Tiny puff pancakes

I love this little sweet dish. Tiny puff pancakes (or poffertjes) are the small version of pancakes, though inside remains a bit ooey gooey doughy. I like it plain with a knob of butter and powdered sugar. Adding vanilla icecream is also very delicious. Just like the idea of eating hot steamy Yorkshire pudding with cold icecream and a dot of syrup on hot or cold days.

For this dish I have used buckwheat flour, but I  have yet to find out the right consistency for the batter.  So no recipes are available yet.

I am sorry for the huge gaps between the posts. I have been coming down with allergies lately, again, but I am able to get it under controle this time. Humid days are the worst, so I am glad that the heatwave hasn’t reached my country yet. I’ll probably be sunbathing under the aircon then .

Lemon Pie take your time

I love browsing in bookstores. You can just drop me there, go shopping come back, and you can still find me running with my finger, touching the spine of the books. One of my favorite section is the cookbooks. I found a book by Michel Roux about Pastry, Savoury & Sweet, which I instantly fell in love and just had to buy.

So inspired by the book of the great chef, I have baked a lemon pie for my sister, who’d turned  thirty a few weeks ago.

Lemon pie, completely made from scratch. Including the pie crust, which was made from sugar dough. It was a little bit too time consuming. (It took nearly 6 hours to make and bake the pie).  My convection oven was stubborn and  too hot despite that I had already lowered down the heat at the beginning. The sugar dough turned dark brown while I was only blind-baking the crust. It then still needed to bake for another 2 hours in the oven. (yikes,  do I hear pitch black crust is the new golden brown colour?) So the lemon pie didn’t had the right texture in the end and the taste wasn’t too great either…..

,

….but at least I had fun making cat shaped cookies from the leftover sugar dough.They were gone very quickly, the pie too but with a different destination!

Midnight snack Ochazuke お茶漬け

I had a small meal tonight, because I wasn’t hungry around dinner time. The thing is, I will often get hungry later that night and it is hard to sleep on an empty tummy.

So I decided to make ochazuke. Ochazuke is a simple yet delicious Japanese dish. Hot green tea is poured over a bowl of cooked rice served with typical Japanese toppings, like furikake, pickles, seaweed, Katsuobushi and other things that you like).

I have made mine very simple with sencha (a type of Japanese green tea) and some okaka furikake (katsuobushi). Even my sister who doesn’t like this kind of food, took a deep sniff and was intrigued by the flavourful smells.

New

A new blog again. New start, new experiments and recipes.
More frightening adventures coming up!

Tuna kimbap

Browsing on YouTube is one of my favorite pass time things. A few days ago, I got inspired by a YouTube video from a delightful blog Aeriskitchen to make Kimbap (similar to the Japanese futomaki). Please visit her blog for detailed information about how to make Kimbap.

I’d adapted her kimbap recipe. I didn’t had ham or beef at the time when I made them. So instead I had used tuna and mixed it with a bit of mayonnaise. It was delicious and it turned out pretty well. I’ll definitely try to make the beef next time.

The ingredients that I have used, sliced in equal strips: Egg omelette (2 eggs) with a dash of mirin (sweet rice wine) and 1 tsp of sugar. Tuna with Mayonnaise, Sliced cucumber seasoned with salt for 5 minutes and rinced with water, Surimi sticks, panfried carrot (seasoned), takuan (pickled daikon), Zha cai (pressed vegetable) -> i didn’t had burdock root.

– 1 3/4 cup of short grain (uncooked) rice. Plain cooked rice yields about 4-5 kimbap rolls (depending on how much rice you put on the “kim” seaweed sheet ).

- Rice seasoning: 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp roasted sesame seed, pinch of seasalt. Gently fold the seasoning in the rice.

- 4-5 kim/nori seaweed sheets.

- Extra sesame oil to lightly rub the kimbap rolls.

I personally don’t like too much rice in the rolls. I like it equally balanced. That way I can eat a few more pieces. I have spread the rice 1/2 centimeter thick on the seaweed. Then I have spread the rice evenly with the back of the rice scoop and placed the filling carefully. Make sure to leave 3 centimeters of space at the far edge. Squish a few grains on the rim, so the end of the seaweed is sticking on the roll.

Roll the kimbap, when the rice is cooled off . Make sure to roll the kimbap firmly so the filling stays in place when cutting the rolls. Mine was a little loose:P.

Tinkering about flower of salt

While I did some grocery shopping on my way home, I had also picked up something else. Fleur de Sel! Something that I have meant to look for it, for quite some time, but I often forget to.

First thing that popped into my mind is to make caramel with fleur de sel. And a second thought it is to make macarons with caramel fleur de sel buttercream. Combining two favorite things, that must be a sure win.

Can’t help a third thought either lol, to make a caramel fleur de sel frosting for cupcakes.

First attempt to make cupcakes with a plain buttercream frosting and playing with green food coloring. Such a sweet indulgence. Mind the crummy piping skills . Oooh caramel is going to be such a dangerous combination.

I will post more about it the next time. Hopefully it will work as good as it sounds in my head right now .

Edit:

Hot lightly salted caramel.

Blurry cooled off caramel. My camera did a woohoo thing with the flash, sorry. I am very happy with the taste and texture. It’s velvety, like condensed milk. Sweet yet lightly salted. A keeper.

Second edit (March 21st):

I finally made macarons with a caramel buttercream and hints of fleur de sel today. However the whole process was quite of a disaster huge failure. My sugar thermometer was completely out of whack. The sugar was burned before it hit the 100 degrees celsius three times. Which shouldn’t be. Goodbye aged eggwhites (+48 hours). I didn’t wanted to waste the almond paste I made beforehand. So I made the sugar syrup a little bit by eye and a bit by the sugar thermometer. Because I wasted too much time making the sugar syrup, the almond paste dried out. Using fresh eggwhites didn’t made it any better. The batter was too tough. I almost wanted to throw the batter away, but I kept going on because I wanted to check out different kinds of temperatures when popping them in my stubborn oven.

