Tina's Bridal Shower

Last month, I had the privilege of helping out with a former roommate's bridal shower. When the maid of honor (Tina's sister) asked me if I'd like to make some dessert for the shower, I was honored to be asked and immediately said yes!

I've had many roommates in the past, and Tina is one of my favorites. Is she even better than my current one? Hmmm.. that's a tough call. She cooked for me, sometimes cleaned up after me, was a great workout buddy, gave me tennis lessons, got me into baseball, and taught me a great deal about home style Taiwanese food. To bake for her bridal shower was my way of showing appreciation for her friendship and presence in my life.





































































Can you tell the bridal shower had a theme? Well it did, and the theme was Tina's favorite things: the color yellow, the color white, and polka-dots. Cheryl did all the decorations and crafted together paper pom-poms, yarn pom-poms, paper banners, balloon banners, and strew paper circle cut-outs all around the apartment. She really transformed David's apartment into a ray of sunlight. Update: Not that it wasn't already wonderfully decorated by the groom..





















































How awesome is it that guests brought presents wrapped in the same style as the decorations? We made no kind of announcement or demands for this; Tina's friends simply know what she likes.

























Kelly, the maid of honor, took care of the food, and she prepared as many yellow foods as she could think of. We had tamago sushi, assorted cheese and crackers, corn salsa on tortilla chips, deviled eggs, a yellow vegetable platter, chicken salad sandwiches, and sweet potato fries. We had quite the assortment of food, and it looked great altogether.




































In addition to this honey chocolate polka-dot cake, I made a few other desserts in the same theme, and I even brought back lemon and vanilla macarons from Ladurée in Paris. I'll be sure to write more about the desserts in future posts, so check back next week!




































Even more polka-dots! This is the only present picture I'm going to post. But let me say we certainly saw more white, yellow, and polka-dots among the presents.
























The bridesmaids sent us home with these adorable pots of honey as shower favors. They skillfully tied various Burt's Bees items to each honey pot with cute yellow yarn. I heard it was a great feat, so job well done, ladies.




































And here the bride is with her lovely bouquet for the wedding rehearsal. Cheryl came prepared with her glue gun and craft supplies and made this fabulous gift wrap bouquet that could be fit for the actual wedding.

I can't believe Tina will be marrying her fiancé David in just one week! The bridal shower was so bright and cheery, and I hope their wedding will be filled with even more sunshine. Congratulations, you two!

Au Revoir...

The day has finally come for me to leave for Paris. No, not forever, just for 5 days. It feels like I've talked about this trip for ages, but I suppose it has been a good seven months. Yes, I booked it that far in advance.

As this day got nearer, I've become so antsy to experience the city of lights for the first time. The sights, the smells, the food, ah the food. I cannot wait to eat everything in sight and capture it all in photos.

The macarons posted above are the chocolate macarons with Nutella ganache I made last winter. I will definitely be eating many macarons over the next 5 days, and I hope to share some photos with y'all when I get back. Au revoir, my friends!

Caramel Apple Macarons

October's Daring Bakers' challenge was to make delicious macarons with the choice of flavoring and filling left up to us. Being that it's now fall and given I had over 10 pounds of apples from the apple picking trip I did couple weekends ago, I chose to make a vanilla macaron cookie filled with a caramel apple puree. My choice of filling became a collaboration of past Daring Bakers' challenges (namely the Danish Braid and Caramel Cake), and it was pretty fun to remake those recipes. My filling is more of a caramel flavored applesauce than I hoped for, so if you're looking for a creamy filling, you'll need to do some tweaking to my filling recipe. Perhaps a caramel apple buttercream?

These macarons didn't turn out as expected due to some over whipped egg whites. And like I've said before, this is not a quick recipe to breeze through. If I were to give a lesson in patience, I would assign the task of making macarons. The day I master the macaron will mark the day I become a patient woman. Or maybe not, we'll have to see about that one.
The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.
Caramel Apple Macarons
adapted from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 cups almond flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
5 egg whites (brought to room temperature)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 200°F. Put both the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a food processor or blender and grind until thoroughly combined.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. Add seeds scraped from vanilla bean. If you are planning on adding other flavoring to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t over fold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip. You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized mounds of batter onto a baking sheet lined with Silpat.
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375F degrees. Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling with caramel apple filling (recipe below).


Caramel Apple Filling

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup water (for "stopping" the caramelizing process)
Apple Filling (recipe below)

Directions:
1. In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush. Turn on heat to highest flame. Cook until smoking slightly and color is a dark amber.
2. When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and be prepared to step back.
3. Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. Please wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it. Note: For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.
4. After caramel syrup has cooled, blend together with apple filling in a food processor or blender until mixture becomes a sticky puree.


Apple Filling

Ingredients:
1 apple, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Directions:
1. Toss all ingredients except butter in a large bowl.
2. Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat until slightly nutty in color, about 6 - 8 minutes.
3. Add the apple mixture and saute until apples are softened and caramelized, 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Let cool to room temperature or cool in an ice bath.

Matcha Macarons

Happy Friday! It's really cold, and a big snowstorm might interfere with our office holiday party tonight, but all is well because it's Friday! And in 5 days, Tim and I will be on a plane embarking our big trip to Taiwan and Thailand. It feels a little weird calling it our honeymoon since it's already been 9 months since the date(!), so I've been calling it our "big trip."

