Easiest and bestest almond macaroons

This recipe is so easy. It is unbelievably easy. And it tastes AWESOME. Severe overuse of that word but I swear it's true. Do you know those almond macaroons you get at the supermarket or at the chainstore bakeries? Or at the occasional artisan market stall. *snorts* I love these. My sister loves them more. We're not talking french macarons and if you're not a fan of those, these are definitely not the same as the guy at work hates those and loves these. These are, in the shop bought form, large round cookies stuck to rice paper, delightfully chewy, with a fat almond stuck in the top. If you made these a bit bigger, you'd get that. Anyway, my recipe came from Alldessertrecipes.com based on a google and ignoring any that forgot to tell me how many eggs I needed.

Technically these make 12 if you make a decent size. I made 18 and they were reasonable hershey kiss cookies sized. They don't spread too much either, easily just larger by 1cm in diameter max after.

Ingredients:
2 egg whites (I used large but I don't think it makes a vast difference)
150g caster sugar
150g ground almonds
few drops of almond essence
rice paper
blanched almonds to decorate

Method:
1. Heat oven to Gas Mark 5 (190°C/375°F)
2. Whisk the egg whites to a froth (by froth I mean use a fork and don't look for peaks, just breakdown of the eggy stuff.)
3. Chuck in caster sugar, ground almonds and almond essence. i.e. everything that makes sense to go in.
4. Mix to a paste (see why we didn't need peaks?)
5. Roll into balls (the first one is easy, the last one is a sticky mess that clings to the leftover stuff on your hands... use two spoons if you get stuck.)
6. Stick on the rice paper lined baking tray. (Now I'd say you can save on rice paper if you make these more than once as you can estimate the spread and therefore just put cut pieces of rice paper and put them under the respective balls. Odds are though, you won't make these every day - though it's easy enough to... so in six months time you're looking at saved out of date rice paper anyway. Saying that... I've just used two months out of date rice paper and have no idea what the difference is.)
7. Stick a blanched almond on each. (I like to press down because they can catch a little in the oven.)
8. Bake for 20 minutes till gently golden.

Now that's done... I have to say, they are yuuuuuuuuuuummy.... but with one pitfall. They are not the cheapest of baked goodies. £2ish for ground almonds, another £2 for the blanched (although you get far more than you need), rice paper.... it's pricier than my usual bakes, but look on the bright side, you end up with twelve and they usually charge 79p for each in the shops.

Devil's Food White Out Cake

It's not the most elegant of cakes. It's covered with crumbs which defaults to messy. Very messy. Messy in a sweep all the counters and a few floors cake. It is however, really rather yummy in a Sara-Lee / Trifle kind of way. I did this for my sister's birthday when she requested a chocolate and cream cake. I didn't quite do double cream but it did meet the not too sweet criteria.


I would say this though. Lower the sugar in the cake. The frosting is actually really nice. Not too sweet, pleasantly foamy and easy to cover the cake. The cake itself just has a slight aftertaste which may have came from my choice of chocolates and cocoa. Words of warning to follow: Watch out when you transport it. The top two levels slid an inch across and left the rest of the cake... it did gently smush back in place, but just in case it's for company. Warning 2. The book may have it showing beautiful, full, crisp white layers in between the chocolate. Mine... less so. And based on the internet, most people had the same smushiness. It tastes great anyway. Just don't expect a sliceshot.


The recipe cake from Dorie Greenspan's book and is on the internet already - the below is my abbreviated / bastardized version. 


Devil's Food White-Out Cake 
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups plain flour 
1/2 cup cocoa  
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 
1/2 tsp baking powder 
1/4 tsp salt 
5oz unsalted butter (140g ish)
1/2 cup light brown sugar 
1/2 cup caster sugar 
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract 
2 oz dark chocolate, melted and cooled 
1/2 cup buttermilk /whole milk
1/2 cup boiling water
4 oz chocolate chips (I used a pack)
For the filling and frosting 
1/2 cup egg whites (I used 4 eggs worth of egg white powder mixed up) 
1 cup caster sugar 
3/4 tsp cream of tartar 
1 cup water 
1 tsp vanilla extract 
Gas Mark 5/6 (350 degree recommended)

1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. 
2. Cream butter and sugar, eggs, vanilla and the cooled melted chocolate (add in that order)
3. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk, ending with dry.
4. Add boiling water and then chocolate chips.5. Put in lined pans (I used 3 x 8 inch round pans - the recommended is 2 deep 8 inch pans)
6. Bake for 30 minutes
7. Cool. Now the book says you have two pans, you slice into two and crumble one of them. In my case I had three cakes, I leveled them and ended up with enough crumbs. Potato-PoTAHto... it's all the same result.

Frosting:
1. Egg whites in bowl. You're making a kind of Italian meringue thing here. Finding a helper or having lots of space helps.
2. Sugar, cream of tartar and water in a saucepan (small) and boil/stir a little bit to begin with.
3. Get it to 235 degrees F (I started before this) and start whipping the egg whites with an electric whisk. Medium/fast is good, you want it white and fluffy and holding peaks the way meringue does without any sugar.
4. Get the sugar to 242 degrees F (soft ball) and then tip the molten sugar into the egg whites whilst whisking.
5. Continue whisking till the frosting is room temp and the bowl doesn't feel hot any more.
6. Spread on cake and shove crumbs around the side. Tah-dah!!!

Old MacDonald Cake

My nephew turns ONE this week and so we made a cake to celebrate. This little number was my usual vanilla buttermilk sponge, which encountered a lot more problems than usual. Check this. Firstly I forgot to put the sugar in which I didn't notice until I poured the batter into the tins - when I thought, hang on, usually there's more of it. Which after tipping back into the mixing bowl to remix, might have resulted in the cake becoming a little more flat than usual.

Brilliantly though, my solution was effective - slice the layers really thin, sandwich with whipped cream and peaches and you don't notice the texture issues. Really. The peaches were so beautiful. I have to make a chinese style fruit cake with them before the season is over. White peaches. Beautiful and pale with a light flush. It was such a shame to hide them inside a cake.

This is the sheep in production. It was my first time working with fondant for modelling. We've played around with making roses and little flowers etc, but I did desperately want to make an Old MacDonald cake because it's my nephew's favourite song. Hence the fevered searching on youtube. As it was, once you watch them once and understand the principle, you don't need it anymore and you just freeze frame it on the final design. I did want to make a little pony to go with, however I realised it wouldn't fit on the cake. 

The first thing I'd say is that it is a LOT easier to make than I thought. I thought fondant animals would be really difficult. It wasn't that bad. One thing I would recommend is the food colouring pens. Very useful for the eyes. I used ready made white and yellow icing, mixing with liquid food colouring in the main despite buying a load of paste. Guess I need to find some use for that now. The liquid food colouring leaves the fondant a little sticky, but it's still okay to form things with. The other little fyi I would say is, don't put fondant in the fridge. It ends up damp and the icing pen I used to do patches on the cow ran. I didn't plan on putting it in the fridge but we had to save the cake a night later than planned and if we didn't fridge it the cream and fruit would go a bit squiffy.

Picture of a cake slice. We sliced around five millimetres thick. Six people ate a quarter of the cake. It's a sweetness thing I think. Buttercream is one of those things we're not a major fan of. It would have been nice to work some green or blue fondant to cover the cake but we hate fondant even more than buttercream. One day I will overcome my issues with the stuff, or make marshmallow fondant which might be tastier, but until then, a bit of buttercream, unfortunately overworked by the end of it, did the trick.

My sister has her birthday soon. I think she'll be a lot happier with a chocolate mousse cake bought retail though!xx