Blue and Pink / Chocolate and Vanilla Macarons

Forgive me for my iphone photos that were then filtered through instagram. I was too lazy to take out the big one.

Instead of cake, I made these for my 23rd Birthday. I wanna say "damn I feel old" but I know it would probably offend a lot more people reading this. It has really been a week long celebration, especially with the May Long and all. I took the Friday off work and just wondered around downtown Toronto and chilled.

Saturday I spent the entire day baking these babies. To be honest, I haven't blogged in so long that I didn't know if I had it in me anymore...what if I don't remember how to bake anymore? or what if the last time I succeeded was just a stream of good luck.

So I set out cautiously this time, following my own recipe to the T. You know I used to be lazy with sifting the ingredients but this time I sifted and processed the icing sugar and almond flour twice at my home in Kingston (it was the "messier" part of the recipe).

This is a little off topic but: although my sister was the one to request the macarons in the first place, I'm forbidden from causing her any inconveniences by making a mess at her place in Toronto. I know, I totally lucked out with her as my sister. In fact, when I ordered her present (a waffle/omelette maker) from Amazon and had it delivered, I was so excited to get a call from her expecting something along the lines of "Thank you" or "awww I really like it". But nope, the first thing I heard from the other end was "What the F**K do I do with this? I don't even know how to make waffles". So I said she could return it if she didn't like it and hung up then proceeded to balling my eyes out. She sent a follow up message saying "actually, it's nice. At least I can make omelettes..."

Who am I kidding? I should be used to this by now right.

But when I look at these macarons I'm happy. They are so cute and in some way resemble me and Anna. Blue and Pink were our favorite colours; I painted my room pink while she did hers blue with clouds. Chocolate was always her favorite thing. She could eat a box of those Purdy's hedge hogs in 20 minutes.

I kept on having these mini freak outs while baking these. What if the mixture was too wet? what if I didn't let it dry enough. Despite all these worries, they turned out and they were the prettiest things ever :)

While making the chocolate ganache filling for the blue cookies, I came across the easiest way to make chocolate mousse. It's literally chocolate ganache (1/2 cream 1/2 chocolate) and you whip it in a stand mixer and it will expand and form a mousse. Excuse me while I'm giggling to myself for this brilliant discovery. It's probably been discovered before but all I've come across were the ones where you use gelatin or the one with eggs. I can eat the mousse by the spoonful; it's sinfully good.

They were a hit at the party and I've never been more proud. Nothing's better than getting compliments on your day's worth of hard work :) Now that I think I've got the hang of it, I might start making them more often.

I'll close with a photo from our birthday party. We really don't look that much alike anymore. Let me know if you can tell who's who!

Slice N Bake Easter Bunny Cookies

After seeing the Pillsbury ready-to-bake cookies, I was determined to create my own. It's no easy task but after multiple attempts, I've finally got it! Due to the amount of work attached to producing these cookies, they will be a limited edition. If you got a cookie, then I must like you a lot.

First attempt was an embarrassment...Instead of a bunny image, the ears were squashed and they looked like little piglets instead. I had no choice but to eat them all by myself...life's tough!

I kept my second batch of dough as cold as possible. If the butter started melting from my hands I would put it back into the fridge to chill. After a 3 hour session of watching The Mentalist in between runs to the fridge, I had a nice log of cookie dough.This time the ears were perfect, but only they ended up on the side of the cheek. I wanted to cry.

I didn't have to remake the whole thing thank god. I sliced it open and re-pieced it together the correct way. Don't think I would have tried it a third time if that didn't work. It's honestly one of those things where I can say I've done it and never doing it again. Ever!

The cookies were amazing. Fantastic recipe from Smitten Kitchen. The secret must be in the icing sugar because Thierry's Almond Sable cookies also call for icing sugar and the cookies come out nice and crispy.

Ingredients:
(slightly adapted from Smitten's Kitchen)

2 Sticks salted butter
2/3 cups icing sugar
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups flour

Cream together butter and icing sugar. Add egg yolks and mix well. Add flour and mix until dough forms.

Then it's a matter of forming the bunny cookie. If you don't have patience, skip this step and proceed to rolling the dough into a log and refrigerate.

Divide the dough into 3rd's. Divide one of those thirds into half and add one of the halves onto another third. you should have 3 unequal portions: sm, med, lg.

dye the small one purple, med one pink, and leave the lg in it's original colour.

I can't help you much from this point on because it's going to be a game of trial and error. What you wanna do is roll out a bunch of logs and shape them into the bunny's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Then you gotta stack them together and wrap it in the lg piece of dough to form a log. The tricky part is making sure everything is in the right proportion and nothing gets squashed. Good luck and don't get discouraged if it doesn't work out!

Easter Deviled Eggs

Toying with the technique of the Chinese Tea Eggs, I decided to make the same pattern on my Easter eggs. At first I was just gonna dye them and leave them like that but then I decided that that was a little dull and tasteless as well.

These bright colours probably scared my housemates because they looked at me with great uncertainty before reaching for one. |And I must admit, I wouldn't eat them either on a regular basis. But hey, it's Easter and you gotta have those colours!

Same procedure as you would with the Tea Eggs : Boil the eggs as you normally would. Then lightly crack the surface and  roll it on your counter, pressing gently with your palm so you get smaller crackers all over. Then drop them into a ziplock back filled with diluted food colouring. Squeeze out as much air as you can and set it in the fridge over night. 

Filling:
12 egg yolks
1/2 cup mayo
2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Fill a piping bag with the yolk mixture and pipe into egg whites. Enjoy!