Speaking of honeymoons and weddings, I made these matcha macarons to send off to Vane at Brooklyn Bride for her 2nd annual holiday card swap. Matcha because I know she loves green, so I wanted to share my main wedding inspiration with someone who also inspired the wedding. Hope they reached Brooklyn in good shape!


Matcha Macarons
adapted from previous recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup almond flour
2 tablespoons matcha
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
4 tablespoons granulated sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Line two baking sheets with Silpat liners and have a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch plain tip ready.
3. Using a blender of a food processor, grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and matcha so there are no lumps.
4. Using a standing electric mixer and at slow-medium speeds, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, gradually beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm.
5. Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding and scrape the batter into the pastry bag.
6. Pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1/2-inch circles, evenly spaced 1/2-inch apart.
7. Tap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15 minutes. Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.

Matcha Ganache

Ingredients:
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 ounces white chocolate
1 tablespoon matcha

Directions:
1. Bring heavy cream to a simmer.
2. Mix a bit of heavy cream with matcha to make a paste.
2. Remove from heat and stir in matcha paste and white chocolate. Stir until reaching consistent texture.
3. Let cool to room temperature.

Assembly Directions:
1. Find matching similar-sized counterpart for each macaron.
2. Depending on size of macarons, spread 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of ganache on one cookie's inside, and then gently press the matching cookie on top, forming a sandwich.
3. Store in an airtight container or in the fridge for at least one day before serving, to meld the flavors. Macarons can keep up to 5 days, after that they may be stored in the freezer.

Chocolate Macarons with Nutella Ganache

I was happily surprised with how well these macarons turned out. Humidity can really alter these little cookies, which makes me feel a little better about messing up every batch I made at home this past summer. (Melida had one successful batch, but that was done at ICE) There I learned how delicate these macarons are, and just one extra fold can ruin it all. One good tip I took away was to beat the egg whites at a low speed to avoid over whipping the whites. For this batch, I beat the egg whites for almost 20 minutes, and I watched it closely to make sure they were the perfect consistency.

Speaking of the class we took back in July, a friend of Tim and mine took the same class that day. This friend says macarons are his favorite food. Now that was his answer to a question regarding favorite foods, not just desserts. So what does that say about this man? Simply put, he's a fancy guy. Tim and I have had the pleasure of working alongside him in one of our church's community groups, and we've come to know him beyond being fancy, as an intentional person with a big heart. So this one goes out to you, Ken. Happy Birthday, and thanks for all you do for everyone around you.


Chocolate Macarons
adapted from David Lebovitz

Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup almond flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
4 tablespoons granulated sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Line two baking sheets with Silpat liners and have a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch plain tip ready.
3. Using a blender of a food processor, grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and cocoa so there are no lumps.
4. Using a standing electric mixer and at slow-medium speeds, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, gradually beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm.
5. Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding and scrape the batter into the pastry bag.
6. Pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1/2-inch circles, evenly spaced 1/2-inch apart.
7. Tap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15 minutes. Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.


Nutella Ganache

Ingredients:
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons Nutella
2 ounces dark chocolate

Directions:
1. Bring heavy cream to a simmer.
2. Remove from heat and stir in Nutella and dark chocolate. Stir until reaching consistent texture.
3. Let cool to room temperature.

Assembly Directions:
1. Find matching similar-sized counterpart for each macaron.
2. Depending on size of macarons, spread 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of ganache on one cookie's inside, and then gently press the matching cookie on top, forming a sandwich.
3. Store in an airtight container or in the fridge for at least one day before serving, to meld the flavors. Macarons can keep up to 5 days, after that they may be stored in the freezer.

Lemon Curd and White Chocolate Ganache filled Macarons

When attempting new recipes, I usually do a ton of research by reading many variations of the recipe, and also by getting whatever tips and advice I can. Obviously when it comes to technique, it's hard to learn from just reading or talking about it. I'd tried making macarons before, but like I just said, the technique is hard to master. So I took a macarons class at ICE this past week, and I learned that you can't just follow a recipe to make this cookie. You have to know what to look for at each step, and even then, you just have to be really nice to the cookie and pray that it turns out.

My baking buddy and old college roommate Mel also took the class with me, and we teamed up to make these lemon macarons, which happened to be one Meilleur Ouvrier de France's (MOF) recipe. Here's a macaron fact: all MOF's can't agree on a particular method when making them because depending on a number of factors, different methods produce lovely macarons. The method our recipe used incorporated the sugar with the egg whites at the start of the whipping process, and also did away with any waiting period after piping the cookies, it went straight into the oven. Some methods have that waiting period to allow a skin to form on the macarons, but ours came out just fine.

Oh, and the fillings. We made a plain yellow cookie and originally paired it with lemon curd. We made another batch of vanilla macarons, but we baked them in the cursed oven (our instructor burned her demo macarons in this oven first), and our cookies also cracked and burned. That left us with extra white chocolate ganache to also fill our macarons with. We were a little stingy with our fillings; something else that takes practice. But for Mel and my first duo-baking project, not bad, huh? Together, we make Melida ;)

And thanks to Julie and Crystal for the ICE gift certificate as a bridal shower gift! As you can tell, I already made use of it and loved it.