

Ps. If I ever have the guts to apply for a spot in Masterchef, this would be my audition dish!!

Toblerone macarons

I think I struck gold when I heard S say “oh how I miss black Toblerone…”. We were talking about how the Toblerone fairy had been visiting work and I was also wondering what macaron flavour I should try next (I haven’t repeated once since I started making them at the start of 2012. There’s always a slight variation.)

Hmm dark chocolate laced with crushed nuts, classic! Easy too as all I need to make for the filling is to melt the chocolate bar with the cream.

I’ve used a subtle chocolate flavour shell to let the filling stand out. I think it screams Toblerone, I wonder what my colleagues will think?

Macarons shell ingredients
150 g icing sugar
140 g almond meal
10g valrhona cocoa powder
110 g egg whites, split into 2 bowls of 55g each
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water
1 g meringue powder

Making macarons shells

Sift the almond meal, icing sugar and cocoa powder, set aside in a large wide bowl.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your stand mixer.
Clip the sugar thermometer according to manufacturer’s instructions to a milk saucepan, put the water and caster sugar in and dissolve the sugar over a low heat. Leave it to heat up and don’t stir it.

Cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 70°C. You should monitor your sugar thermometer, and as it reaches this temperature, add the meringue powder to the egg whites and whisk in medium speed until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, keep the mixer speed on medium and slowly trickle the sugar syrup in, down the side of the bowl. (Be warned not to get the syrup onto the whisk as you will then have spun sugar.) Increase speed to high and whisk until the bowl is warm to touch, about 8 minutes.

Add the second lot of egg whites to the almond meal mix, then add the meringue and use a large spatula to thoroughly combine it. Continue mixing the mixture to soften the meringue. Don’t be afraid to slap the mixture down.To achieve “macaronnage”, I mixed the batter about 25 times. Don’t over do this.

Scoop half into a piping bag fitted with a #12 Wilton tip, and pipe. To get even rounds, I hold the piping bag above the baking sheet, with the tip at a 45 degree angle. I squeeze the mixture in the centre of my rounds and as it is close to filling my circle, I stop squeezing and flick the tip from three o’clock to 6 o’clock. This ensures a smooth top.

You can sift some cocoa powder on the tops too if you wish.

Allow 30 minutes for a skin to be formed.

Fan-bake them at 125°C, for 20 minutes. After a few minutes in the oven, I could see them rising nicely.

Once out of the oven, the macarons were left for 2 minutes on its trays before I checked them. They peeled off the baking paper quite easily. I then slid the whole sheet off the baking sheet onto my cool marble counter top. This causes a thermal shock and will make it even easier to peel off.

I paired these with a dark Toblerone ganache.

Filling Ingredients:
150g Dark Toblerone
150ml cream

Instructions:
Break up Toblerone into small chunks. Bring cream up to a boil in a pan, and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit for a minute before stirring. Let it cool and thicken in the fridge.

Spread a teaspoon of ganache on half of your shells and top them with the remaining half of your shells.

The filled macarons need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! These freeze well (up to 3 months).