Macaronage Macarons

The past year has been quite a whirlwind for me! Whirlwind in a good way. I was just reading about an old post I did on Facebook dated December 2012. I posted "at this rate, I should own a bakery at year end". At that time, I was frantically baking anything I can think of. Little did I know that exactly a year from that, my prediction has come to life. In December 2013, my pastry shop Macaronage Macarons, has opened its doors. And by saying whirlwind, its almost literal. Little did I now just how much work it is to start a pastry shop from ground up. Not to mention, I am a complete amateur who's only been baking for a year. I've cried and laughed, struggled and succeeded and worked like I have never done in my life before.

Here are some of the pictures!

Not-So-French-Macarons: Italian Meringue Method Tutorial

For the newbies, French Macarons are almond-based cookies sandwiching a concoction of filling flavors. Its light and airy on the inside and a little crunchy on the outside of the shells. Originally fancied in  boulangerie of Paris, it has now gained so much popularity not only in the US but around the world in the past few years. For the macaron virgins, it is now time to join the trend and get a bite of these deviliscious cookies!

French Macarons are not only known for its taste and chic appearance. It is also notoriously known for the intricate process of baking them. The hype is certainly validated through the hard work required in making them. Its not only time-consuming but also very delicate. There are 2  methods in making the macarons: the French and Italian Meringue method. To the aficionados like me, it almost seem sacrilegious to use the Italian Meringue method on "French" macarons. If you're a newbie and without all the right gadgetry, I would suggest using the French Meringue method. The Italian Meringue method is less delicate with the use of the right equipment.

The recipe below has been adopted from my favorite blogger "Not So Humble Pie". This yields about 50 cookies or 25 sandwiches. Feel free to scale up or down depends on how much macarons you want to end up with. I typically scale it up using twice the measurement as I cater to all the macaronic-demands among my friends and family.

Not-So-French-Macarons: Italian Meringue Method

Equipment (Gadgetry):

 Small Pan (less than 8 inch diameter preferred)

Candy Thermometer

Mixer (Stand Mixer preferred)

Weighing Scale

Food Processor or Blender

Pastry Bag

Wide Piping Tip

Cooling Rack

Ingredients:

170g confectioners sugar
170g almond meal
55g-60g eggwhites (no need to age or wait to reach room-temperature)

150g granulated sugar for syrup

60 g water

55g-60g eggwhites

Preparation:

Separate egg whites. Unlike the French meringue method, you do not need to age your egg whites or wait until it reaches room temperature.

Measure all your ingredients. Combine the powdered sugar and almond flour on a food processor or a blender and grind for a minute or two. Then, sift the powdered sugar/almond flour mixture. Big lumps of almond flour can cause grainy shell surface and hollow shells as it weighs down the macarons. Do not use the lumps of almond flour left after sifting. I usually save mine, dry it in the oven and process it for later use.

Prepare a half sheet with parchment paper. Most recommends to double the sheet but unfortunately for me I don't have enough sheets of the same size to allow me to double it. Also, it would help to use a template like below for sizing uniformity. 



Pre-heat oven to 275-300 degrees Fahrenheit. I highly recommend the use of oven thermometer to calibrate your oven temperature. Mine fluctuates so much and mostly too hot by 50 to 75 degrees. 

Let's RocknRoll:

Place granulated sugar and water on a small saucepan. Let it boil on medium-high heat with the candy thermometer in. To me, this is the trickiest part of the process. Most of my failures are attributed to this process. The idea of using a small pan is to ensure the accuracy of your candy thermometer. If its wide, it'll spread the water too thin and you're thermometer reading may be lesser than it actually is. This will cause your syrup to overcook which will give your a very crunch shell. Overcooked syrups also makes it hard to mix the batter during macaronage. So invest on a small saucepan and a good candy thermometer.

It is very important that you are not distracted during this process. Timing is critical and this part will hugely influence the outcome of your cookies. Most of my failures occurred during this process.

