tiramisu kisses

I decided to make french-style macarons again today, only I had trouble deciding on a flavor. Then I remembered the instant coffee in the cupboard, along with the marcapone cheese I had made a while back (when I was contemplating making canoli for the Nov Daring Bakers challenge- that never happened, mostly because I was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and who has time to fry canoli when all that's going on?).

So I made little tiramisu kisses. Coffee meringue cookies, sandwiched with a white chocolate marcapone filling and some chocolate ganache (because honestly, who doesn't like chocolate ganache?). I used a different macaron recipe from the Oct 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge, this time the one that came in my Dec Food&Wine by François Payard. He uses soft ball stage sugar to make the meringue, and I have a soft spot for Italian meringue after working at Sarah's. I omitted the red food coloring and added 2 tsps of instant coffee to the meringue before folding in the almond/sugar mixture.

The cookies turned out well, only some of them kind of exploded in the oven. The rest puffed beautifully and had the distinctive feet. My personal theory is that the cookies on the bottom tray (that kind of exploded) heated up too quickly and thus exploded.

Marscapone filling:

2 oz white chocolate, melted

8 oz (approx) marscapone cheese, softened.

-combine white chocolate with marscapone, mix well.

The assortment of cookies:

One that kind of 'sploded:

Perfect:

The only thing about french macarons is that they remind me of little hamburgers and thus I always have to remind myself that no, actually, they are sweet and fantastic.

gingerbread house!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

I finally got around to baking/making this today. Kevin and I were originally going to do some post-Christmas shopping, but then it was snowing and didn't stop. So I baked instead.

Okay. So I tried the recipe from the Scandinavian Baking Book first, but it was way too dry, and then I made the mistake of leaving it in the fridge for way too long and not wrapping it so that it was airtight. So that batch of dough went in the trash (sad). I wasn't feeling like trying that recipe again, and I didn't have the ingredients for the other recipe (I don't keep heavy cream on hand, though maybe I should), and since it was snowing (still) and the snowplows had not come by after they did at about 10:30 am, I used Google and found a recipe by Chris Broberg. This was simple, I had everything I needed, and the cookies tasted great fresh out of the oven. After a few hours, they had hardened up- good for gingerbread house-making, not so good for eating. But still, yummy. Kevin was dipping his gingerbread men in milk (I think it might work better in hot cocoa, since he soaked them for a while to get them soft).

Anyway.

I used a (very rough) hand-drawn template for my house:

Baked gingerbread house pieces:

Next step was the royal icing. I obviously didn't use enough egg whites, because the icing was way too stiff to pipe (at least out of a plastic bag- I'm working on getting some pastry bags and tips- as in, I asked for them for Christmas, but we haven't taken the effort to go out and get them yet. And yes, I realize it's past Christmas at this point). After it started flinging out of the bowl and covered my brother's sweater, I decided we were done. Since it wouldn't pipe, I used my hands. This was definitely a two-person job: I got my fingers sticky with icing as I slathered it all over the joints of the house, and my brother was useful and held the walls together until they could stand up on their own. As far as I know, the thing hasn't fallen apart (but I left it in the kitchen about an hour and a half ago, so who knows what may have happened by now).

Here's a slideshow of (part of) putting the house together. We used Skittles and Starbursts for decorations, mostly because I didn't have the forethought to get any holiday-related candy or food coloring (I keep forgetting we have no food coloring in the house). The Skittles and Starbursts are leftovers from Halloween. Halloween 2008. But Skittles and Starbursts are pretty generic, and it's not like I was planning on eating this house later anyway (I think my brother may have other plans).

What Kevin plans on doing with the gingerbread house when I'm not looking:

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is a rotating view of the house. I tried setting it to music, but it was way to large to upload (since I looped the video 11 times to make it last as long as the song), sadness.

This was a lot of fun. Maybe I'll do it again next year (possibly with icing that pipes properly). :)

merry christmas

Little knitted gifts:

For my sister, a pair of mittens that open to be fingerless mitts:

I started from the pattern given on Knitty.com for their "Fetching" fingerless mitts, modified the cables, and added a mitten top and thumb cap.

A lacey scarf:


This one is the Juliet Scarf by Louisa Harding

A lacey beret:

This one is the Grace Lace beret.

For my brother, a knitted sweater. It looks best on a person, so here he is:

This was the Woven Bands Pullover by Hana Jason

For my mom, a knitted lace scarf:


Estonian Lace Scarf by Nancy Bush

For my dad, a knitted scarf:

Pattern from Cotton & Cloud