Vanilla Macarons

So with my leftover egg whites I decided to have another shot at macarons... I've tried two different recipes before, but whilst they have always tasted great they have never had the distinctive 'feet' and have always cracked!

This weekend I tried another recipe, from one of my newer cook books, Tea with Bea (thanks to Phil and Mel for this book)! The recipe actually called for six egg whites, but as I already had two I just used one extra and halved the recipe.

Macarons appear quite technical to make and call for heating sugar to make the meringues plus a bit of piping, but I don't think its too hard if you follow a good recipe! I decided not to use any food colouring either so they came out quite pale in colour but a miracle, no cracked tops and some 'feet'!!! Compared to the picture in my cook book they are a bit flatter, I think I should have whisked the meringue a bit more as I don't think they quite at the 'stiff' stage before I added in the sugar! Also having tried leaving them to rest for 30mins and whacking them straight into the oven my last two tries, I left them to rest for 40 mins until the skin formed. Also, the full recipe said it would make 30 so I was expecting half to make about 15, but it made at least 20 and I think mine are average sized rather than small, although I guess I would hope to make they a bit taller next time...

Hallelujah! Feet appeared! Here is a pic of some filled just with whipped cream! Another trick I've learned is not to fill them unless I'm eating them this means they stay slightly chewy. You can just whip the cream ready and leave it in the fridge. I think next time, I'll definitely add some food colouring as whilst these are lovely they look better in pretty pastels, also I may start experimenting with flavours.. maybe pistachio or different style fillings. Anyway, these are the best I've ever made and they tasted great too!

Swedish Summer Cake

At it's strawberry season I decided to make something with strawberries so got out my recipe book and saw an amazing picture in my Nigella's Kitchen cook book for a Swedish Summer Cake. Essentially a layer cake of sponge, strawberries, cream and custard! Yum! You can google the recipe and get it online...

First I made the custard, different from the ice cream from last weekend, it was just two egg yolks, milk, sugar and cornflour. I think I could have heated this a little longer as my cooled custard was still quite runny but I was nervous of burning the milk...then I cooled this down and whacked it in the fridge covered with clingfilm touching the top of the custard to stop a skin forming.

Then onto the sponge cake. The recipe calls for one cake, with no fat so a very light sponge. Just three egss, 150g of flour, sugar and baking powder. Followed the recipe exactly and and it was cooked in just 30 mins. Here it is just cooling:

Then I got on with the strawberries, I macerated 2/3 of them in sugar.

The hardest part of the recipe is assembling the cake. I had to slice it into three layers which wasn't that easy with a bread knife, although none of the fell apart which I think was quite lucky.

As I mentioned earlier my custard was a little runny and I ended up with a few more strawberries in the middle layer than the bottom, as you can probably see, then a nice topping of cream and a few strawberries for the top.

And hey presto! Super easy actually! It tasted great, the sponge was airy and light (if you've ever eaten a Chinese sponge cake it was very similar to this), lots of strawberry flavour and plenty of cream and custard! Overall, a success!! Now I have two egg whites left.. what to do?!

First attempt!!

So pretty much every weekend I attempt to cook something new so I thought I'd create a little blog about my weekly food challenge!

I'll try and post the recipes, take pictures and obviously advise on how it tastes! So this weekend, I decided to try out my ice cream maker. About 4 years ago some friends of my in-laws moved back to hong kong and I took a moulinex ice cream maker off their hands. It's been gathering dust in my cupboard ever since! So yesterday I spent 3 hrs googling the instructions on how the machine works, but alas just thought I'd give it a bash. I made salted caramel ice cream, as found on google! This is the recipe I chose: Epicurious Salted Caramel Icecream.
Tons of great reviews for the ice cream and I've been craving salted caramel for the last two weeks! Also some of the others called for tons of egg yolks and I hate not having anything to do with egg whites! This recipe uses three whole eggs.

 First I had to convert the annoying cup measurements into grams and millimetres! Then I was on my way. I substituted 'heavy' cream for double cream as well. My first attempt at caramel went ok, I was worried it was burnt but when I poured in the cream it all melted nicely and went exactly as the recipe described. The custard part was also a little tricky. I took my eye off it to grab my sieve and bowl and it went a bit lumpy but was fine once I sieved it! (next time I'll try and remember to take pics as I go as well!) then cooled it down quickly then into the icecream maker for 40 mins! Simples!

A word of warning I was really worried that it would taste burnt as at room temperature that seemed the overriding flavour! Once frozen it tasted quite different and the slightly burnt caramel flavour only enhanced the ice cream!

Overall, a successful recipe I'd say and hopefully (if I don't end up eating it all today) a nice after dinner treat for the next few days!