While waiting for your syrup to reach 240 degrees Fahrenheit, pour 55-60 grams of egg whites into a mixing bowl. When the temperature reaches 235 degrees, start the mixer on high. When the temperature reach 240 degrees, pour the boiled sugar into the meringue. Pour it on the side of the bowl so that its not touching the whisk.

Continue whipping until the mixing bowl is lightly cook to touch and you get a beak on the meringue when you take the whisk out. It should look glossy.

The beak should not be runny and drizzling back to the bowl. If it does, continue whisking. Fortunately, this method is more forgiving in over mixing the meringue unlike the French method but don't be confused: over mixing during macaronage is a huge killer.

Mix the remaining egg whites into the powdered sugar/almond flour mixture until well-incorporated.

MACARONAGE (pronounced as macronahj):

Macaronage refers to the delicate process of mixing the meringue and almond flour mixture. This process will later on determine the dome-like shells. If over mixed, it will flatten and if under mixed it will appear taller and rounder. Of the two though, you'd rather under mix than over mix.

Add the meringue into the almond past. With a spatula, draw a straight line in the center and fold in using a "J" motion. Slightly rotate the bowl while doing the "J" motion. Keep folding until reaching a lava-like flow.

As soon as you reach a lava-like consistency, then stop. Remember, its better to under mix than to over mix.

It may still look a little grainy but it will even out as you pipe it later on. Before placing it on the pastry bag, add your food coloring. I like different colors so I half the batter and use 2 food colorings.

On one bowl, I added a matcha green tea and the other one a purple gel food coloring. As much as possible, stay away from water-based food coloring. The last thing you want to do to your batter is add another liquid to the ratio of your batter. For once, you will get a more vibrant color using the gel or powder.

If you decide to split the batter to have 2 colors, make sure you do this before its fully incorporated. Adding more strokes to mix the colors may cause you to over mix your batter.

Pour the batter into the pastry bag on a tall glass.

Then start piping! The hard part is over! I've been reading a lot about whether or not you should allow the shells to dry out for at least 20 minutes. I've had successes in both and personally don't wait anymore. I bake my piped shells right away.

Place the sheet in the top middle rack of your oven. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes at 275 degrees. I like to turn the sheet around halfway the baking time to make sure its baked evenly. Slightly wiggle one of the shells to check if it still moves. It it does, then bake for a few more minutes. If the shells cracked, you may have overcooked it or the temperature may be too high. Each oven works differently, it may take awhile for you to become very familiar. I highly recommend the use of oven temperatures.

Take out of the oven and allow to cool a little for about 3 minutes then transfer to the cooling rack. Match same-sized cookies and pipe with filling. Make sure you wait until its fully cooled before piping in the filling. Some filling are butter-based and it will cause the butter to melt. You will have a huge buttery mess just like me.

Pardon my photography skills! Here they are and they're boxed for an order! haha..

I will post recipes of the filling at a later time. Its about 4:30 AM in the morning and I haven't slept yet!

By the way, macarons have a very short shelf life of about 3-4 days in the fridge and 2 months in the freezer. I don't like my macarons frozen because the shells looses its crunch. Place your macarons on an airtight container and allow to mature overnight before serving. This process will allow the filling to flavor and moisten the inside.

Have a happy baking! And I guess a very early good morning from my side of the globe! 







What You Focus On Expands

I will guarantee you that every single champion in all arena of life will say that "focus" is paramount to their success. Unfortunately for me, it was one thing I severely lacked in my life. Fortunately,  I am a work-in-progress. One of the quote that has impacted me so much in the past year is what I always hear T. Harv Eker say, "what you focus on expands". Whatever the dominant thoughts in your mind are, will dominate your physical reality. Very simply, the more you focus on anything, the truer it becomes.

