Coffee Macarons

Happy father’s day to all the dads out there! Today is C’s first father’s day and I really wanted to make it memorable! It’s been a crazy busy week, in fact, most weeks have been that way now and yep, I am falling behind in my weekly baking posts! Oh well, it was bound to happen!

C loves coffee and anything coffee flavoured (just as well since he does run his own cafe) so I wanted to make him coffee flavoured macarons.  

 

I had to whip up this batch in the spare few minutes I had (which seems to be the story of my life so far!) and while I’m pleased with how these macarons look, I’m not entirely happy with their texture.*  Argh! It just goes to show that no matter how many times I make macarons, they cannot be rushed!

The coffee ganache is delicious however! I ended up just eating the leftover ganache on it’s own.  Just as well I went for a run afterwards hehe! 

Anyway, happy father’s day C! You are an amazing father to our baby girl!

*PS -  The texture turned out perfectly - I just needed to let these macarons rest a good couple of hours so that the ganache softened the shell.  Overall, really happy with how these macs turned out!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I first came across the red velvet cupcake a few years ago whilst queuing at the Hummingbird Bakery in London.  I noticed everyone leaving with a red cupcake and thought to myself, why would anyone buy such a thing with all that red food colouring – it made my stomach turn! In typical herd mentality, I figured if everyone else was getting one, I might as well too!  

 

If you can get past all that red food dye, red velvet cupcake is really quite delicious! It’s got a hint of chocolate flavour as it uses unsweetened cocoa powder, but the flavour is really neither chocolate nor quite plain vanilla.  

It’s said that the reaction between the cocoa powder and the baking soda (or the buttermilk) is what gives the vibrant red to the cupcake, but in reality, a lot of food colouring is used.  

 

The recipe I used is one from Magnolia Bakery and I’m so happy with how these cupcakes turned out.  The cupcake turned out wonderfully moist, yet light and fluffy.  After the chocolate layered cake I made last week, I was really after a cake that was light and fluffy, so I did my research and came across the red velvet.  

Apparently buttermilk is what gives the cake its moist and tender crumb.  Oh, and following from last week’s post where I said I was on the hunt for the perfect chocolate cake recipe, well I’ve narrowed it down, and I believe the cake I am after is a devil’s food cake.  I know this now because the red velvet is said to be a devil’s food cake with red food colouring. 

And of course, the cream cheese frosting tops these little cupcakes off.  I love cream cheese frosting and just like a little kid, I was licking the frosting off the beaters and spoons.  

I’m really in love with these red velvet cupcakes and really recommend the Magnolia Bakery recipe which can be found here.

Donna Hay's Chocolate Layered Cake

Chocolate cake is always a winner with my nephew so it was only fitting that for his 7th birthday last weekend, I baked him one.  It's the first time I'd ever baked anything in his honour and I was only too happy to do so.  It's  funny how when my niece turned 7 some 5 years ago, that was when I first baked her a birthday cake so 7 seems to be the magical number for my niece and nephew to get a celebratory cake from their "favourite" aunt!

I opted for a chocolate layered cake and used a Donna Hay recipe which she used on Junior Masterchef some years ago.  I was supposed to only make two sponges and cut them horizontally so that I would end up with 4 layers, but for some reason, my cakes never rose and I ended up having to bake three separate layers.  I don’t understand how 8 year old contestants on Junior Masterchef can get it so right and I get it so wrong?! Anyway, I’ve decided to brush over the fact that junior masterchefs seem to have greater competency than me...!

The recipe also calls for a chocolate cream cheese frosting which is quite nice, but I think I prefer a simple chocolate ganache.  I drizzled chocolate ganache over the top of the cake and the idea was that the ganache would ooze sexily down the sides in large beautiful drips so that I would end up with a beautiful cake where you could clearly see the layers amongst the clearly defined chocolate drips, but unfortunately, I ended up with a clumsy chocolate mess.  

 

So at the very last minute, before I presented the cake to my nephew, I decided to make chocolate shards to cover up the horrible mess I’d made of the sides! If time permitted, I would definitely have attempted tempering chocolate. 

I think the saving grace of the cake (presentation wise) is the fresh strawberries which I decorated in a flower shape.  I couldn’t quite pinpoint what the flower was until my sister said it reminded her of a lotus. 

I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed with the texture of this cake.  Although it is moist, it was quite dense. I followed the recipe to a tee so I believe it’s meant to be like this.  The disappointment lies in the fact that when I think of chocolate cake, I think of a cake that is really moist, yet light and fluffy.  So I am now on the hunt for that perfect chocolate cake recipe!

You can find the recipe for this cake here.