Green Velvet Cake

St. Patties is just two days away!! It doesn't seem too long ago the last time I was funneling wine and soliciting free pizza outside of Little Caesars. Let's hope this year doesn't get as crazy...or, at least I wanna stay up past 5 pm. Working the next day will be an episode, keeping in mind that my job requires a lot of driving.

The recipe I used for this cake is from Crumb Boss but it was wayyyyy too sweet. I'm going to adjust the measurements here so you don't have to go into a sugar coma like I did.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 sticks butter
2 eggs

2 1/2 cup cake flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp gel green color
1 tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Cream together sugar and butter until pale and fluffy. 

Add eggs one at a time and whisk until incorporated.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix it slightly.

When you combine the baking soda and vinegar, it's going to bubble up like a science experiment. Red velvet cakes didn't always have artificial colour added to them. Initially, the red was caused by a chemical reaction from combining the baking soda, vinegar, and cocoa powder. I guess people liked the red a little too much and decided to enhance it.

When you are happy with the colour, pour into buttered/floured pans and bake at 350 until done...I baked mine in 8-inch pans so it took me about 35.

I wanted my cake to be smaller so I cut out 6-inch rounds from the 8-inch cake. It did two things: It made my cake look taller than it really is, and it gets rid of the over-cooked edges.

go to my carrot cake recipe for the cream cheese frosting. I don't usually do this, but because the cake was so green, I crumb-coated it first. Didn't wanna risk getting green crumbs all mixed up in the icing.

Refrigerate the crumb-coated cake until set then do the final coat.

I crumbled up the cut-outs from the cake and decorated the sides and top with it. For the shamrock pattern on top, I just placed a cookie cutter on top and filled the inside of it with crumbs then removed the cutter. I will use the remaining crumbs and icing to make cake pops!

Chinese Tea Eggs

These tea eggs are a classic in China and they are my sister's favorite. The eggs are first hard boiled so that you can take a crack at the shell. Then they are boiled again in a dark liquid that's made from black tea, soy sauce, and spices.

I never liked eggs as a kid so I've always avoided tea eggs until recently. Since I've learnt to appreciate eggs as one of the most versatile ingredients, I am now attempting to include it more often in my diet.

I would make a big batch of these and have 2 for breakfast everyday. I still throw out the yolk because no matter how hard I try, I cannot begin to like the texture and taste. The whites, however, has a rich and slightly salty flavour from the tea and soy sauce mixture.

There's no real science to it. Par boil your eggs first so you can crack the shells.

Combine 1/4 cup loose black tea, 1/2 cup dark soy sauce, 2 cinnamon sticks, 3 star anise, 1 tsp coriander seeds, 1 tsp cardamom, enough water to cover the eggs.


Bring the liquid up to a boil with the eggs then turn off the heat and let it sit for 12-24 hours in the fridge. 

Chocolate Clusters

I'm not sure if you are familiar with "OMG's Chocolate clusters" that popped on the shelves of most Canadian grocery stores a while ago. I believe it was on Dragon's Den and damn... they are expensive. For a little pkg containing 135g, they charge a ridiculous amount of $5.29. I can probably make a half kilo of them for that much. Plus, it's more fun if you are making it yourself anyway right?

I've tried making them twice and found that if you temper the chocolate first, your life will be made much easier. Tempered chocolate takes seconds to harden whereas un-tempered takes hours. What you do is take 2/3 of your chocolate and melt it in the microwave. When it reaches 110 degrees, add in the rest of the chocolate and stir until they are melted. This will bring down the temperature of the chocolate. Microwave again on 10 sec intervals until the whole batch of chocolate reaches 87 degrees Fahrenheit. This starts the crystallizing process so that the chocolate hardens right away when dipped.

Coconut Tuiles

I feel terrible that I haven't updated this blog for so long. A lot has changed since Christmas and I must have let it become my excuse to take a vacation.

So I haven't been able to bake all that much; instead of brainstorming new ideas, I found myself going back to the same recipes over and over for special occasions and gifts. The extra time I had I spent job hunting. I'd say it paid off. I will be starting a job with Pepsi next week as a Territory Sales Rep. 

It was a lengthy interview process and I honestly didn't expect to be hired. I had a terrible first interview cause the HR guy called out of the blue and asked me what my favorite Pepsi product was...I obviously didn't have time to prep so I had no idea. And it would be dumb to say Diet Pepsi cause it was so obvious to the point that I questioned whether or not Pepsi was actually a PepsiCo product. 

Then I didn't hear back from him for weeks and one morning he called and asked me if I've been getting any of the emails he sent. I said no and he said he sent out a couple emails the week before asking if I could do a second interview with the HR manager and the zone manager. I had the second interview and everything was good until they asked me :"what motivates you?" and I blurted out:" money (duh)". They laughed and it seemed fine but then I talked to my sister after and she goes :" Annie! you NEVER tell them money motivates you!". 

And somehow, I got to the third interview, and somehow got the job. I jokingly said to Anna "who's dumb enough to hire me?" 

So for the entire month of January I have been packing and getting my shit together for the move. I had to figure out how to buy a car, insure a car, and oh yea! get my license. Fast forward a month and I'm in my sister's apartment DT Toronto, writing a blog post that was long over due.

Coconut Tuiles was another one of Thierry's recipes. These alone made all those volunteer hours at Thierry worth it. They taste like chips, but sweet. and they cost almost a dollar per cookie at the bakery. The ingredients are not complicated but they take a frickin long time to make.

I usually make a decent sized batch and leave it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Then every time I need to go somewhere, I'll make a tray of them (10-12) to bring along.