Experiments with Macarons

I have a serious case of ‘if someone else can so can I’, and it’s no different with macarons. After several experiments with recipes for the basic mix, I have decided that Ed Kimber’s is the most reliable and least like to sink/burn/fail and leave you bereft and empty.

The base recipe can be found here, just alter the food colouring accordingly.

http://www.frenchweddingstyle.com/wedding-macarons-with-edd-kimber/

Using this recipe, I have played around with fillings and flavours- here are three of my favourites.

Rose and Raspberry

So this is a variation on the above recipe, I think it needed a sharper element.

I coloured the shells using pink gel food colouring, which is bake stable and doesn’t make the recipe too runny to work. The filling is a buttercream, coloured with a darker pink (Waitrose natural pink) and flavoured with rose water to taste. Then ice both shells to protect them from the raspberry juice, and crumble a raspberry across the one of the shells.

White Chocolate and Sea Salt

This macaron was coloured with yellow gel colouring. The filling is white chocolate ganache- melted chocolate with a splash of cream mixed in. I added Maldon Sea Salt to taste- its a sweet hit followed by a gorgeous salt aftertaste. My favourite!

Dark Chocolate with Mint

I left the shells natural for this macaron, which gives a beautiful pure white colour. The filling is ganache made with dark chocolate and cream, as before, but with a generous splash of peppermint oil stirred in.

Have fun playing with colours and flavours….and design. Here’s what you can do with a paint chart….

Stay Unchained<3

Berries!!

Blackberries to be specific! Look at my haul…..glittering from the freezer!

Here are some pictures of my blackberry exploits! (Sorry for the short post…spending all my time outdoors…OCTOBER IS MY MONTH!)

Blackberry and Orange Frangipane…Almondy cake with blackberry jam inside a shortcrust pastry case.

Egg washing a puff pastry tart, blackberries and vanilla/lemon marscapone.

Place puff pastry on a baking tray and bake until gold. Mix the rind of half a lemon and two teaspoons of vanilla with 150g of marscapone. Spread on the cooled pastry and stud with blackberries. Bake until the marscapone has firmed and the blackberries are hot and gorgeous! Sprinkle with brown sugar, then blowtorch or grill until crunchy 🙂

Use your favourite fairycake recipe (Lemon works well!)…pipe buttercream with a rose nozzle, and top with a berry….I used equal parts white and coloured icing splodged in a piping back to create these stripes.

Happy October everyone!

Stay Unchained ❤