It is very typical to hear "Emergency Funds" in most envelope budgeting system. For years, we focused our budgeting in the realm of emergency funds. Among the first step in Dave Ramsey's envelope system is to complete the first $1000 on the emergency funds right away. There's no arguing that preparing for the rainy days is a smart and responsible thing to do. However, because we focused on saving for emergencies, that's exactly what we keep getting. Either a car breaks down or an unexpected bill arrives just in time for our newly-funded emergency funds to get depleted again. Have you ever had that situation when you thought you could get ahead of your savings account only to find something very important to spend it on? That was us!

After realizing that what we focus on truly expands, we started shifting our focus. We graduated from Dave Ramsey's envelope system to T. Harv Eker's Money Jar. The money jars represents the envelopes, only more visual. The only difference is that the most important of the jars is the "FFA" or "Financial Freedom Account". Part of the jar is the "contingency jar" as I try to avoid the word emergency. The tiny shift of focus has worked magic for us allowing us to become financially independent. Its amazing how an exact amount of money managed with a slightly different focus can have a better result. Guess what, we definitely had fewer emergencies.

Truly understanding that whatever your focusing on expands is empowering. Sad to say my focus towards my life vision isn't exactly laser light today. I am distracted even more now with more wonderful opportunities coming my way. With my innate enthusiasm, its easy to loose focus. The good news is that both focus  and success are learn-able skills. So I am going back to the very basic by forming the right habits.

Since I want to inculcate success in my habit, I've decided to start a success journal. This allows me to focus on being successful on a daily basis. At the end of each day, I will right down successes I've had that day and at the end of each week, I will write down 2 major successes. Journaling about my small daily successes not only helps me focus on being successful, it also motivates me to do something worth celebrating. Today is day 5 of my success journal. I taught an SAT class, something I've been doing for years now but because of my success journal, I prepared myself better and taught the class with a higher energy just so I can celebrate this success today. Notice how a shift of focus can make a huge impact. Same activity, different focus, different result.

I encourage you to observe yourself and your dominant thoughts in the next few days. Pinpoint your key focuses and examine if it is supporting your vision and goals in life. How do you know if your focus is not supportive to your goals? Its simple--look at your results. Are you anywhere close to your goals? If not, maybe its time to shift to a better perspective. Shift your focus from focusing on the  problem to the solution itself. Use helpful tools like journaling and the jar system.

Truly understanding the power of focus is liberating. Within one year of shifting our focus to a more solution-oriented perspective, Marlon and I have accomplished things we only dreamed of years ago. We now know to channel our energy and focus only on things that supports our vision. Its amazing how a small shift of focus from "emergency funds" to "financial freedom funds" changed our lives exponentially.

Bacon Cups Breakfast

Bacon Cups Breakfast: Recipe

This is a perfect concoction to serve for brunch or holiday breakfast. Its scrumptious and super easy to make. The idea of this recipe is that you can fill the bacon cups with just about anything you want. Some fill it with pancake mix in the bottom and sunnyside up. For this recipe, I used sourdough bread for my base and eggwhites and turkey bacon.

Turkey Bacon Breakfast Cups Recip

Cooking Time: 25 minutes


Ingredients:
5 Turkey Bacon (cut in half)
2 sourdough bread
jack/cheddar cheese
5eggwhites
chopped chive
pepper

silicone cupcake cups (preferred) but other cupcake cups or pans are fine
baking sheet
round cookie cutter

Pre-heat oven at 375 degrees.

1. Cook halved bacon slices but not thoroughly for about 2 minutes.
2. With a round cookie cutter, cut 5 pieces of bread.

3. Once bacon is half-cooked, place it on the side of the silicone cup. 
4. Add the bread to use as a base. Sprinkle some cheese into the bread.

 5. Add chive into the eggwhites and pour the eggwhites into the bacon cups.

6. Sprinkle the top of the egg with freshly ground pepper.
7. Place the bacon cups on a flat baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until the eggwhites are cooked.
8. Take bacon cups out of the silicone cups and serve immediately. You can drizzle ketchup on the cups.