Monday, August 29, 2011

.: relentless baker :.

The barely edible scones didn't squash my baking spirit (well it did for a few hours...). If anything, I wanted to tackle a slightly more complicated baking project: macarons. A bit ambitious for someone who can't bake without disaster, but what the hell. Never know until you try it, right? This time I made sure I have all ingredients are available. I got the recipe from David Leibovitz' website because he already tried several baking techniques and this one was the no-fail-guaranteed-it-will-look-like-macaron-so-help-me-God recipe. I did switch the cocoa powder with Starbucks' mocha powder. (caffeine+sugar! woohoo!) At first everything fell according to plan...
Then I bang my head on the cabinet door and drop my egg yolks into the bowl of egg whites that I separated earlier. What a coincidence that the egg whites bowl was just right there?! So I redid the egg whites and that was why we ate egg foo young for dinner that night. :p
I used double layers of parchment paper because some people commented that their macarons stick to the parchment paper and cracked when they tried to remove it. My piping job was inconsistent so the sizes sort of varied. After a few minutes in the oven I was so pleased to see the 'little feet'. However this was done closer to 10-12 minutes as opposed to 15-18 minutes as mentioned in the recipe. I tried leaving one batch for 18 minutes and they cracked.
I use the chocolate ganache filling using Ghirardelli's bittersweet 70% chocolate bar, but maybe next time I'll use the 100% cacao unsweetened because it balances out the sweetness of the macarons (5 cups of sugar is too sweet for my taste)
And voila! The rugged, natural-looking macarons.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

.: clueless housewife chronicle :.

I'm trying to see if being a homemaker is my calling, since the graphic-designer thing didn't seem to work out lately. So far it's been quite interesting; try to take care of cactus, cactus dying, replace dying cactus with new ones to calm my conscience, trying new recipes, meal planning, change meal plans because I suddenly lost my appetite for a particular meal... You know, the usual wifey-duty. I originally thought that cooking and baking will not be super hard. I am a woman after all, supposedly it's in my genes and whatnot, right? Wrong! Cooking I'm quite okay with, but baking requires patience, organization and precision; all of which I don't have if you know me quite well.

So it all started on a bright, sunny day. All is calm, so I decided to bake scones out of the blue. I have flour, sugar, eggs, salt and milk. Yup, scones coming right up! I was confidently whipping the dough, quite happy because it smells yummy.
While comparing my dough with the picture on the recipe book, I realized my dough is too soft. I transferred it to a floured surface anyways and it became this piece of disaster:
What makes sense in my head is to add more flour. Then I realized I used up all the flour. Then I begged my beloved husband, who didn't ask for scones in the first place, to get flour. My husband, the flour-bearing hero saved the day!
After I got almost-unlimited flour, I went nuts. I put flour everywhere. When it started to resemble the picture on the recipe book, I was so relieved. And after 15 minutes there were scones to be had:
Not the best scones I've ever had, but it smells like them. Good enough for now.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

.: introduction to domestic life :.

(the happy, healthy cactus the day we brought it home)

So I'm not built for domestic life. My baking skill is lacking (a blog post will follow); I prefer Swiffer for cleaning as oppose to manual, down-on-four-knees sweeping (and the dust return in the morning, wth?); and I can't even take care of a freaking mini cactus. It sorta died on me in less than TWO weeks!! A cactus!
That's one thing to add to my series of failures this year. Maybe I'm one of those people who just can't do anything right, so that someone (aka husband) can step in and become a hero. Right?