Holiday cooking :>

Boredom = baking :>

It’s Easter, and thank goodness, my work is giving me a week of blissful holiday happiness.  I’ve already had 3 days off, and I won’t be back into work until Thursday!  How good is that?!?!?

So what does a bored software developer do?  Bake!  I’ve been hankering to make croissants, so I thought I might give them a try, now that I have so much time on my hands.  I have a bad feeling about this though :/  Rolling the pastry was such a BIG EFFORT.  I feel like I needed to do some weights before I attempt to make them again.  The pastry seems a bit to stiff, and then there’s layers that’s tearing as I’m rolling them out… anyhow… we’ll see how that goes tomorrow morning!

In between the croissant turns, I’ve decided to make some macarons.  (I have made some tiramisu for a Wii party, which, woops, means I have some egg whites left!)  They’ve been well aged (read: I forgot about them).  Since I didn’t turn up to bootcamp on Thursday, I thought I’ll do everything by hand, including the whisking – my arm is somewhat limpy right now…  How do bakers do it day in day out?

The last few attemps at macarons, it didn’t work properly, because I was lazy, and assumed that an eggwhite is 50g.  WRONG!  I gave the aged egg whites a rough weight, and gyess what?  4 whites = 100g.  Oh. My. God.  No wonder it was always too thick!  I thought it was 200g, thus doubling the dry ingredients!  Anyhow, I used the recipe from Syrup and Tang (http://www.syrupandtang.com/200712/la-macaronicite-1-an-introduction-to-the-macaron/)  I followed the basic (i.e., not the Italian Meringue) recipe and also used the caramel recipe for the filling.  The picture above shows the finished product.

As you can see below, it’s pretty lumpy.  I don’t have a big food processor so I can’t blend the almond meal, as a result,  I’m at the mercy of the manufacturers  Now that I’m armed with the correct amount of dry ingredients, I vigorously mixed the ingredients together (no, not folding, I slopped it around everywhere) and voila, it was the consistency of flowing magma!

I’ve pipped them smaller this time too, which thankfully meant the shells didn’t merge with their neighbours (and thus, creating a super-deformed macaron shells).  On hindsight, I should have mixed it a few more times because some of the shells ended up having a bit of a beak (next time, next time…) I sprinkled some sea salt on top and left them to harden for an hour.

I then tackled the caramel.  To be honest, I didn’t quite believe that sugar will just turn into liquid when heat is applied to it.  Below is the transition from solid granules of sugar into liquid.  It’s quite amazing and happens surprisingly quickly once it starts.

I didn’t have a sugar thermometer, so when I added in the cream, since it was bubbling and all, I would assume it was at the rigth temperature.  I then quickly stirred in the butter.  Perhaps it was the wrong way to do this?  I ended up having a layer of butter hovering on top of the browned sugar.

But it wasn’t all bad – I’ve found a way to fix this!  I put an icepack around the bowl and kept whisking the sugar and butter, until the caramel starts to solidify  and holding in the butter.

It worked!  The caramel got thicker and it took in the butter.  Mind you, you have to whisk pretty hard :)  Here’s a picture of adding some filling in the shells :)

And one more photo for good measures :)

Sorry about the long post…..