A Treatise on the Macaron

I can say with a lot of confidence that upon reading the word "macaron" you thought of Paris and its wonderful pastries. Maybe you're really imaginative and you pictured a rainy day on the Place de la Concorde, with the Eiffel Tower in distant view and cars driving around the cobbled streets. Maybe (if you're a woman) you were wearing a wonderful trench coat in a sublime shade of raspberry, and maybe you were nibbling on a macaron that you had just picked up from Pierre Herme, Laduree, Gerard Mulot, or some other amazing bakery.

But apart from that, I can also predict fairly certainly that if you're one of those people who have tried making macarons or who have wanted to your heart skipped a beat or you made an inward groan upon reading its name.



Macarons, wonderfully indulgent as they may be, are also notorious little devils. I've lost count of the numerous blog posts or articles I've read about the art of macaron-making, and how disastrous it can be.

I for one, tried macarons once in late 2009/early 2010. It ended up looking like soup. Admittedly, the recipe was a very basic one which didn't talk about technique or anything at all. Then, I took a macaron making class at Ateliers des Chefs Dubai in May 2010. Then, I tried making them in September of that year and they turned out pretty good! The next two tries were a disaster. And then two months ago, I researched, and researched, and researched.

The nerd in me came up with a sheet full of notes I had gathered from various books, different websites, talking to other people, and pure trial and error. I studied that sheet so religiously and then began making my macarons *drumroll*

The entire process I was extremely nervous- constantly checking to see if my macarons had developed feet or if they were smooth-topped. The entire process took me three hours and drained me. I made raspberry macarons that day and they turned out reaaally good.

Last night, I decided to attempt to try them again- I thought that maybe it would take less time but it took three hours again. I manage to get about 60 shells or 30 macarons from the batch that I make which is pretty good!

I'm posting the version of a macaron recipe I'm most comfortable with below and I'm going to follow that up with a list of explanations.

Note: I prefer using Italian meringue instead of French meringue as I find it makes the shell a lot smoother and the texture better. The recipe below uses Italian meringue.

How to make classic macarons! 
Ingredients:
200g ground almonds (plus extra to make up for residue- around 100g)
200g icing sugar
180g caster sugar
55ml water
130g egg white
Gel food coloring of your choice
-for the buttercream filling
40g butter
150g icing sugar
2 tbsp milk

Procedure: 
-With a bottlecap, draw circles on three sheets of baking paper spacing them around 1.5 inches apart. Turn the baking paper over and place each on one baking sheet. Make sure that the side that you drew on is on the underside.
-Process together the ground almonds and the icing sugar until fine and well combined. Then sift the mixture into a large bowl. You will end up with residue of the ground almonds- pieces that are too coarse or too big to be sifted. Weigh them out and then sift the same quantity of new ground almonds. Repeat the process until you have made up for all the ground almond residue.
-In a saucepan over low heat, place the water and sugar and allow for the mixture to boil. Make sure the temperature doesn't go above 115C.
-Meanwhile, whisk 50g of the egg whites till soft peaks form. Then, slowly pour in the hot sugar mixture and beat on high speed for 15 minutes or until the mixture is stiff and forms a beak like shape on the tip of the whisk.
-Take the remaining egg white and with a rubber spatula, mix together the egg white with the almond and icing sugar mixture. At this stage, also add your coloring.
-Take four tablespoons of the egg white mixture and mix into the almond mixture. Then add the rest of the egg whites and start the macaronage process by incorporating them with an alternating cutting and folding motion.
-Once all the egg white has been incorporated, lift your spatula with some of the macaron mixture and analyze how it falls from the spatula. You want the mixture to fall into the bowl in a smooth ribbon-like motion.
-Preheat the oven to 150C and place the macaron mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 2-3cm round tip. Pipe circles onto the already drawn rounds.
-Lightly tap the baking sheet on the surface of a counter and allow to form a crust for around 30 minutes.
-Place in an oven for around 20 minutes.
-Remove and allow to cool before spreading with buttercream.
-For the buttercream, mix everything together and whisk really well until mixture is as white as possible.

