Monday, January 3, 2011

Matcha & Yokan Macarons


AKA the most time consuming macarons EVER.    Each mac took probably 3 - 7 minutes to pipe.  I am pretty happy with how they turned out though.  And the filling is GOOOOD!

I was inspired by a japanese red bean dessert called yokan.  Every year around the holidays my mom gets little boxes of goodies sent to her by her family and friends in japan.  Quite often yokan is included from a famous shop in Tokyo that my mom claims is the "best."  This year there was a little 3 pack that included plain, water chestnut, and green tea.  My mom let me pick one to bring home with me and I picked green tea, yum!

Anyway, I've been wanting to to a matcha macaron for a while and this dessert reminded me of that.  So for the filling I decided to do a matcha white chocolate ganache with a little square of plain yokan in the middle.


The resting macs..

To be honest for the ganache, I sorta winged it.  I had only part of a bar of white chocolate in the apartment, so I weighed it and it came out to 85 grams.  I poured 1/4 a cup of boiling cream over it and stirred them together with a spatula.  After the chocolate and cream were completely incorporated, I added about 3 tablespoons of matcha power (you can do this to taste) and stirred to combine.  After the mixture was cooled I beat it together with half a stick of room temp butter to give it some extra creaminess and to lighten the color a bit (it was a really dark army green).

And thats it!  Tasted like high quality green tea ice cream.  You could barely taste the white chocolate, it just gave off a small hint of sweetness.  Luckily I have some extra that may or may not be eaten with a spoon in about 5 minutes...

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Vanilla Olive Oil & Balsamic Caramel Macarons


About a week ago, I had some leftover white chocolate and saw this interesting recipe over here for Pierre Herme's olive oil and vanilla ganache. So of course I had to try it! Honestly, I found it very... interesting. The olive oil flavor came through very strongly! I didnt think it was bad at all and I actually would keep going back to taste and re-taste it. But, I didnt have that "Mmmmm" feeling when I bit into the Macaron. Well, then I became very busy with other Holiday stuff and stuck the ganache in the fridge for later.

Then, I came across MacTweets' challenge for the month - a savory sweet macaron! It got me thinking about the olive oil ganache again. An idea began to form. I realized that while I dont mind dipping some good french bread into some nice olive oil, its never as good plain as with a sprinkling of sea salt in the olive oil or some balsamic vinegar.

So here are my olive oil macarons v.2!



After piping the olive oil ganache I sprinkled on some sea salt and then mixed some balsamic vinegar into some salted caramel buttercream and piped it into the center.



I actually really did enjoy it! I thought I was just weird and offered some to my family and they all actually said they liked it. I guess it was a sucess!

The ganache recipe can be found at the above link.

Salted Caramel Buttercream
200g sugar
1 vanilla pod
200g cream
3.75g fleur de sel
1 cup butter, room temp

In a heavy pan or pot, wet sugar with a little water and heat over a medium-high heat. Meanwhile, boil the cream and have it standing by. Continue to cook the sugar until there is an even caramel color throughout. Whisk in the cream, vanilla and salt until well combined. Remove from heat and stir in butter. Chill until thickened, then beat with an electric mixer. To create the balsamic caramel, I just took a couple spoonfuls of the caramel and stirred in a couple splashes of balsamic to taste. Go slowly, remember how strong balsamic vinegar can be!

Happy Happy Happy Holidays!

Photo Post!

Just some holiday pictures! Later today or tommorow I'll post my mactweets entry, a vanilla-olive oil with balsamic carmel ganache mac. These pictures are courtesy of Jason Chen!






Close-ups!







annnd saving my favorite for last!

Tomorrow I'll attempt to make some macs for my family with an ancient kitchenaid and an ancient oven!

Oh, and my friends' friend works for the Kardashian's so I made a little box for them!
Horrible i-phone pics -


I'm pretty lucky working in TV, so far I've baked for Melissa Joan Hart, Emma Stone, the cast of GREEK cause thats where I was working the past few years, and now the Kardashians! Maybe I'll post pics of Melissa & Emma's orders later!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

A couple more Christmas Macarons


A couple more decorations that weren't included in the last post. I cant believe I almost didnt do the Jingle Bells, I love how they turned out!


This batch of macs were made for the cousins and one of my friends. The filling is a peppermint whipped white chocolate ganache. I colored half of it red and tried to pipe the filling in so the sides looked like candy cane swirls.

It kinda worked!

In the past I've always made my "candy cane" macarons with peppermint buttercream, so we'll see how the ganache goes over - though I have to say I am a fan. In fact I got a sugar headache from all the tasting I was doing!

Birthday Suitcase Cake


This cake was done for a friend's birthday. A suitcase with "stickers" of the countries he has visited, speaks the language, or loves.

Gluten free chocolate cake using my fave chocolate cake recipe subbing in Bob's red mill gluten free flour and some xantham gum. Filled with nutella buttercream, coated in a ganache flavored with hazelnut, & covered in fondant. The "stickers" are made from sugarveil.

Whenever I try to calculate how much cake to make I seem to overshoot by a LOT. There was about half left after giving out some pretty decent size pieces. Well, too much cake is always better than too little!

Christmas Macarons!

I love these little Christmas macs! But boy are they time consuming!


The decorations are made of sugarveil and luster dusts! Of course my favorite is Santa :)




Monday, August 2, 2010

Baby Shower Macarons

Macarons!
Green - Pistachio
Blue - Vanilla
Brown - Chocolate
Yellow - Salted Caramel



Packed in little boxes... and then tied with a blue ribbon. These were favors for a baby shower and i think they turned out pretty cute!

This order was a little crazy as right after i made the delivery i went straight into working a 24-hour shift with Good Morning America's Oscar Special. (Obviously this entry is very, VERY late!) I have to get better at keeping up this blog!




aaaannnnd all ready to go! Phew, it was a lot of boxes!