In Oxford the other week, we stumbled across a lovely little store on the High Street called “Pod“. There was the sweetest little book simply called “Macarons” which is by Annie Rigg . Of course, I was bought it on the condition I’d use it and that David would see the results.
A Raspberry and White Chocolate birthday cake for last week had been requested so of course I saw this as the perfect opportunity to make some accompanying macarons.
I followed the recipe in the book (200g icing sugar, 100g ground almonds, 3-4 egg whites, pinch of salt, 40g caster sugar) and then followed the instructions to a “t”. They worked! The middle was raspberry jam, and then a white chocolate ganache.
Everyone who tried them really liked them and they tasted like macarons should! Very happy!
What do you get for your boyfriend’s parents for Christmas? Ahh I had no idea. Except. They like my baking: sorted!
Since I’d made shortbread recently and it’d gone down well; it was easy and keeps, I decided they would be perfect. On Christmas Eve morning (still in dressing gown!) I set about making them. It would only take me a short while and then I would have time to revise before the Children’s Carol service. If only.
After a disaster of trying to make shapes (DON’T bother! – it doesn’t work. Obviously.) I had to re-make a batch. I was making three flavours: plain, choc chip and lemon. They all follow the same basic recipe I blogged last week. For the lemon ones, add the grated rind of 2 lemons (adjust depending on how much you/the recipients like lemon).
They all turned out well. And definitely try lemon ones – the crumbs of that flavour were definitely my favourite!
I put them in the little cellophane presentation bags you can get, tied with Christmas ribbon and wrote on gift tags to label the flavours. They went down a storm – success!
David asked me if I can bake shortbread. So of course, I then had to!
Mary Berry (legend) calls this “the very best shortbread” so who am I to dispute that?!
8oz plain flour
4oz semolina
8oz butter (do not use marg for shortbread!)
4oz caster sugar
Chocolate chips (optional)
Dipping chocolate and sprinkles (optional)
Mix flour and semolina then add butter and sugar. Rub with finger tips until it starts to bind. When it does, add the choc chips. Keep going! Slowly it will form a dough and you can bring it together into a ball.
Press into a greased and or lined baking tin to however thick you like – thinner = crispier. Prick with a fork and chill.
Bake at 160 fan for about 25 mins or until golden brown. Unfortunately you can’t listen to shortbread!
Leave to cool for a bit in the tin but while warm, cut whilst in the tin into fingers. When possible, remove from tin.
Melt chocolate and spoon over one end,of each,finger. Add sprinkles
I had 2 friends round for lunch after church yesterday and found they don’t bake but would like to. So, I thought we’d start off with simple flapjack. In their words: “this is SO EASY! Even a child could do this”. Go bake, kids :)
6oz butter + 5oz golden syrup + 2oz sugar (caster/demerara the best but granulated would work too) into a pan. Heat and melt everything together.
Take off the heat, add 9oz of porridge oats and mix in. Put into a tin lined with greaseproof baking paper, so that it’s 1.5cm thick. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180’C for about 20mins or until golden on top.
Now be patient! Mark out the squares of flapjack whilst still in the tin. Then leave to cool in the tin so that it doesn’t fall apart when you take it out of the tin. Move to a wire rack and cut some more.
Et Voilà!
Variations:
Add raisins/sultanas or chocolate chips, or even cinnamon to your flapjacks with the oats. Be creative!
Sieve the icing sugar and almonds together. In a separate bowl, get the egg whites and whisk until they’re stiff peaks. I’ve never made Macarons before. I’d never had one until my boyfriend got me to try them at the weekend (yum!). So I looked up a recipe, thought “They really don’t look that hard” and had a go…Turns out making delicate, pretty things is really not my thing. I’ll be making many more to try and perfect my technique. However, the filling that I made was DELISH :)
Sieve the icing sugar and almonds together. In a separate bowl, get the egg whites and whisk until they’re stiff peaks… You could use an electric whisk which would be easiest but (so my mum says) I’m stubborn so do it by hand – a good arm-workout! Whisk in the caster sugar and the food colouring. (Preferably a gel one to not change the texture too much)
Aching arm after whisking…time to test if it’s done
Upside-down test: egg whites are whisked!
Fold the sifted dry ingredients into the wet until it’s totally mixed in. Don’t over-work the mixture.
To get the circles (or, in my case – blobs) pipe onto a totally flat baking sheet covered in greaseproof paper using a wide, round nozzle. Tap the baking sheet on the worksurface to get rid of bubbles and to stop them cracking (I didn’t do this well enough).
Bake at 180’C for 20ish minutes or until they look done. Take a look a bit early (don’t open the oven door though!) – under-done will mean slightly goo-ey whilst over-done will mean crispy macarons. I think the former is preferable.
Filling: I wanted to make blackcurrant macarons so I made up a filling: I cooked a few handfuls of blackcurrants in the microwave and then added a few chunks of dark chocolate and melted that in. I then added icing sugar to thicken the mix. It was very tasty. Popping it in the fridge will help it to set more quickly if you’re impatient, like me. When the macarons have cooled, add a little of the filling onto one half and then pop another on top.
Below are a few photos of my messy attempts at the delicate beauties…: You can see the wonderful colour the filling gives.
I’ll keep you posted at my future attempts at making these!
Just had one after my dinner…the texture of them is actually pretty good! They just need to look a bit prettier and they’ll be great :D
These chocolate cookies are my go-to recipe if I need to bake something for someone and can’t be messing around with anything fancy (sorry if you’ve ever received these from me – made with love, I promise!). My sister and I have been baking them since we were small. Now I barely measure anything out – just bung quantities of ingredients in until it looks right!
They’re from a book called “The Children’s Step-by-Step Cook Book” (a great present for any child), and they’re fool-proof and tasty. I’ll often add my own twist:
Standard recipe: 2.5oz caster, 2.5oz soft brown sugar, 4oz butter. Beat sugar + butter. Add 1 egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla essence; mix. Add 5oz Pl. four, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp bicarb. soda; mix. Add 6oz choc. chips. Bake for 8-10 mins @ 180/160fan.
Variations: make them multi-choc-chip by adding dark/milk/white chocolate; add glace cherries etc etc…go wild!
This picture shows some very pale cookies. You can get them to go browner. It depends on whether you’re aiming for a more cookie or biscuity-crumbly texture; and how patient you are!
The first thing that I learned making these is that I can’t make crispy cakes. My chocolatey mixture just didn’t work. So my lovely friends made the mixture for these! I would put up a recipe but since I was awful at making them I’ll just say they’re unhealthy*!
Every crispy cake needs a Smartie nucleus to begin its transformation into an atom!
We then mixed up a simple icing-sugar and water icing, popped it into a couple of disposable icing bags with a small-ish hole in them (slightly bigger than a writing nozzle) and created atoms – try to get electron orbitals like you see them shown in basic textbooks around the nucleus.
An atom wouldn’t be an atom without its electrons which are simply silver balls dropped onto the orbitals. You could use whatever you want, but we found these to be effective.
And Voila! Here are your atoms:
*Specifically: butter, sugar, cocoa, and golden syrup mixed into cornflakes unhealthy.
Physicakes 