French Macaron

Aren't they beautiful??  Almost love at first sight!

Well, it looks like winter is still upon us in San Diego.  It's kind of strange...we would usually  be out of winter by now... I mean, we are shy a few days from March!  It makes me even happier than I was able to make my macarons last Thursday!  The weather was beyond perfect on Thursday for macaron making!!  My baking buddy, Mai, had wanted to order some French macarons for her baby sister's birthday.  I was more than happy to oblige!  I can always use the practice!  And for those of you who've made macarons before, you know it's not a spur of the moment kind of thing.  It takes careful planning and timing with the weather to create beautiful macs.  See, if only I can get my hands on one of those copper KitchenAid mixing bowls...well, I can then make macs even in cold, rainy weather (like today).  Kind of.  Or at least, I can attempt to make perfect macs in rainy, stomy weather if I had that copper bowl....Ok, I'm digressing.  Anywhoo, back to those macs.  I had perfect, perfect macs!  I usually don't brag too much on my baked goods, but these macs were meant for bragging.  These macs baked up so perfectly, that they slid (slid!) off my silpat!  I only  had a little problem with my first batch of macarons and figured out that if only I had baked them for one minute longer, they would have slid off like my next two batches..Ah, live and learn (and know thy oven!)  Have I redeemed myself from my Hello Kitty macaron blunder??  I should hope so!

The color scheme ordered was black and purple.  Mai said her sister looooves nutella, so had wanted a batch filled with nutella filling.  The other was filled with a raspberry filling.  So, I ended making a black chocolate shell with black sugar crystals with a nutella Swiss meringue buttercream.  I'm not completely sure what happened, but after I filled the macs, I put them into the refrigerator to mature...the filling kinda collapsed and didn't come all the way to the edge of the macaron shells.  Although, I did put less filling than what is called for in macarons...but I think they taste better without a mouthful of filling.  It could just be me, but I think when the filling comes all the way to the edges, the ratio of filling and shell is just off (to taste), but it looks nice.  However, I think mine is just as fine too...pretty enough!

This light purple is my very fist batch of the day.  This batch is where I figured out I needed about another minute in the oven too.  The majority of these macs came off the silpat without a problem, but there were a few in the middle that needed that extra minute (those ended up with more filling since the middle got stuck to the silpat!).  I also found that I have problems with mixing colors.  This is nothing new that I didn't know, but man, you think I'd be smart by now and realize that getting colors (such as plum purple) means I actually have to combine more than one color together.  You see, I bought "regal purple" hoping that I'll get a nice dark purple without having to mix colors.  Yep, not quite...I ended up with lavender instead.  I think I'm a tad bit light handed on the food coloring, so that didn't help with my quest at darker colors.  I guess it doesn't help that I get a bit grossed out by the addition of too much food color (ie red velvet, black macs...yeah, those black macs really grossed me out, but they were actually really very good!)  And because I kind of messed up on this first batch of macs (not the right color and needed extra baking time), I decided to make an extra batch of darker purple (I was actually going for plum and actually mixed the two colors to make plum, but, again, I underestimated the amount of coloring needed for all that egg white!)  But overall, the three color worked well with the over all look of the table!  

Isn't this a gorgeous table setting for the sweets?  My sweet friend Mai is a genius with her creativity!  Everything she touches turns into elegance!  She truly has the talent to make even a brown paper bag look nice!  And not only does she do beautiful set ups, she bakes and cooks too!  Great job Mai!  Perfect macarons made even more perfect through beautiful table setting!  I hope you all enjoyed this post!

Hello, Kitty

Just to let you all know, I am in between my last batch of macarons for the day!  I thought instead of sitting around watching my macs dry, I'll come and blog about the second post I had promised from yesterday.  Today's fun post is about the adorable Hello Kitty.  Yes, she is super cute and can be made into just about anything...macarons included.  Amazing, right?  I was a bit daunted making Hello Kitty macs...macs are finnicky enough shaped regularly and here I was, trying to make cat shaped ones.  And for those of you who've made macs before, you knooow the extent of mac making.  They are the prima donnas of cookies.  Very high maintenance and very intolerable to slight changes.  And knowing all this, I still went ahead without my instinct of double checking my notes (I haven't made macs in a while), and somewhat screwed up my macs.  It was only a difference of 30 grams too much almond meal and 30 grams too less of powdered sugar!  And what a difference that made!  See, when I got to the macaronnage part, I knew something didn't look right.  My batter didn't turn very runny (especially after the amount of time I folded the batter).  That still didn't phase me, but I still got a little suspicious.  It was when the macs are baking in the oven that my eyebrows really lifted.  Usually after about 7-8 minutes, the foot would have started to form.  Well, these macs have been in the oven for over 10 and nothing formed.  Hmm...I thought...maybe it's this oven...(it sucked).  So, another 8 minutes goes by and I barely get a foot on my macs...they were trying very hard to appear for me, but I suspect the extra weight from the almond meal hindered their rise.  I was a bit disappointed as I haven't really blundered on macs like this since I first started baking macs.  Ah well...they still ended up looking ok, but I had higher hopes for these Hello Kitty macs.