Macaron Cheat Sheet:
-age the egg whites by keeping them at room temperature for 6 hours prior to using.
-make sure that your kitchen is well ventilated. If it has a door that leads directly outside, keep that door shut. If your kitchen has air conditioning of any sort then switch that on!
-do NOT underestimate the importance of EXACT measurements. Even one or two grams here or there might alter your final result. 
-If you don't have a candy thermometer (like me), then take tiny teaspoons of the water and caster sugar mixture (while it's boiling) and place in a bowl of cold water. Quickly attempt to touch the sugar mixture with your fingers. The mixture is done boiling if the tiny sample you put in the water forms a pliable round structure in your fingers. 
-it is crucial that you get the macaronage process correct. Keep checking every few seconds to see whether the mixture is falling in a ribbon like form or not. 
-while incorporating the egg whites, and macaronaging, use firm, steady motions with a flexible spatula. 
- it is very, very important to allow your macarons to form a crust. They should not be sticky when you touch them before putting them in the oven. 
-it's better to bake macarons in a low-heated oven for a longer period of time than in a hot oven for a shorter period of time and risk spoiling it.
-that's why: temperatures above 150C (non fan forced) might be dangerous
- once you've piped the macarons, tap the tray to break up the air- this reduces the risk of air pockets in macarons.
- when baking, make sure that the top of the baking sheet reaches the middle of the oven. 
-open the oven door every two minutes to let the humidity of the oven out. 
- right before removing the macarons from the oven, spray a countertop with water and as soon as the sheet is out, pull out the baking paper with the macarons on it and immediately place over the damp countertop. This makes it easier to remove the macarons. 
-do not eat the macarons on the same day that they're made. store in the fridge for 24 hours in order for the flavors to develop.

Two Tiered Wedding Cake with Fondant Roses (TUTORIAL)

I've been dreaming of making tiered cakes for sooo long.. And I've had a few experiences doing so but never really professionally. But ever since I've started looking through pictures of tiered party cakes I've began to daydream. And daydream. And daydream. And get this unrelenting urge to sit (or potter around) in the kitchen for hours creating one of these beauties.

I made the following cake over three days although if you wanted to, it's quite possible to make it in one day. I baked the bottom tier cakes on Thursday, the top tier cakes on Friday morning, did the dowelling, stacking, rolling fondant, and roses on Friday night and put the final touches with the pearls and royal icing Saturday afternoon.

I am by no means an expert at this and being an amateur baker, I want to show that these kind of cakes aren't difficult to create at all. They're challenging, and that makes it all the sweeter once you get the results you want. I wanted to make a cake which was entirely my idea and not copied from any of the books and so I came up with this. I also wanted to start off making two tiered cakes because I wanted to take it slow.. and gradually build up skill and also because.. I mean, seriously, I have no idea how I'd manage to get a four tiered cake eaten up (not by myself.. obviously...)

This is the first time I'm writing up a detailed tutorial so please bear with me if anything doesn't make sense (ask if you're confused).. obviously by saying this I'm assuming all my readers are going to get this wonderful streak of inspiration and go off to the kitchen.. but I don't think that's going to be the case..

And so here's the tutorial:

Equipment
A cake board
Measuring cups and spoons
Two bowls
A whisk
Four cake tins (two 6" ones and two 8" ones)
Baking paper
A cake leveller
An icing turntable
An offset spatula
A rolling pin
A sharp knife
3 dowel rods
Sandwich bags
A cake fondant smoother
Toothpicks
Ribbon of your choice
Piping bag
1.5 icing tip/nozzle
Sifter
Strainer
Pastry brush
Unused makeup blusher brush


Ingredients
For the bottom tier: 
1.5 cups self raising flour
1.25 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


For the top tier: (identical.. and you'll have enough leftover batter to make one batch of cupcakes)

1.5 cups self raising flour
1.25 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


For the buttercream
50g unsalted butter, softened
300g icing sugar
3 tablespoons milk
Pink gel food colouring

For the coating and roses
1/2 cup apricot jam, boiled, strained, and cooled
1.5kg marzipan
1.5kg white fondant (ready to roll icing)
Light pink gel food colouring
Rose gel food coloring
500g icing sugar

For the royal icing and pearls
1 egg white
200g icing sugar
Juice of one lemon
One packet edible pearls (preferably white)


Procedure


For the bottom tier: 
-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line two 8" cake tins. Put the flour together in a bowl and mix well together.
-In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and beat well between each addition until sugar dissolves and mixture becomes fluffier and paler.
-Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add a third of the flour mixture and beat well, followed by a third of the combined milk and vanilla extract mixture. Repeat until all flour and milk has been incorporated into batter.
-Spoon into cake tins and bake for 30 minutes on the middle rack of the oven until a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

