Inside the cake was what I normally bake when I am not sure of someone’s preference, layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream.

I have only been in London a few weeks and already I have hunted down two French patisseries for the sole purpose of buying macarons. Last week when we were in Canary Wharf for interviews I stumbled upon Paul and bought a giant macaron. Unfortunately no one was sure what flavour it was, and even after sharing it and eating it neither of us had figured it out. The texture however was devine and it was far richer than the Ladurée ones, but obviously very bland. I think the huge one from Paul was 2 pounds something, and roughly equates to 3 or so of the little Ladurée ones which were 9 pounds 80p for 6 + a pretty box. Ouchie.

After discovering last night that there are two Ladurée shops in London – First stop today was Harrods. Which of course is packed full, mainly with tourists, and looks to have quite a cool food court with people chowing into these amazing looking gelati/sundaes.  But I wasn’t there for any of that and in fact we made it through the ground floor in possibly record time to end up in Ladurée.

Hubby helped me pick out 6 little macarons – here is my verdict. (L-R in pic above)

Orange Blossom – hubby chose this flavour and although I wouldn’t have done so myself I quite like it. The green ganache slightly put me off but it does taste very floral.

Salted butter caramel – Third place? Almost sticky ganache, with a scorched caramel flavour.

Vanilla – rich with vanilla seeds, although tastes slightly pasty almost. On second thoughts the aftertaste is of an amazingly rich vanilla icecream.

Chocolate -Thick and rich with a nice deep ganache. I give second place to this guy. I think this may actually have been bitter chocolate, they didn’t have both available and this is light and not so sweet.. I wonder.

Rose – amazing rose flavour, super fluffy ganache almost like whipped cream, consistency too thin for my liking but still devine, strongly rose scented and tasting like turkish delight.

Pistachio – My favourite, densest and delicious, with a nice texture. Mmmm.

All in all amazing! If you want to make me happy – buy me macarons. Pistachio ones if you are too scared to choose

Is it sad that my goal is to try all the flavours? Haha. The berry ones, and of course lots more pistachio ones And to be fair, I must of course compare with all the ones from Paul and then Pierre Herme when in Paris!!

image from http://www.laudree.fr

I’m really annoyed I missed seeing bodyworlds it closed just before we arrived here. There is an exhibition on at the welcome collection called “Exquisite Bodies” which is sort of not really similar, well, its wax models anyway and has the added bonus of being free.

I made the weirdest sauce ever to go with this roast chicken last night. All I have is wholemeal flour, rice, pasta, tiny bit of butter, milk and some vegetables and meat. So I did the roast with some roast carrots, haha, and it was looking pretty disturbingly bland. So I thought I would make gravy, but I couldn’t because a) I hadn’t made the chicken stock yet and b) wholemeal flour does not a good gravy make. So I did white sauce with wholemeal flour lol – I liked it, tastes like a mix between bread sauce and white sauce haha both of which I love but have never made myself.

What other weird things have I done… oh yeah.. hot chocolate with wholemeal flour – HAHA – do not recomend, rice pudding with evaporated milk, porridge with evaporated milk, and washed so many freaking saucepans because there is no dishwasher and no microwave, ahhh, so not used to having to actually do this stuff myself lol.

Anyway most people would probably be a bit disturbed at what I have been cooking but Jonnos pretty good and takes it in his stride although I do wonder what he is thinking haha. I have done some baking and did a batch of cocoa brownies with a layer of ganache which were proclaimed the best ever, made with wholemeal too although you couldn’t tell.

Oh yeah I have been epicly sick so been in bed all day, browsing ASOS.com, learning ASP.NET, reading food forums, deafening myself with dance music, you know the usual. I really need to find a wallet and I am scared of how cold it is going to get and how little warm clothes I have. Never fear. I will survive.

xx L L

Current observations about London:
* Transport is horrendously expensive. For hubby and I to get in and around London from Hemel Hempstead its costing us around $100NZD/day. It is nice and fast though, and so easy to get around on.
* Technology is backwards and hard to come by. Our wireless dongle is annoyingly intermittent and currently not working. Internet cafes are extremely hard to come by, especially on bank holidays!!
* People here are not quite as scary as I thought. Although catching the trains is still quite an experience.
* Protein powder is rare, and health shops seem to be non-existent.
* We had like a bomb scare or something that closed down the Euston underground station. Excite!!

Anyway, I need to go meet jonno back where his interview was. Hopefully I can find it because I have wandered around a bit.

Bottom Cake flourless chocolate and orange with dark ganache frosting
Top Cake carrot and macadamia cake with cream cheese frosting

The decoration was rushed and gross, I find it way too hard to decorate a cake iced with cream cheese so it came out a bit of a disaster.

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.

2. Ice cream scoop.. one of those ones that have the self release handle thing. These are so good for cupcake batter, basically it allows you to get absolutely even portions in each case with no sticky mess of using 2 spoons or your finger or whatever. The only reason I haven’t bought on of these yet is simply because I have never actually seen one to buy. Maybe millys has them, or a catering kind of place, normal shops only have the basic scoops that don’t have that lever thing.. and I already have 2 of them and they don’t do the business..

I know there is heaps more, like another cupcake tin, a huge circle tin for wedding cakes, a cooling rack.. I could go on, but I gotta find these two in the next little while.

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.