Yum, yum, yum. We’re half way through it. 🙂 Recipe from the latest GF, plums on offer in Ocado, which helped, as normally they’re a bit too pricey.

Also, the pastry is bordering on awesome. I used half a portion given in the magazine to make a small pie for us 2. So 113 g of cold butter got processed with 175 g of plain flour until looking like breadcrumbs. 25 g of icing sugar, 1 egg yolk and a splash of water to bind it. Chilled.

About 450 g of plums, stoned and chopped in quarters, along with 50 g of sugar and a tbsp of cornflour very quicky simmered, until they started giving away the juice. They they sat in a sieve over a bowl to let the juices go, about 30 mins.  Some marzipan got purchased too, golden marzipan from Sainsbury’s, very decent, unlike Dr Oetker’s bought last time. Not much to do with almonds.

When the pastry was chilled and ready, I lined my small round tin, sprinkled some ground almonds on it, then the plums, which had a small addition of almond extract. I’m not a massive fan myself and might just skip it next time. Chopped marzipan, around 100 g got scattered around the plums and then the top layer of the pastry, brushed with egg white and baked for less than 30 mins in 190 degrees.

I love the pastry. It’s buttery, flaky, not too sweet. I’m thinking it would be fantastic with apples.  It’s great. A keeper. 🙂

And a successful one. After quite a nice dinner I’m just having a cup of tea and munching on my creations. I’ve been wanting to learn to make them for a while, then last week I saw 2 blokes on GBBO making macaroons, which made me think- now, come on, get off your arse, woman.  My lovely Florian ordered a pastry thermometer for me, as the recipe I picked uses Italian meringue. It arrived on Monday and there were no more excuses.

I picked Dorota’s recipe for raspberry macaroons, as this lady has proven many times she knows what she’s doing.  Of course, mine look nowhere near as good as hers, but with the next attempt I’m going to invest in better food colourants. Aska recommends Wiltons, over £10 on Amazon, but she uses them a lot, so I’ll give them a try.

So, it took 2 hours of the cloudy afternoon, plus extra efforts to keep Izzie happy and busy with random kitchen equipment to play with.

I used 150 g of finely ground almonds, same amount of icing sugar, sieved and fine. Mixed with 60 g of egg whites and food colourant. The other 60 g of egg whites were being whipped in Kitchen Aid with 35 g of sugar, while 150 g of sugar and 50 ml of water were heating up on the stove, without stirring, but with the thermometer in. When the syrup reached 118 degrees I started pouring it slowly into the meringue, while beating slowly for about 6 minutes to cool it. Then, in 3 batches the meringue got mixed into the almonds bit, placed into the piping bag and then piped onto 4 trays ready with baking paper. I then left them to rest and dry slowly, nearly an hour. Then they baked for 12 minutes in 160 degrees.

The first one I tasted was still warm, but delightfully crunchy and nutty. For the next time I will know to pipe them and flatten them more than I did today and of course use better colour.

The cream was made with 250 g of mascaropne, 80 g of white chocolate- melted and 100 g of fresh raspberries. Dorota recommended 40 g of raspberries, I used more and I’m happy I did.

I’m very pleased with the results. Quite a lot of work, lots and lots of stuff to clean afterwards, but worth it, plus Florek will find a plate of lovely macaroons in the fridge, when he comes home from Yorkshire tomorrow.

Baletki, maczki, these gorgeous little things have lots of names. I had a craving for them when in Poland last spring. Sometimes they can be bought super nice, sometimes decent.  Thanks to mojewypieki.com I found out they’re super easy and quick to make, they taste great and no need to go to Poland at all.  So this afternoon I have won a title of The Mother of The Year and got busy with my cravings, while Izzie played around in the kitchen with various kitchen utensils. She did vacuum clean 3 of them in the end, so I guess I succeeded.

3 egg whites got whipped in the kitchen aid with slowly added 80 g of sugar, bit by bit. Then in went 75 g of plain flour, incorporated super carefully in order to keep all that air. Into the piping bag, then sprinkled with poppy seeds and then baked in 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. They cool quickly and in no time are ready to sandwich with a good jam or conserve- I used strawberry.  Delightful, I don’t think they’ll last until tomorrow.