For the top tier


-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line two 6" cake tins. Put the flour together in a bowl and mix well together.
-In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and beat well between each addition until sugar dissolves and mixture becomes fluffier and paler.
-Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add a third of the flour mixture and beat well, followed by a third of the combined milk and vanilla extract mixture. Repeat until all flour and milk has been incorporated into batter.
-Spoon into cake tins and bake for 30 minutes on the middle rack of the oven until a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

For the buttercream
-Beat the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar and beat until mixture is of a sandy consistency. Add the milk and beat until incorporated.
-Add the coloring and keep on beating for five minutes until mixture gets fluffy.

Assembling and coating the cake
-Refrigerate the cakes for around half an hour before assembling them. Refrigerating cakes makes them harder and much easier to handle.
-Split each cake into half so you get a total of four layers for the bottom tier and a total of four tiers for the top tier.

-for the bottom tier
-Place the bottom-most layer of the bottom tier on an icing turntable and with an offset spatula, spread the top with buttercream.
-Place a second layer on top and repeat until you reach the last top-most layer for the bottom tier. Do not put buttercream on top of the topmost layer of the bottom tier.
-Brush the cake with the boiled, strained, and cooled apricot jam.
-Knead half the marzipan until soft and pliable and then roll out onto a surface liberally dusted with icing sugar (trust me when I say you're going to need  a collective of 500g of icing sugar just to dust the surface- don't underestimate it! you don't want fondant sticking to the surface after you've wonderfully rolled it out). Remember to roll out marzipan to cover a slightly larger cake than the one you're actually covering. Having extra-long marzipan or fondant on your cake prevents it from folding over each other and skirting and makes for a smooth, straight finish. You can always trim the excess off with a knife (and then you have excess marzipan/fondant to make roses with!).
-Gently lift the marzipan using both hands and rest the marzipan on your wrists. and lower forearm.
-Place the center of the rolled out marzipan onto the center of the cake. Smooth down over the edges with your hands and then trim off the excess with a sharp knife. Smooth with an icing smoother.
-Brush the marzipan-coated cake with boiled, cooled water.
-Knead the fondant until pliable. With a toothpick, add streaks of the baby pink food coloring and continue kneading until color is even throughout. Roll out on a surface VERY LIBERALLY dusted with icing sugar until, again, slightly larger than the size of the cake.
-Gently lift up and place on top of the cake. Smooth with the icing smoothener. Trim off the excess and smooth again.

-for the top tier
-Repeat the steps of the layering and coating the bottom tier.

-stacking the cakes.
-Place three wooden or plastic dowel rods into the center of the bottom tier cake. Measure the height of the cake on the dowel rod with a pencil. Remove the dowel rods and trim to the size of the cake.
-Do that with all three dowel rods and place in the center of the cake forming a triangular shape.
-Lift the top tier and gently place it on top of the bottom tier.

-"ribboning the cakes"
-Take the ribbon and place it around the base of bottom tier, measuring how long it should be. Cut out the required length.
-Dab a little royal icing or buttercream on the cake where the ribbon will be placed.
-Place the ribbon around the base of the cake and make the end of the ribbon slightly overlap with the start of it. Dab in place with a little more buttercream.
-Do the same for the top tier.
-Take the makeup blush brush and dust the cake off any icing sugar.

-for the roses
-Color the leftover marzipan rose pink and shape a little bit of it into a 4mm diameter sausage. Keep the rest in a plastic bag or tightly wrapped in foil to prevent it from drying out.
- Take the sausage and cut off the ends. Then cut the remaining sausage into six slices with a 3mm width each.
-Take a plastic ziplock or sandwich bag and open the sides to make it into a foldable plastic folder. Place the six slices evenly spaced out inside the sandwich bags, with the rounded sides facing away from you and the flat sides facing towards you.
-Place the top half of the sandwich bag over the bottom half and press down and flatten each slice with the base of your thumb (no, that isn't the part of your thumb right under your nail but the base of the thumb by the wrist).
-Then run your actual thumb around each piece to smoothen the edges.
-Take the smallest petal and roll it around on itself so it curls.
-Then, take the next smallest petal and place it around the rosebud. Keep on working your way outwards using slightly larger petals each time until you use up the six.
-Repeat to make five more roses.
Place around the cake as you see fit. Or do it like I did: two on top, one in the middle, and two at the bottom.