Battenburg

Things have been so hectic lately I very nearly did not get a chance to bake.  So when I found some time yesterday, I decided I had to bake something that wasn't as technically difficult as what I've been attempting to make in the past couple of weeks! I settled on a battenburg as it's simply a sponge cake, trimmed down to size, glued together with apricot jam and wrapped by marzipan or fondant.  

I love this cake because it’s so English.  In fact, it was originally created by the chefs of the British Royal Family in honour of the marriage between Queen Victoria’s grand-daughter to the German Prince of Battenburg.  

I'm really pleased with the symmetry achieved, which I thought I would struggle a bit with.  However, the most tricky part for me was actually working with the ready to roll fondant, which I'm not accustomed to using.  As you can see, the fondant is slightly thicker than what I would like, but  any thinner and I was having problems with lifting the fondant without it tearing.  I think in hindsight, I should have rolled the cake into the fondant, rather than lifting the fondant to surround the cake, if that makes any sense!

I do like the cross stitch pattern of the cake - it reminds me of the Chanel cross stitch handbags which I love!!

 

The almond in the sponge was very subtle and likewise the apricot jam that glues each rectangle together.  Having said that, the sponge is really quite nice and goes perfect with a cup of tea!  

 

Lemon and Poppyseed Cupcakes with Lemon Macarons

Last weekend was all about lemons and piping!  I have to thank friends of ours, Mr and Mrs H, for the bag of lemons they generously gave me! The lemons have been sitting on my kitchen bench for some few weeks now.  I’ve wanted to incorporate them into my baking but I didn’t want to go with the obvious choice of making a lemon tart so they’ve just been sitting there, staring at me.

A little word about how I got the lemons.  A couple of weeks ago at M’s baby shower, we were heading back towards our car, which was parked the furthest away in a dingy lit carpark.  So there we were all alone walking in the dark when Mr H comes up to me and out of left field he says in hushed tones, “I’ve got some lemons for you.”

”Huh?” I think what the? Lemons?

“Yeah, they’re in the back of the car,” Mr H says quickly.

“Ummm...okay... ” Why are we whispering? Why is Mr H giving me lemons?

Then Mrs H comes along and explains all, “Yeah, we found them on our bike ride.  They were hanging from someone’s backyard so we picked them from the branches! You can use them in your baking!” Oh, I see now haha! How awesome! You guys are the best!

So here are some lemon and poppyseed cupcakes with a lemon swiss meringue buttercream.  As you can see, I wanted to experiment with different piping. 

I love piping the rosette! They’re so pretty! I still need to perfect it, but for a first attempt, I’m quite happy with how they turned out!

Then I went the traditional swirl top as I needed a mound for my macarons to sit on.  I'm not a huge fan of that much frosting on my cupcake.  I much prefer the rosette as for me, it contains the perfect ratio of frosting to cupcake.

 

C is not much of a fan of cupcakes on the basis that cupcakes are sooooo five years ago and they have been done to death! Based on that, I felt like I really had to jazz up these cupcakes and decided to top them with mini macarons!

These macarons are filled with the lemon swiss meringue buttercream and I made these primarily to experiment with piping love hearts, and I know that they're not the best looking batch!  Macarons are notoriously temperamental and it doesn't matter how often I make them, I can still stuff them up.  But like I said, these were made primarily for the purpose of experimenting with heart shaped macarons!

Making mini macarons is not good for the waistline! You can just keep popping them in your mouth and before you know it, you’ve consumed something like 5 of them without realising!

And a word about the swiss meringue buttercream.  Wow! I am a HUGE fan! It’s so wonderfully light and airy and not sickenly sweet! I think I'll keep to this type of frosting from now on.  

So there you have it, a weekend of piping and lemons!

 

Vanilla Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream

I know I said in my last blog post I was going to give baking a mini break (and therefore this post would be a continuation of the afternoon tea saga), but last weekend I just could not resist!

I had absolute NO intention of getting in the kitchen, but last Saturday we decided to throw our friend a very impromptu baby shower.  She’s 36 weeks along so it was either now or never! While she was very happy to accept the latter, I was not! I do however understand where she was coming from because when I was pregnant, a baby shower was the least of my worries and I could easily have not had one. C, being the wonderful man he is, threw me one despite my protests and I was so glad he did because it turned out to be one of the happiest memories of my pregnancy.  So we wanted our friend to officially celebrate her pregnancy even if it was just over an informal dinner with close friends!

I really wanted to make it something a little bit more than just dinner and I had this vision of getting to dinner early to place a cupcake on each place setting, surprising her as she walked into the restaurant.  But traffic was a nightmare (the one drawback of living in the city fringe) and we didn’t arrive to dinner until half way through.  DOH!

