Cooking: Failed Macaron Tower turned into Macaron White Chocolate Crepe Layer Cake

Blogger finally works at school!!! It has been blocked for a while for some reason but now they must have unblocked it, probably because I spend a lot of my spares reading food blogs =]

So on the weekend I tried to make a Macaron Tower for my friends birthday except after piping out 120 shells which looked fine and baking them, they all decided to be mean and stick to the baking paper and break when I tried to peel them off. In the end I ended up with 20 acutal macarons =[ absolutely devasted. Since 20 macarons were definitely not enough to feed my group of friends at the mini party we were going to hold, I decided on making a crepe layer cake with the failed white chocolate ganache I made.

I assumed that white chocolate ganache proportions would be similar to normal chocolate ganache proportions and how wrong I was. Normal chocolate ganache is 1:1 (meaning 100g chocolate, 100ml cream) white chocolate however as I discovered is 2:1 (200g white chocolate, 100 cream) and as I had a limitation of white chocolate it wouldn't set, hence a failed white ganache.

Decided to make a crepe layer cake instead since it was the quickest thing to make without a baking time, and I guess somewhat impressive but not as impressive as a macaron tower. Lesson learnt from making the crepe batter, add melted butter into the flour before adding eggs and milk, otherwise the cold milk will solidify the butter and you end up with a horrible looking batter. However it doesn't really matter as the butter melts when you make the crepes and self oils the pan....so I guess it's not too bad.

P.S I spend hours staring at my computer trying to type out an english essay but when I blog I just type like there's no tomorrow, effortless thinking....why can't writing essays be like writing blog posts?

Cooking: Macarons

Finally SUCCESS!!!!!! Learnt from my mistakes. Added food colouring whilst eggwhite were beating and actually FOLDING the sugar and almond meal in and not mixing it like there's no tomorrow.

Ingredients: 225g icing sugar, 140g almond meal, 100g eggwhites (approx 3 eggs)

Method: Weigh and sift sugar and almond meal. Whisk eggwhites to soft peaks, add colouring then whisk to stiff peaks. FOLD icing sugar and almond meal into eggwhites in 2-3 batches. Don't listen to the pros when they say it's alright that the air gets knocked out because their folding technique is so pro that they don't lose much air, but for the amateur, air gets knocked out due to inexperience. So by the time you have folded in all the ingredients it should be about the right consistency. Pipe onto sheet, beware that they do spread quite a bit so pipe them a lot smaller than you want them. Bake at around 130 for 10-12 mins. Good luck =]

I'm also getting a lot better at piping. Fairly uniform sizes and I'm starting to be able to do that quick flick lift up thing the pastry chefs do to make sure the mixture doesn't get everywhere and stays on the macaron, with some practice it's actually not hard.

However I'm still having trouble baking them as I don't know when they are done. Practice practice practice.

Filled it with the leftover chocolate ganache from the cake my bestie and I made last week.

Soooooooooo yummy =] 

Cooking: Lemon Delicious

Didn't make dinner last night as it was leftovers but I did make dessert. Went to the library and borrowed a few cookbooks and flipped through the desserts sections to choose what to make. Decided on something "simple", lemon delicious. Looked very nice in the picture, however mine didn't turn out right.

Ingredients: 2 Lemons(rind + juice). 3 eggs separated. 70g butter. 175g white sugar. 3 tbsp sifted plain flour. 3/4 cup milk.

Method: Cream butter, sugar and rind with a mixer until pale and creamy. Use softened butter (i used rock hard butter and it just didn't work). Add egg yolks. Then milk and flour. Continue to whisk. Pour in juice. Whisk to combine. Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold into the egg and milk mixture. Pour into a baking dish or ramekins. Bake in a bain marie for 1 hour.

Supposedly serves 8 but it only served 4 in my family XD

Cooking: Pavlova

2nd time making this. And it's still failing. I whip the eggwhites like they should be done. I add sugar one spoon at a time. I don't think I bake it for long enough though....whoops, that might be my problem.
I'm too lazy to make a topping. Still trying to master the base.

Help please?

Cooking: Creme Brulee Part 2 mini

Decided to make creme brulee again, hoping for better results.
This time I couldn't be bothered measuring everything and just went with what I thought was 100ml of cream and 1/24 cup of sugar. Baked for 35 mins, and it was set, slightly overcooked I think. I think it was probably because I use metal moulds(egg tart) with very little filling so I should have reduced the time.
Still finding it very hard to create the sugar topping with the grill. Just doesn't harden properly, somebody HELP?

Tasted like the custard filling of egg tarts. I think using the egg tart mould made it taste even more like it. 

Cooking: Creme Brulee

I was watching masterchef masterclass last night with a tummy full of lamb. The last dish they taught was creme brulee. I've never made this before and I don't think I've ever tasted it either (not a proper one anyways). Decided to make half portions right after watching it.

Masterchef Creme Brulee recipe

Encountered a few problems. They did not set particularly well because the egg yolks I used were TINY. I baked them for about 40 mins. Also I don't have a blow torch meaning I had to use the grill which is a perfectlygood substitute except that my creme brulee only went about 1-2 cm up the ramekin leaving about 5cm between the grill and the actual creme brulee. Turned out very very yummy.

Maybe I should make a pavlova with all that egg white leftover.

Cooking: Tang Yuan 汤圆 Little Glutinous Balls in Sweet Soup

Since it's been so cold lately I decided to make Tang Yuan last night. However I found out we ran out of that yellow sugar that comes as a slab....rock sugar? Its called 冰片糖 in Chinese. Therefore I put a piece of sultana inside the tang yuan instead.