-for the royal icing and pearls
-Beat the egg whites till the soft peak consistency, add the sifted icing sugar and beat in until incorporated. - --Add the strained juice of half a lemon and beat in.
-Add the color with a toothpick and beat in until smooth and not too runny.
-Prepare a piping bag with the 1.5 nozzle and spoon in the royal icing. Secure the piping bag.
-Holding the piping bag at a 60 degree angle to the cake, pipe around 5 or 6 round pearls onto the top of the cake in front of the roses.
-Don't pull the piping bag away as soon as the icing starts coming out of it otherwise you'll end up with sharp studs instead of pearls. Instead, wait till the pearl is formed and then gently release.
-Once you finish the pearls on the top tier, ice the top of the bottom tier (you'll only be able to have access to the outer edges of it due to the top tier placed above it).
-Once that's done, with your fingers, gently add the edible pearls on top of each pink royal icing pearl. You'll have to work fairly quickly because the royal icing hardens fairly quickly and crusts if you apply too much pressure.

And you're done! As you can tell from the pictures, I'm having issues getting the icing completely clean and smooth without cracking a bit. First, I need to knead the colour in a lot more so little white streaks don't show. Plus, I also need to not put SO much icing sugar on TOP of the fondant when I'm rolling it out. It's important for it to be under but not on top. But I had to re-knead the fondant around three times before I could lift it without it breaking. I had to keep adding more icing sugar for that.

Swirly Glittery Cupcakes Tutorial

OK, well this isn't exactly a tutorial if there aren't step-by-step photos. I made these without the intention of blogging about them but a lot of people have been wondering how to get swirly frosting that holds its shape.. and even to get the rose-like look on them. So I decided (since these looked so pretty) to share these pictures with you and also explain verbally (as best as I can) how to get frosting like this.

 

1. I never make frosting with measured or weighed ingredients. I use my intuition- or I just see how well it's progressing.. But let's say for ingredients- I use 50g of unsalted butter (give or take 20g either way) that is softened. It is extremely important for the butter to be softened. I then mix in around 350g of icing sugar that isn't sifted. For one, I find sifting icing sugar extremely frustrating- you get little icing sugar smoke all around you. And two, I don't think the sifted factor makes much of a difference.

2. For cupcakes like these, you need frosting that is "tough".. or more solid.. Runny frosting won't do. Once you've mixed the butter and the icing sugar, add around 2-3 tablespoons of milk and beat well until combined. Add the gel food coloring at this point. Gel is best since you only need to add a very small quantity for strong color, and its nature doesn't change the consistency of the frosting-whereas liquid coloring would.

 

3. The longer you beat, the more fluffy and incorporated the entire mixture will become.

4. If the mixture is too runny, keep on adding more icing sugar to tighten/harden it up until you reach what you think is the right consistency. A lot of this is done by eye.

5. Take a piping bag (plastic or paper one) and pop a 1M nozzle inside. This is the most important part. It has to be 1M otherwise the size/shape of the piping will be different. Hold the piping bag open over a jug, and with a spatula, pile in the icing. Make sure that the piping bag is a bag which is floppy and not one of those mechanical syringe like ones. It's more challenging to use an actual piping bag but the results are so much better because you have a lot more control over it.

6. Hold the cupcake in your left hand if you are right handed and in your right hand if you are left handed and with the piping bag (nicely secured at the top) in your dominant hand, pipe from the center, bringing the bag around like you're drawing a snail pattern anticlockwise. Loosen your hand as you reach the outer edges of the cupcake (this will create somewhat larger swirls which will overlap creating petal-like features).

7. Release the piping bag from cupcake once you have covered the entire cupcake. Do not abruptly pull away as that will show on the cupcake. Instead, "seal" the frosting in by making the last bit of piping extremely thin and tight.

8. For the glitter, take a very thin (un-used!) paintbrush and open a pot of EDIBLE glitter, Dip the brush in the surface of the glitter in the pot. Bring the brush (whose tip is now coated with glitter) over the cupcake and with your index finger tap the brush. This will release all the glitter from the tip of the brush onto the cupcake. Tap the brush lightly while moving your hand around the entire cupcake so the glitter doesn't end up all in one place.

9. If you're using edible pearls, carefully place them around the swirls with your fingers.