 

Luckily, everyone decided to retreat to the Pancake Parlour next door for drinks and while our friend decided to drive the whole 10 metres (she IS pregnant after all), the rest of us were able to hastily recreate the effect I was hoping for.  The look on her face when she walked into the restaurant and saw everyone gathered around with these cute little cupcakes was priceless.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t really the cupcakes that gave that priceless expression, most likely the mountain of presents (literally) that she was confronted with!

So these are a vanilla cupcake with a raspberry buttecream frosting.  I love how the raspberries have naturally turned the buttercream into a beautiful pink colour and you can even see the raspberry seeds speckled in the frosting.  I'm really beginning to love having frozen raspberries stocked in our freezer, they've come in handy so many times now! Without them, these would have been a plain vanilla cupcake with pink frosting,

This is the same cupcake recipe I used when we foolishly decided to bake 200 cupcakes for our wedding several years ago! For me, its a tried and tested recipe that I'm happy with. 

 P.s. Our friend looked radiant exactly how a glowing mother-to-be should be!

Blackforest Gateau

Last weekend, C and I hosted another one of our afternoon teas at our place.  We’ve taken to hosting these events once every so often as a nice way of having an intimate catch up with friends as well as using it as an opportunity to practise my baking. 

C and I take our afternoon teas seriously! We don't just have a few finger sandwiches and scones, no, we go all out! Four different variety of finger sandwiches, scones, and five different petite fours. Needless to say, I had a mammoth week of prepping and baking for this afternoon tea using baby girl’s naps as my chance to do much of the needed prep work.  Unfortunately, there were days where baby girl would only take to having half hour naps which makes for baking a REALLY difficult task!

So the majority of the desserts I decided to make have already featured in my blog, these included the salted caramel macarons, the lemon meringue tarts and the coffee éclairs.  I wasn’t very happy with how my lemon meringue tarts turned out on the day – having just boasted about them in my blog, I got over confident with the meringue and ended up overbeating it causing it to weep over my lemon tarts :( Aahhh meringue, I will show more respect next time!

So the other desserts on the menu was a blackforest gateau and well, I've decided to be cheeky and not reveal the rest and save it for the content of upcoming blog posts! I think with all the baking I’ve done of late, I might just take a mini break!

So let me explain the inspiration behind this blackforest gateau.  Since starting this blog, I’ve become quite taken with the blogging world and have often stumbled upon various dessert blogs.  Let me just say, there are some AMAZING baking bloggers out there, which have my total respect.  One of them is Evan’s Kitchen Ramblings (R-E-S-P-E-C-T sister)! She makes entremets that would rival professional chef patissiers.  Through her blog, I’ve learnt about the amazing Hidemi Sugino, who with Pierre Herme has now become a hero of mine.  One of Sugino’s dessert books is published only in Japanese  (and part in French) so I’m very thankful that Evan translated one of the recipes in English so that I can attempt to recreate it. 

So the layers of the blackforest from the bottom are chocolate joconde sponge, dark chocolate cream with soaked cherries, another layer of chocolate joconde, and a lighter chocolate cream decorated with chocolate shavings and tempered chocolate.  C thinks I'm too harsh on myself but I wasn't entirely happy with the middle layer - I used too strong a dark chocolate (70% strength) which made the middle layer cream have a very strong cocoa powder type taste.  I might have to play around with the strength of the dark chocolate to get the right consistency next time.  The other thing I wasn't entirely happy with was that the cherry flavour didn’t really come through.  The sponge is meant to be soaked in the cherry syrup although I only brushed the sponge with it (generously but not enough), rather than give it a good soaking, as I wasn’t sure how absorbent chocolate joconde is, I didn’t want to risk turning the sponge into an oozy mess. 

And yay, I tempered chocolate! Chocolate tempering and I have had a shady past.  The first time I ever tempered it worked beautifully, and I thought tempering chocolate was soooo easy, I didn't quite understand the mystique surrounding it.  That was until the second and third time I tried it and I ended up just melting chocolate.  So this time around, it worked again.  Phew! I think the secret is not to rush it and to just let the chocolate melt over a very low heat.  I've never been one for patience but it seems to be the key!

Oh, and yes, there’s a bit of flour dusting and fingerprints on the tempered chocolate as I was still trying to bake everything else for the afternoon tea,  I didn’t have time to perfect the photo shoot!

And thank you to C, who thoughtfully bought fresh cherries for me as he thought I could somehow use it to decorate the blackforest.  Isn't he the best?! I wanted to top each entremet with a fresh cherry but given the size of these entremets, the cherry just looked too big!