Another round of macaroons, this time with blackcurrants, which were not too easy to obtain in January. But I asked Robert, who grows them in his garden and then freezes them. He gave me some in summer, Izzie enjoyed vitamic C packet compots made of them. I offered to buy some off Rob, but he said I could have some and he’d just like some of whatever I’ll be baking with them. Pleasure doing business with this man!

Usual recipe for the macaroons, but they haven’t risen as much as I’d have liked. The curd however is freaking sensational.  250 g of frozen blackcurrants cooked quickly with 70 g of sugar, then sieved for smoothness. 2 egg yolks +2 eggs, lightly beaten added, 2 tbsps of creme de cassis, bought especially for this purpose from Ocado and 80 g of butter.  All this heated up slowly, stirred until thickened. Luckily it made more than I needed, I’m planning on baking more macaroons with this curd, it’s that good. Florian had about 5 after dinner, that’s before the dessert. 🙂

What a lovely way to finish the first dinner in New Year, in nice company ( Jimbo and Louise came over).

I saw it on telly, some Christmassy special with Mary Berry, saw it and I knew I’d have to try it. Bought a bottle of Grand Marnier, which won’t be wasted, as this cake will be done again.

First job, a large orange gets thinly sliced and then cooked for nearly 2 hours in a sugar syrup- 400 ml of water, 400 g of caster sugar, slowly and gently. After 2 hours the oranges are out and drained, 50 ml of Grand Marnier goes in and it’s set aside.

Next creme pat. 600 ml of milk warmed up with lots of vanilla paste. 4 eggs whipped with 100 g of sugar, then 60 g of flour added. Almost boiling milk goes into the eggs, lightly whipped, back onto the heat and constantly stirred, while it thickens. Transferred into a clean bowl and covered with cling film, cooled, chilled.

First time ever for me and a genoise sponge;50 g of melted butter, 4 eggs, 100 g of sugar, 100 g of plain flour. Eggs and sugar lovingly whipped till pale and fluffy, flour goes in, melted, cooled butter goes in. And then it bakes for about 25 minutes in 180 degrees.  I think the sponge is the only thing in the whole cake I could have done better, it could have risen a bit more.  When cooled I sliced it horizontally and cut round with the help of a plate.

300 ml of whipped cream is the next thing, whipped and happy to proceed, creme pat mixed in bit by bit.

Finally, the pretty bit. A large bowl lined with 2 layers of cling film, the sliced oranges arranged in a pretty way- this will be the top of the dome, when ready to serve. Onto the oranges goes half of the creme pat, nicely smoothed, then half of the sponge. The sponge then gets soaked with boozy sugar syrup. The other half of creme pat will have the remaining oranges, chopped finely and mixed in. I’m thinking maybe even an extra splash of Grand Marnier would not be a bad idea. That onto the sponge, the other half of the sponge on, syrup and then a heavy plate on top and to the fridge overnight.

It came out of the bowl without effort. Tastes rich, light, orangey and luxurious. Super pleased. 🙂

Aska brought one last weekend and I thought it was my favourite cake I’ve ever tasted that came out of her kitchen.  I immediately asked for the recipe, got it and got cracking.

It takes 150 g of butter, 100 g of blanched hazelnuts, 140 g of self raising flour, 100 g of sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 5 ripe conference pears and 50 g of chopped, dark chocolate.

While the oven warms up to 160 degrees, the tin is buttered and lined, the hazelnuts get ground till fairly fine. In goes the butter and the flour, till the mixture resembles crumbs. In goes sugar and eggs. 2 of the pears, peeled, cored and chopped- in, as well as chocolate. The mixture is unusually thick, needs to be worked with a fork. When in the tin and flattened, the remaining sliced pears go on top.  It bakes for about an hour, till firm.

Aska omitted the chocolate in her bake, I didn’t, I think it’s money, the whole cake reminds me of some decadent cocktail, maybe espresso martini with some Frangelico or hazelnut vodka.  Super nice.

