I recently splashed out the whole £7 on a book “Secrets of macaroons”. Some useful tips, do’s and don’t’s, but most importantly ideas for beautiful macaroons with lovely fillings.

As I’ve cleaned the freezer the other day, I came across some frozen raspberries, which I topped up with blackcurrants, roughly 60-40 and made some lovely macaroons today, perfect for The Bake Off this evening. The guy’s recipe for the shells does not differ much from what I normally do, so I stuck with the usual method and quantities, but the filling was made yesterday, only this morning reheated and topped up with more gelatine, it was too runny. So I cooked down the fruit, then pushed it through a fine sieve. Made a sugar syrup out of 170 g of caster sugar ( could have used less, I decided when tasting the finished jam) and 100 ml of water. Once the syrup reached 110 degrees I added the fruit and a juice of half a lemon. Brought the temperature back to 105 degrees, cooked it for a further few minutes and took it off the heat. Added 1,5 gelatine leaf and left to cool.

This morning it was still far too runny, so another 2 leaves went in and that made it perfect.

Next macaroons will be hazelnut ones, but the filling will be chocolate, a dark chocolate, methinks. 🙂

I dusted off my Paul Hollywood’s baking book. Last Tuesday on Bake Off they were excelling at making focaccias and bread sticks, I had a warm up today with these posh little French things. Having tasted a couple, 15 minutes after baking them I think they could have had more flavour in them, so this weekend I’ll try to make Hollywood’s ciabatta bread sticks with cheese and olives, there will be no problem with lack of flavour!

The dough was unbelievably tricky. Super runny, needed a heavy dusting of flour to come anywhere near handling it. I started off with 250 g of strong white bread flour, 5 g of salt, 10 g of fresh yeast, 200ml of tepid water, which kitchen aid worked into a mess barely resembling something one can handle. A drizzle of olive oil was also added towards the end and it was POURED into a well oiled, rectangular container for proving. When tipped out, it looked like that;

I then laboriously shaped it into something resembling sticks, sprinkled with salt, oregano and some of my truffle butter from Italy ( original recipe wanted truffle oil, I don’t buy any anymore as it goes off quickly and I tend it waste it). The shaped dough proved for another 30-40 minutes and went into the oven for about 11 minutes in 230 degrees. More truffle butter on top once baked.

They’re nice and crunchy, in our bread loving family they won’t last beyond this evening, next time however- olives and cheese ones. 🙂