Macarons and petit fours

Since I started with this baking course there are lots of things that I've been doing for the first time and it's been so much fun. 

Today we were making macarons and petit fours. We started with a macaron master class. After that we were on our own. 

First we had to make a batch of butter cream. Although I've made it several times at home I couldn't get it right in class. At home I use room temperature butter and in class the butter was still cold. So the timing should be spot on to get a smooth butter cream. I added the butter in a bit too late so my cream wasn't as smooth as it should be but the taste was good. Just to give it more flavor we added a dash or two orange liqueur. Also I used less sugar then the recipe called for since I don't like it that sweet. 

After making butter cream we each got a piece of cake for our petit fours. The petit fours were quite easy since the cake was pre-made and all we had to do was fill it with jam or butter cream, put a layer of almond paste on top and dip it in some fondant. It was a piece of cake. To bad we could't bake our own cake, but I guess there wasn't enough time for it. 

First we cut it in half so we could spread some jam in the middle. Instead of jam we used a mixture of butter cream and jam. Then the orange liqueur butter cream went on top and we topped it off with a thin layer of almond past. We needed to freeze the cake so we can cut them in squares later. After they were frozen we cut them in bite size pieces. Then it went back in the freezer since they have to be frozen for the fondant dip. Basically we heated up some fondant with some water so it was a bit runny and we dipped the top of the cakes in and place them in cupcake baking cups so we could decorate them later.

Then we made the batter for the macarons using:
- 100 gr powdered sugar                                               300 gr powdered sugar          
- 100 gr almond flour                                                     300 gr almond flour
- 40 gr egg white + 40 gr egg white                               120 gr egg white + 120 gr egg white
- 100 gr sugar                                                                300 gr sugar
- 40 gr water                                                                  120 gr water
- color paste (optional)
oven temperature 140C

We started with sifting the almond flour and threw out all the bigger pieces. Then we added more almond flour to the batch making it 100 grams. Then we mixed it together with the powdered sugar. This mixture is called "broyage" and it's just a mixture of 50% almond flour and 50% powdered sugar.

Then it was time to make the meringue. We cooked the sugar in some water till 121C. When the sugar syrup reaches about 115C it was time to mix 40 grams of egg white to soft peeks. Then we added the sugar syrup and mixed it till the bowl is no longer hot.

The other 40 grams of egg white was mixed with the broyage mixture and some food color. To this we added a bit of the meringue to loosen it up a bit and then we fold in the rest of the meringue. Now here comes the tricky part, when do you know if you fold everything in just right? If you mix it to much the macarons will be flat or crack. I guess this is something that needs a bit of practice to see when the mixtures is just right. 

We poured the macaron mixture in a piping bag and started to pipe little circles. As we piped the macarons too close we ended up with some twin, tripled and even quadruplet macarons. Next time we will make sure we give them enough space.

As the macarons have to dry out a bit we had time to work on our petit fours. The macarons were ready for the oven when the top has dried a bit so it doesn't stick on your fingers when touching them. We baked them for about 17-19 minutes. When they cooled we stuffed them with some butter cream and they were ready to be gobbled down. 

Next time I will try to make the macarons less sweet or make a slightly sour stuffing so it can balance each other out a bit. As for the petit fours, they were very tasty, but if I would make them again I would make them half the height and more square.

For about 120 macarons you need to triple the recipe. Every oven is different so you need to test it first. Better to have it on a lower then higher temperature and it's not a problem if you bake it too long.

Next class: Rodolph van Veen's Oscar cake: this is a chocolate mouse cake with hazelnuts which he made for the Oscars in 2005.

Apple cake and pie

Last week I wanted to surprise my girl friend at her store with a cake so after my normal morning errands I started with making some cream patisserie. This has to cool down so in the mean time I could make the biscuit cake batter.

I had a jar of apple almond jam she gave me so I thought that would go will with the caramel butter cream. For some extra freshness I shredded one small apple and mixed it with the jam. 

After the cake cooled I cut it in three layers. Unfortunately this time they didn't turn out as even as I hoped so maybe it was beginners luck earlier.

In the mean time the cream patisserie has cooled down and to that I added two table spoons of lemon curd. I whipped up some whipping cream and mixed that in.

I made the caramel butter cream using the same recipe I used for the blueberry butter cream cake but instead of blueberry juice I added 2 big table spoons of warm caramel in the end. The caramel butter cream really tasted like caramel and it was sweet. A bit too sweet for my taste so I hope the other ingredients can even it out a bit.

