Making macarons
After some experimenting, I now have a good recipe to bake the macaron shells. It's a bit finnicky, so it took a few tries to get to a recipe that works with our tools (and mostly the oven).
I got a request to bake macarons for the opening of a zendo, and the request was for around 60 banana macarons. I can't make batches that large in one go, so I did one batch of banana and one batch of lemon. They're both yellow, but I added a little drop of green colouring to the banana, which gave it a harsher yellow colour. In this picture, just before the opening, the ones on top are banana, the ones at the bottom are lemon.
I had also made a batch of peppermint macarons, but it turned out that the client didn't like peppermint. (We hadn't hashed out any details, apart from "can you bake me around 60 macarons?" It was only later that we discussed the details, and I had already been baking by then.) So I had a batch of peppermint macarons. What to do with that? Well, dunk them in chocolate to create an After Eight-like sensation, of course!
(The stuff on the right is dried mango that we also turned through the chocolate. Because we could.)
I had changed the amounts in the recipe for the shells, so that I could fit it all on the two baking sheets I have. But I hadn't changed the amounts for the filling, so after each batch, I had quite some filling left. It does freeze well, but where's the fun in that? So it was time to create... Mystery Macarons!
Mixing the Italian cooking merengue with the dough. It looks grey in this photo, but it's actually a blue-ish purple. Blue colouring with a tiny splash of red mixed in.
Piping the shells onto the baking sheet. Note the little magnets to keep everything in place. I don't use a guide as to how big I'm making the shells -- I simply eyeball it, and that works out most of the time. I use one-time piping bags, because cleaning piping bags is stupid. I never get them completely clean. I also don't use a nozzle: I simply cut the tip of the bag off and use that.
Baked and filled -- ready to eat! Some of these are banana, some of these are lemon, and some of these are peppermint. But you have to taste it to be sure!
I got a request to bake macarons for the opening of a zendo, and the request was for around 60 banana macarons. I can't make batches that large in one go, so I did one batch of banana and one batch of lemon. They're both yellow, but I added a little drop of green colouring to the banana, which gave it a harsher yellow colour. In this picture, just before the opening, the ones on top are banana, the ones at the bottom are lemon.
I had also made a batch of peppermint macarons, but it turned out that the client didn't like peppermint. (We hadn't hashed out any details, apart from "can you bake me around 60 macarons?" It was only later that we discussed the details, and I had already been baking by then.) So I had a batch of peppermint macarons. What to do with that? Well, dunk them in chocolate to create an After Eight-like sensation, of course!
(The stuff on the right is dried mango that we also turned through the chocolate. Because we could.)
I had changed the amounts in the recipe for the shells, so that I could fit it all on the two baking sheets I have. But I hadn't changed the amounts for the filling, so after each batch, I had quite some filling left. It does freeze well, but where's the fun in that? So it was time to create... Mystery Macarons!
Mixing the Italian cooking merengue with the dough. It looks grey in this photo, but it's actually a blue-ish purple. Blue colouring with a tiny splash of red mixed in.
Piping the shells onto the baking sheet. Note the little magnets to keep everything in place. I don't use a guide as to how big I'm making the shells -- I simply eyeball it, and that works out most of the time. I use one-time piping bags, because cleaning piping bags is stupid. I never get them completely clean. I also don't use a nozzle: I simply cut the tip of the bag off and use that.
Baked and filled -- ready to eat! Some of these are banana, some of these are lemon, and some of these are peppermint. But you have to taste it to be sure!