70% of Cocoa Goodness

Hi everyone!

As you all know, I was in Bangkok for the past 4-5 months doing my Student Exchange Programme at Chulalongkorn University. Well, my exchange is finally over & I’m now back in Singapore 🙂

Having not been with my oven for a super long time (well I did come back & bake but yknow, not having it there all the time makes it different), I jumped at the opportunity to make my favourite challenging macarons for Mothers’ Day.

I decided to play it safe and go with the all-time favourite & simple to make macarons – Chocolate Macarons. I used a 70% Callebaut Chocolate for the ganache, rendering a really rich and flavourful ganache. After not having made macarons for five-ish months, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. However, my macaron shell recipe did not fail me & the macarons turned out  pretty good. The shells were chewy on the inside, there were feet on the outside and it tasted great. The only problem was that I was too lazy & didn’t sift the almond meal enough so the surface was kinda lumpy :S Also, some of the macarons had cracked feet – one of the nifty problems of macarons.

Well, secret for you : People don’t really care if the feet are cracked or if the surfaces are lumpy if you’re just giving it to them & not selling it. So don’t stress and just pat yourself on the back for making a darn good macaron 🙂

 

My mom really liked these macarons – she was the one who requested for them to be in pink & purple. Yes, I know that the purple didn’t turn out purple! I’m still playing around and trying to figure out why the purple doesn’t stay purple when it goes into the oven. The next time, I’m going to lower the oven temperature and see how well it turns out.

 

I’ll be away for about another 4 weeks and then starting my internship. Once I’m back for good though, I’ll definitely put in my best effort to update this space as much as I did before I left for my exchange.

Till then, enjoy baking & sayonara 🙂

Macaron Shells

I’ve been using Pierre Herme’s recipe & modifying it here and there. If it’s your first time making macaron shells, I’d say stick with the original recipe because it’s what got me hooked on macaron making in the first place 🙂

Recipe over at Vanilla Macaron’s post

Dark Chocolate Ganache
Makes enough for 80 macarons

Ingredients:

• 250ml whipping cream
• 250 – 300g dark chocolate (70%)

Directions:

1. Put all the whipping cream in a bowl
2. Place in microwave and heat for 10 second intervals, making sure it does not boil or separate
3. Put in dark chocolate and stir with a fork till ganache is nice and smooth
4. If the cream is not heated enough, put it in the microwave for another 5-10 seconds
5. Refrigerate until firm
6. Pipe generously onto the macaron shells

Alternative Method

1. Place cream in a bain marie (boiling water with a bowl over – cream and chocolate in bowl)
2. Mix slowly, not stopping till you get a smooth ganache
3. Repeat steps 5 & 6 as above

Love,

Eugenia