Now I have everything ready for the cake. On the first layer I spread the apple almond mixture and on the edges I piped the caramel butter cream. This time I made enough butter cream to cover the sides.
On top of the apple mixture I piped the cream patisserie mixture. I did the same for the second layer. Then I spread the butter cream on the sided and topped it with some toasted shredded almonds. I decorated the top and voila: apple lemon caramel cake.

Then I messaged my gf asking her if she would be at the store and she answered that she wasn't due to a wedding. Bummer. Entirely my fault for assuming she would be at the store. Luckily my mom requested a cake for Sunday dinner so this cake it is. 

Today my gf was at the store so I baked an apple pie using the 1-2-3 dough recipe. Instead of using lemon zest I used some orange zest and instead of cutting the apples in slices or cubes I use a greater. I added some drops of lemon, a hand full of raisins, a bit of cinnamon and a bit of sugar to the apples. On the bottom of the dough I spread a thin layer of apple almond jam.

Every one loved the apple pie, especially with some vanilla ice cream.

Biscuit deeg

|'ve been searching for half an hour for the English name of this particular cake batter that we made in class this week but only found the France name: Biscuit de Savoie. In Dutch we call it "biscuit deeg" and it's a cake batter made with eggs, sugar and flour. It's super light and ideal for any stuffing, frosting, icing; basically it's a great basis for any cake (occasion).

I will start at the beginning. This week we made a "Hema" cake. Hema is a well known sort of department store in Holland that sells pretty much everything. They also have their own cake and pie section. If we had to describe a Hema cake or pie the first thing comes in mind is a cake filled with whipped cream or mocha cream and decorated with nougatine on the sides. And that was exactly what we were making. 
Also we were taught how to make Italian meringue which can be use as a base for butter cream.

We started with making the batter for the dough. We used:
- 200 gr eggs
- 100 gr sugar
- 100 gr flour
- pinch of salt
- lemon zest
Baking temperature 170C.

For a light dough it was important to heat the sugar and the eggs to 40C, then bead it on high speed till the batter turned very pale yellow, almost white, and last to gently fold in the flour, trying to keep as much air in as possible. Since this dough doesn't have any rising agents, the eggs are the ones keeping it airy.

The cake is ready when you don't leave any finger prints in the middle of the cake and it sort of bounces back on your touch.  

After a long cooling period (the cake has to be completely cooled) it was time for decorating. As we each made a cake we could make either a whipped cream cake, a mocha cake or both. I decided to do half whipped cream and half mocha, getting the best of both.

The mocha cream wasn't made with butter cream with some coffee added to it, but with something they called "patiecream". It's somewhat like whipping cream, but not made with dairy so it couldn't be called whipping cream. I've never heard of this before, but it was great stuff. So many possibilities as we could whip it up with anything we liked in it without ruing it. It was great for filling and decorating the cakes.

The cake wasn't high enough for three layers so I kept it simple and only cut the cake in half. On the first half I spread a thin layer of strawberry jam, but only on half of the cake because the other half would be mocha and I didn't think strawberry would go that nice with mocha. Then I added some thinly sliced fresh strawberries on the jam layer for some extra flavor and freshness. I piped some mocha on the other half of the cake and didn't bother even it out because the other layer of cake would come on top. To the strawberry layer I added some whipped cream to level it to the mocha layer. Then the cake layer was placed on top. I marked the cakes with an incision so I knew how to put both half back in the right place. I spread some mocha on top and side of the mocha half and whipped cream on the other half covering the whole thing. Then I pressed the nougatine on the sides covering it all.

 And this was the end result.

For the mocha part I didn't want to make rosettes. So I though I would just pipe it on and see how that goes. Unfortunately it looks less pretty then I thought so I gave it a try with the whipped cream part.

It looked much better. But both sides tasted great. I had a huge slice for lunch the day after.

For the Italian meringue we had to heat up sugar syrup (225 gram sugar and 85 gram water) to 121C and slowly add that to 100 gram egg whites that we already beaten up a bit with 75 gram sugar. After quite some time the mixing bowl cooled down and the mixture was light and shiny. We didn't want to make butter cream so we didn't add the butter. Instead we piped little meringue buttons and baked them in the oven on 90C. This was to keep it white and slowly dry them out.

These were the little buttons we baked in class. I filled them with some butter cream at home making it a nice mini treat.

It was great learning how to make the cake batter and it was much simpler than I thought. This would be my to go for cake batter for any cake. 
Another eye opener was the "patiecream". I can't wait to experiment more with this.
The Italian meringue is a bit tricky since the sugar syrup has to be on 121C and I don't have a candy thermometer at home. I'm sure there are other ways to make this.

Next week: chocolate pie!