august two one: 2012

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

christmas lovin'

T'is that time of year again. I love Christmas. But who doesn't? Food, family & friends. I don't even care about presents that much. Every year I look forward to my family Christmas, get together. All the women in my family, my aunts, my mum and my grandma are all amazing cooks, and they all come together to cook up an awesome Christmas feast.

I especially get excited because I have an excuse to bake, and my family, who aren't too fond eating sweets, usually let go a bit since it's Christmas. For the past few years it's been my tradition to bake profiteroles every year ( I'll post a recipe up for this later!) and usually experiment with something new. Last year I tried Viennese cookies and this year I thought I'd try gingerbread cookies.

I made two variations, a gingerbread christmas tree and jam filled ones.

(Recipe will be up soon)

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

pastel love

Right now I'm currently loving pastel colours, especially with all the cute and refreshing outfits popping up everywhere for the summer. I'd seen people make rainbow cupcakes but I thought the colour was too intense so I thought I'd try these cute pastel colours. The vanilla cupcake recipe is one that I've used in my family since I was a child, it's a recipe that my aunt came up with.

Recipe

Cupcakes

175g butter
150g sugar
225g self raising flour
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
Food dye - I prefer using Wilton food gel over water based dyes as it tends to make your mixture too runny.

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Cream butter until light and pale in colour. Add sugar and mix until combined.
3. Add one egg at a time, continually beating gently. After last egg is added, add vanilla extract.
4. Divide the batter evenly into different bowls and a different dye to each.
5. Spoon the coloured batter evenly into patty pans. Then use a metal skewer and twirl the colours to get a marble effect.

Saturday, 7 July 2012

lilac & white

Having not baked macarons in such a long while, I felt like baking them this weekend seeing as I'm back to uni in a week or so. I usually always bake salted caramel macarons because they're my favourite flavour and also because other fillings I've made haven't turned out as good as these.

But I'm sorta obsessed with the colour lilac at the moment, seeing as everywhere I look there seems to be lilac this or lilac that - clothes, accessories,, nail polish etc. Lilac and white look best together so I thought I'd give making a white chocolate ganache a go.

I just used the basic macaroni recipe I always use and made a simple white chocolate ganache filling. I usually like using salted caramel because the filling is thick and stays in place when I fill the macarons. Other fillings I've tried in the past are too runny and eventually leak out of the macaron. However what I found with this white chocolate ganache recipe is that you need to let it set over night or at least a couple of hours. I tried filling my macarons with the ganache after about an hour or two and is way definitely too runny still. However I woke up the next morning the ganache had set and thickened nicely to fill the macarons.

Recipe:

Vanilla Ganche:

3 ounces good quality white chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup heavy cream1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 seeded vanilla bean

Pour the chocolate in a medium heat proof bowl, set aside. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the heavy cream, butter and seeds of vanilla bean. Bring to a slow boil and immediately pour over the chocolate. Let sit a few minutes (until most of the chocolate is melted) before stirring. Add the vanilla extract and gently stir, until just combined and no chocolate lumps remain. Let cool completely before filling macaron shells.

recipe from : http://www.epicureanmom.com/2011/12/vanilla-macarons-filled-with-vanilla.html

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Geometric love

photos courtesy of isseymiyake.co.jp

If you're a friend of mine, you'd know that i'm currently obsessed with geometric shapes in any shape or form. Having stumbled upon the 'Bilboa' bag by Issey Miyake has combined my two loves, geometrics and bags. The bags are made of up triangles and meshed together so that it forms flexible shapes. It's able to fold and bend in different ways as you use it...love.