Have murphy

Not only were the steps of making macarons out of sorts. The taste was even worst. I tell you why. I used a foodprocessor to ground the almonds. It’s a foodprocessor that my mom also often use to make chili garlic paste. Including this week. Do you get it?

Don’t be fooled by this picture.

Mini macarons with fleur de sel caramel buttercream and a hint of strong garlic. bleh.

Surprisingly tall feet, none cracks, none hollow. I don’t understand. Since the steps were all floopy.

Sunny saffron macarons with raspberry buttercream, trying to grasps its feet

After the last batch with the pink macarons, I was toying with the idea to make macarons with ground hazelnuts. So I did, yesterday. I have used saffron to color the macaron shells. And the color combination turned out really well.

Almost like little drops of vitamin C.

I think I have made too much changes this time. I have changed the sugar sirup temperature to 118 degrees, used a tant pour tant recipe for the hazelnuts and tried lowering the oven temperature half way baking.

Should lower the temperature next time. I didn’t realise how just a 5-8 degrees can make such a change.

Realising, should have also cleaned the oven door, before taking this picture , lol. The batter spread a bit too much this time. Though I thought I had left plenty of room between the piped batter, a few of them were attached to eachother.

Bulging feet and poofy skirt. I am not sure why the feet were very wide this time, but I think it has something to do with the changes I made.

It kinda oozed out under the shell. Like this. Surprisingly, the shells weren’t hollow.

Without the filling. I have tried two attempts to make buttercream and caramel, but the buttercream was too liquid and the caramel was kinda burned and too hard. Ooh quite bad, come to think of it. At some point I wanted to make a chocolate ganache, but I didn’t had chocolate at home, well I did had chocolate bonbons, but I don’t think my sister would be too happy to hear I have been melting her box of comfort for cookies.

Playing with the shells

Third time is a charm right? I stumbled across alacuisine
’s wonderful blog to make meringue buttercream and it worked. I have added some raspberry jam (even though it didn’t match with the hazelnut macaron, but that didn’t matter, I was already happy that it had the right consistency).

It sure is rewarding:). Chewy and lightly crisp from the outside, soft from the inside (perhaps a tad too much hazelnuts) with a velvet fruity buttercream. Despite the few errors, it was a pretty good batch. I am getting there!

Personal notes :

- Hazelnuts makes the shells a lot sweeter than almonds -> filling should be bittersweet to keep the flavors in balance. Also, make buttercream in advance, or try not to screw up that many times, while waiting for the shells to dry.

- Tant pour tant hazelnuts ( equal nuts and icing sugar) is a bit heavy for the feet. (Probably a better idea to mixed half hazelnut and half almonds or lower the hazelnut quantity, though I have yet to find out).

- Sugar sirup should not reach 118 degrees.

- Timing, lowering the oven temperature during baking. It worked well with hazelnuts, I hope it will do the same for almonds.

- Not sure whether this is related, but the macarons shells were maybe too dry before popping them in the oven.

- Also to remember making smaller nozzles (1,5 cm) for next time, yes next time! lol my family thinks I am a total macaron nut, for making them that often. But I don’t mind if I get the opportunity to make these delicious cookies.

Macarons with a pink blush

Though I have never eaten the real thing in France, I have caught on the macaron fever. There is something charming about that cookie. I always get itchy hands when I see beautiful macarons in blogs.

So yesterday, I have tried making macarons with the italian meringue method for the first time with the proper tools ( sugar thermometer and the like) . Though there is still plenty room for tweaking, I am very pleased with the result.

I have added some rose coloring gel. I wish I was brave enough to add more to give it a real deep pink color. Next time, next time.

I couldn’t help but smile at the enormous tall feet. I have air-dried the macarons for an hour and they were dry when I touched them. None of the 60 shells cracked. I just couldn’t believe it. They rose quite quickly, after three minutes I saw the feet rising and within 5 minutes, they looked like this. I wonder if that is the reason why the feet turned out a lot smaller after popping them out of the oven. I have a convection oven and I noticed that the last row, near the fan, had smaller feet than the rest. None the less, hurray for the feet and skirt!

First batch, The recipe called for 15 minutes in the oven. I thought they were slightly overcooked, cause I noticed the color change. However, I really liked the chewy texture.

I have used a buttercream filling with dulce de leche and vanille beans, however it didn’t turned out that well (though the taste was pretty good) . I have yet to find a filling that is smooth and fluffy.

I have popped the second batch for 12 minutes in the oven. As you can see, they have a brighter pinkish color than those who are baked for 15 minutes (faded salmon color). I need to practise piping the batter. Some of them were too close to others and got stuck to eachother while rising in the oven.

Digging the second batch, light crisp outside, soft from inside. Though I personally liked the chewier one. I’ll just have to try some more to combine the chewy texture of batch 1 with the pretty pink color of batch 2.

The italian meringue is a keeper. I remember making my very first batch using the french meringue (Nigella pistachio recipe) and it turned out disastrous (the taste was good though). It had pores, airpockets, no feet and no desire to detache from the cookie sheet. But after 12 batches and many eggwhites later (or just me being very determinded to get it right), this is without a doubt my best batch so far .

There are still some notes to work on, especially the feet. Because the skirt (feet) isn’t consistent enough. Adjusting the temperature of the syrup and the oven will hopefully work, I’ll be posting my tryouts next time.

Selfnote: Sieving is a pain!