laurasaur

I think I kind of have cabin fever after spending 2 days at home with food poisoning. So now that I can stand for more than a few minutes without puking I made these babies.

Traditional French Macarons are not easy at all, and I spent a lot of time researching the technique and everyone’s tips on egullet. I was so stoked when I checked after 10 minutes and they had the little frilly feet!! I know they are far from perfect, but after my last attempt which was just an EPIC failure – these are like perfect to me.

I left mine to rest before baking for approximately 30 minutes which I like to think helped the shells, however the consistency was just a tad too thick which means the tops arent quite as glossy as I would like. They taste divine like an amazing brownie though.

Recipe from ‘Baking from my home to yours’ by Dorie Greenspan

After a little snowboarding incident on the weekend (check out my sling – and yeah that is a fairy costume hehe)

I’m at home for a few days, and I’m not really supposed to be using my arm at all.. so I embarked on some easy one arm baking these are my new favourite oaty cookies, and you can swap out the dried fruit for any dried fruit of your choice, ditto for the nuts, so they are super adaptable.

180g / 1.5 sticks + 1 tblsp butter
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp mixed spice
2 2/3 cups rolled oats
180g dried apricots, chopped into approx 4 pieces each
1/2 cup sultanas
1/3 cup pecans or any nuts, very finely chopped

Preheat oven to 392°F (200°C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, spice and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the dried fruit and nuts.

Put the mixing bowl in the fridge for about half an hour or for as long as you can stand (you can skip this step but your cookies may be a little flat and not as chewy).

Place on a COOL (very important) baking sheet with the same space between them as the width of each ball of cookie. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes until golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

If you wanted to make these super super awesome times four, then you could add chunks of white chocolate, about 100grams or as much as you wanted really, cut into fairly large chunks so as to not affect the texture of the mix too much. I only had a tiny amount of white chocolate but its like a jackpot when you get a cookie with chocolate in it!! mmm.

This is based on the famous Sour Cream Coffee Cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It has a super rich eggy batter which bakes into a moist soft tight crumbed cake, topped with a layer of sweet apricots and then a golden crumble topping.  It looks time intensive but it comes together very fast.

Click on more to see the recipe… Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of my first fondant attempts all by myself and I am super happy with how it turned out (except for the colors, more on that below). It is a four layer cake and has a white chocolate mouselline buttercream in between all layers and on the outside. The fondant is a mix of vanilla and almond. I was meant to stripe the layers but got distracted when I was assembling the cake, hahaha FAIL.

I didn’t have anywhere near enough time and as such my colors are not what I would like them to be but hey hey its here. I cut out the corner slice to take a photo and the cake is SO GOOD. So moist and rich and flavourful – and it has been in plastic for 3 days already because I knew I wouldn’t have time – how right I was!

Crap tons of photos to follow Read the rest of this entry »