I saw them being made on GBBO, obviously from scratch, puff pastry and all. I ordered the cute, metal horns from Amazon to make them with and today did, to have something sweet when my man comes home after 2 long weeks in Canada. I bought my puff though.

They were fun to make, to roll onto the horns, painted with egg yolk and baked till golden. When cold I piped in some vanilla whipped cream with fresh strawberries. I intended to dip the front in chocolate too, but forgot to buy chocolate. Next time I won’t forget, there will be plenty of next times, the horns are sheer delight.

Yup, they look like they’re ready for Halloween.  I admit, I didn’t do a great job mixing the food colourant with the rest of the ingredients, I wonder if kitchen aid would do a better job, only I wouldn’t be quite following the recipe. We’ll see. For now, we’re having tea and the scary macaroons stuffed with rhubarb filling. If I were to make improvements, I’d add more rhubarb, than the 280 g that I had. Experience now shows they taste best when the filling is sharp, lemon, yuzu kinda sharp, raspberries- the contrast with sweet almond cookie is then delightful. I made the filling with 280 g of chopped rhubarb, quickly cooked with 3 tbps of sugar till falling apart, then a packet of unsweetened budyn smietankowy mixed with 1/3 of a glass of water- in. All mixed together, nice, tasty, but a touch too sweet, this sharp contrast is missing today.

Still. Being eaten and quite quickly. 🙂

All my ambitious plans of flattening my stomach again are pointless. I love eating too much. I can’t just have 1 eclair, I have 3, with beautiful whipped vanilla cream and the coffee glaze dripping down my fingers. So much more pleasure than sweating on the floor with Ewa Chodakowska, hoping to lose 2 kg around the stomach. Sorry Ewa, eclairs 1, you- 0.

Eclairs were one of the challenges for the Bake Off contestants last Wednesday. Most of them were mixing plain flour with the strong one, hoping to make the choux more stable and drier. I tried that trick, I thought my choux was excellent, but whether it was due to that addition or not, not sure.

For the pastry I used 105g of flour, 30 g of which was  a strong one, 85 g of butter melted in 225 ml of water, a pinch of salt and 3 lightly beaten eggs. Until today I didn’t know I should really cool the flour/ butter/water mix before I add the eggs, now I know. The end result- smooth and shiny dough, ready for the piping bag.

I piped my eclairs quite small, that made me around 16 of them. The sight of eclairs rising in the oven is lovely, I was watching them with Izzie. One day I’ll teach her to bake with me.

They baked for about 25 minutes in 200 degrees, then I got them out of the oven, made a small hole in each and returned them in for another 4 minutes to dry them out.

When ready for dessert, I stuffed them with vanilla cream and finished with coffee glaze- just a double espresso with about 5 tbsps of icing sugar. Keeps nicely in the fridge, our eclairs are being enjoyed for 3 consecutive evenings. Yum.

I was looking for a recipe for chocolate muffins as a form of down payment to Florian, who finally, after months of nagging, begging, threats of suicide and slashing veins agreed to complete the thresholds in the kitchen.  The search engine on mojewypieki.com showed only 800 recipes for muffins, but I went with these, as I happened to have some plums and not enough chocolate to make the chocckie ones.

Easy, quick, yummy. For 12 muffins I used 2 tall glasses of plain flour, a tsp each of soda and baking powder, 120 g of sugar, 2 eggs, beaten, half a glass of sunflower oil, 300 g of soured cream and 5 medium plums, chopped in small pieces.Also, a handful of chocolate chips. All dry ingredients combined, all wet ingredients added, into paper muffin cases, baked in 180 degrees for 25 minutes.  Very pleasant indeed. 🙂

I’m pretty confident with macaroon making now. With good recipe (Dorota’s), good pastry thermometer and now excellent food colourants- Wilton’s- I feel I could make them for sale! Cocky!!!

It does take a good few hours in the kitchen, but the batch I’ve made today are perfect. The look excellent, they taste great, tomorrow Ewa and Co will be tasting them and giving their verdict. My stuffing was made with a good splosh of yuzu juice, alongside lemon curd and mascarpone. I’m very happy with the lot.

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.