The sugar you're supposed to use

Anyways I cbf writing a recipe up, I learnt how to make them from my dad who learnt how to make them from my grandma. So its kinda like grandma's recipe =)

Made very small ones this time.

The sultanas did not go AT ALL, very bad combination. 

I shall stick to plain for next time.

Cooking: Orange and Coconut Tart

I made this tart exactly a week ago and half of it is still in the fridge...I think that might be saying something.
So my cousin came down from Brissie last Saturday and came over for dinner. I decided to make dessert and chose a recipe from my wall. Lemon, Lime and Coconut Tart. I realised that we didn't have any lemons or limes so chose oranges instead.
It was a pain in the ass to make, I don't like working with shortcrust pastry as you have to blind bake it and all that. Therefore I most probably will not make this tart again.

Looks can be deceivin. The pastry was all crumbly and the middle of the tart was not set and therefore the entire middle part fell apart when I tipped the tart out...and it was a complete mess.

The tart was shockingly sweet, the filling and the pastry. However I quite like the addiction of dessicated coconut in the pastry.

Cooking-Mango Pancake

Due to the disappointment of not being able to eat many mango pancakes in HK I decided to make my own 3 days ago to bring over to a family friend's. I discovered that it is extremely difficult to find a Mango Pancake recipe online especially in English. Found one that was posted on a couple of different sites so I went with it.The hardest part of such a simple dessert is making hte pancake because it isn't like any normal pancake, it is very moist, not fluffy, chewy and very thin. The recipe sounded simple but when it came to cooking them it was merely impossible to master due to the fact that no oil was being used and the pancake was getting stuck onto the pan. A nightmare to clean. So essentially the pancake is steamed in a pan....
The mango cubes and whipped cream was very straightforward to prepare.
Another problem I encountered was the pancake cracking after folding the pancake. I guess this could be because of several reasons. 1. The pancake not being moist enough. 2. The pancake not being thin enough. 3.Wrong batter?
I kept forgetting to take a pic until I've bitten into it.

Taste? Similar but not close enough to what it is supposed to taste like. The mango was too hard, not fragrant enough. The cream was too whipped. The pastry was just wrong. I guess it was alright for my first go.

Lantau Island and Food Court

Blogging about what happened over a week ago.
That morning we had to wake up super early to take the bus to Lantau Island and meet up with my buddhist nun aunty to visit this place they're redoing. Lantau Island is actually really beautiful, lots of people go hiking there. It feels like a forest, surrounded with mountain ranges in the background. So after spending the morning there we had a vegetarian hotpot with way too much food. Although it was very yummy, however no pics, very hard to take a pic of ALL the food. However we did eat lettuce that was grown next door and it was soo sweet and fresh. After lunch we went down to Tai O which is like the town at the bottom of Lantau Island? Not too sure. But the bus ride down felt like a rollercoaster, so twisty and HK bus drivers are crazy, they go way to fast for buses. After walking around looking at stilt houses we encountered shops that sold this tofu dessert 豆腐花 which is on the things to eat list. I never really liked this dessert growin up and I still don't. It's slices of really silken tofu in some liquid and you either sprinkly over this orange sugar or pour in some special syrup. Normally eaten hot.

My bowl of the tofu dessert with sugar sprinkled on the top. It was really smooth and slippery. You have to eat it with lots of sugar because the tofu is really plain, it's just about the texture.

We then left Tai O for Tung Chung to go SHOPPING. There's this shopping centre in Tung Chung that is just all outlets, like Nike, Adidas, Puma, Esprit. I only managed to get a roxy bag for just under $30 aussie.

So as we shopped till pretty late we decided to eat at the food court as it would take an hour to get back out into the city part of HK.

Pretty big food court, plenty of choices but there is a catch. They pretty much only sell asian food. There's a little shop for each country in Asia. Chinese, Shanghainese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai, Viet, Malay/Singaporean, Macau and possibly a few others that I've forgotten. And yes each country had a separate shop.

I had no clue what to eat as the choice was overwhelming. In the end I settled for Singaporean Laksa...which happened to be white round noodles not the malay style with two types of noodles (which is what I wanted). Mum added a satay chicken for like $10 or something.

  The satay chicken was pretty average, the chicken wasn't dry and was nicely cooked. The laksa on the other hand was pretty disappointing. The soup was not rich enough and there weren't enough ingredients. I have to go to Malaysia one day and try actual laksa. Oh well, it's hard to find all this for under $7 aussie in Melb though I did see seafood laksa for $7 today at union house at Melb Uni. Very tempted but at 43degrees it was just too hot for it.

To polish off dinner Dad and I went to the dessert shop to pick some desserts. Dad chose Ice Kachang...in HK...in winter??!! I chose the long awaited MANGO PANCAKE!!

Super sweet random Ice Kachang, I learned my lesson, don't eat Malaysian in HK.




Mango Pancake. I didn't take a pic of the inside as I was too busy eating it XD I've waited many many years to eat this again. Wondering what it is? Its mango pieces with about an inch of whipped cream on top all wrapped in a super thin crepe like pancake which is chewy. DELICIOUSSSS. MUST EAT in HK although it can be pretty expensive. Around HK$20 at Honeymoon Dessert. This dessert shop had it for HK$15

A great end to an amazing day away from the busy city streets of HK.