So I drew Hello Kitty's face on the macs.  I am definitely drawing impaired.  Seriously, right?  I mean, at first, I thought...Well, how hard can it be??  REALLY...it's Hello Kitty.  She's got 2 oval eyes, an oval yellow nose, and 3 pairs of straight line whiskers.  HOW HARD CAN THAT BE??  Hmph...it was actually quite taxing for me.  And seriously...it was harder than I thought!  Making cat ears and macs wasn't as hard as drawing Hello Kitty's face!  I know, it's really sad, but seriously, I can't draw stick figures right, let alone Hello Kitty!  Overall, I was pleased (except for the macaron ratio incident) with my first attempt at Hello Kitty.  She is definitely a lot more work than your average macaron, but well worth it in cuteness points!  And what's better than one Hello Kitty mac?...a whole bunch all together!

Meow!

Happy Birthday Justin!

Happy hump day, dear readers!  Ok, so we are at the tail of hump day, but still, it's Wednesday all the same.  And I've got a special treat for you this week...not one, but two posts this week!  So, although I'm starting late in the week, there's no time like now!  Here's the first of the two.

Today is Justin's birthday.  Happy birthday Justin!!  Remember Justin?  So, in honor of Justin's birthday, his thoughtful wife ordered some peanut butter cupcakes for him.  He got a whole dozen...I would chance to say all to himself too,  but I'm sure he must have shared at least one with his favorite gal!  I am honored that Jen wanted me to produce those cupcakes...I'm sure Justin has been thinking about them since their wedding last year!  So, here they are!

So, I decided to frost these cupcakes instead of piping them with my pretty tips.  I should probably practice more free-hand frosting instead of relying on my tips so much...I can't help it; tips makes my life much, much easier!  I decided on blue swirl cupcake liners because Justin's favorite color is blue...well, navy to be exact, but I figure all shades of blue should make him a pretty happy camper!  And see, I free-hand frosted these cupcakes because they seem a little, well, manlier...although, I'm sure everyone enjoys piped frosting...I mean, it's not like frosting has a gender, but still...you know what I mean??  Ok, I'll just stop here because I'm putting my foot into my mouth!

Look out for the next post...here's a little hint: macarons and hello kitty.  Enough said.

For the Love of Justice

Welps, it's Monday...again...The only saving grace for me today is that I have a fantasmic event to blog about!  I had the pleasure (honor, really) of attending a super fun fundraising event (with a bunch of cool people in attendance) in Los Angeles this past Saturday.  This event, "For the Love of Justice" was hosted at the APALC office (Asian Pacific American Legal Center) and it was their third year running this specific event.  The key to this event was to open people's eyes about social injustice and fighting injustice through love.  There was one quote that stuck to me and pretty much sums up the event:  Social justice is showing love publicly (so sorry I'm not giving credit to the author...I didn't take notes Saturday and can't remember whether I read it on the walls, or heard it through someone's recital!)  But hmm, what a concept, right??  And what a fitting time to have such an event, what with a Hallmark holiday right around the corner!  So, although I have been exposed to these kinds of issues and subjects, being a social science major and taking a lot of fun classes that deal with society and people, this was still a reminder to me of the injustices of the world and that I, too, can play a part in making justice "just."  So, indirectly for the cause, I donated my time and baking skills and had set up a dessert table for those in attendance.

This time around, I made chocolate cupcakes, vanilla popcorn balls, fortune cookies, vanilla sugar cookies, rice krispy treats, brownies, strawberry cake pops and German chocolate cake pops, meringue cookies, and VEGAN items!  Ok, so there were only two vegan items, but hey, better than none right?? I stuck in a vanilla vegan cupcake and vegan oatmeal cranberry cookies.  I must say though, that those vegan oatmeal cookies were really yummy.  I almost wished I left more at home so that I have some to munch on!  I am really happy to say that by the end of the night, a lot of the desserts were gone and there really wasn't that much left over!  I also cannot express the amazement and gratitude I was in that night, as everyone was overflowing with complements and praise!  The delightful MCs were touting my desserts all night and it really filled my heart with gratitude and pride as people came up for desserts over and over throughout the entire night!  Nothing can express what I felt as people drew me aside and asked in wonderment if I had created this table.   Of course, my other other half Christina was a great help that day.  I completely forgot about the time it takes to set up and break down tables!  I surely would have been much more exhausted had I not had her to help me carry things to and from the car...which was upstairs...SO, we definitely had a mini workout that night!  

Riku, caught, red-handed!

I had also made a cupcake bouquet for the silent auction that was also going on.  It was a brilliant idea, and the bouquet was so pretty the morning I put it together.  But thanks to a very moist chocolate cake and the crappy, bumpy freeway (the 10 freeway mostly), gravity did its part and undid my beautiful bouquet...well, a portion of it anyways.  I had extra cupcakes to tack back on, because I'm one of those "just in case" kind of gal..but alas, the bouquet did not want to cooperate with me!   So, I made do with what I had and in the end, the cupcake bouquet was raffled off.  Thank goodness the winner didn't try to give that prize back!  

Overall, I had the most amazing time with the most amazing people!  They were all super fun and very welcoming! 

Mr. Stewart Kwoh (President and executive director) and Riku (one of the very engaging MCs for the evening)

Aakash and Chrissy, getting silly after one too many cake pops! 

Christina, my other other half, and me

There was even dancing after the program.  It was seriously a lot of fun!  The DJ played a fantastic music selection all night long.  The local duet sang and played music from every single genre possible!   The poetry and memoirs recited were memorable.  It was one fantasmic night!  Thank you APALC for letting me be a part of your event! 

Cheers!

I