Wednesday 30 May 2012

Zumbo Macarons


I've had Zumbo's recipe book for..... a while now and haven't yet attempted anything from it. Don't get me wrong, I would love to, but it would take the whole weekend for one recipe, and right now I like making lots of things. Soon, though, I think I may have a Zumbo month where I make up some of his delicious recipes each weekend.

Any who, I picked macarons as my first Zumbo recipe, mostly because I know macarons, so there was no going wrong there, and just to see how a different recipe goes, you know, coz I can.
So I went ahead and made up macarons, just white ones because I picked salted caramel and butter popcorn as the fillings. Also, at work, I've been asked to make a GIANT macaron, hence the big one. It was just a trial, but the one I've been asked to do is supposed to be twice the size. WTF?! But that's cool, I suppose.


5inch macaron

Salted Caramel filling with unfilled macarons

Giving it some perspective

Its huge.... and still not filled

Nom nom nom, Salted caramel & Butter popcorn macarons


Excuse me, I moustache you a question




I like moustaches, not on men though, that's a bit awkward, but the edible/hilarious versions I love. Which means I have been looking for moustache cookie cutters for a little bit. Finally I found them on Inspired Insanity. Queue Excited squeals! I got them express posted because I just couldn't wait. and when they did arrive I did a happy dance :)

Again, I used Sugar belles sugar cookie recipe and flavoured it with Lorann Pralines & Cream flavour oil. I also used her royal icing recipe and used the pralines & cream to flavour it. I just want to say that her cookie recipe is so good, even in my oven her times for yummy cookies were spot on! Now, if you've been reading my other posts you'll know I'm of the belief that everything is more awesome if it comes on a stick. So, of course the moustaches had to be sticked. Plus, it makes for much easier moustache faces if there is a stick to hold it up.

I did a light and dark version of each colour, and although the brown is reversed, I suggest filling the details (the pressed in bit) first, with the lighter colour, let it dry (maybe half an hour) then going over the raised bits with the darker colour. Its then a good idea to leave them out to dry overnight.

A moustache to suit everyone!

The 5 types of moustache that I received, complete with stamped tops

I used White royal icing to attach sticks to the cookies

Bit of royal icing on the cookie first

Press the stick in and add more royal icing on top

All sticked up

With pretty light beams

The front!



CUE MOUSTACHE MONTAGE!!!!


Black Bristle Brush aka "The Detective"


Red Baron, good colour matching for this one

Blonde Imperial

Brown Woolford

Black Walrus


Apparently moustaches are also handy for peaking through

And as horns


Tuesday 29 May 2012

Being Lazy.... Again!

So, I completely fail in the blog posts once a week race! I am trying, really, but I get so excited over the weekend and want to cook so many things and then I'm so tired, and full, from all that cooking.

5 out of my 6 parcels for my Australia Post experiment arrived, and aside from a few cookie breakages, arrived quite well considering. The 6th parcel, I dont know where he went :( I'll write up a proper post soon!

Feedback from the experiment was wonderful though, all good reviews as far as taste and looks went, which means there may be exciting things developing over the next couple of months. Yay!

I didn't get to make everything I wanted this weekend, mostly because, as soon as the moustaches were iced and sticked.... I played with them a fair bit lol

Any way, I will get onto posting what I did make, with plans to finish the rest next weekend :)

Monday 21 May 2012

I Make You Smile, No?!




Mmmm cake pops, I'm having so much fun with these! I made up 3 different ones over the weekend. I had been asked to do up 12 Turkish delight cake pops for a birthday present, and as I was posting off to my volunteers this week, I thought I would make 2 more types of cake pops to go along with the 3 different cookies they are getting.

So, of course, first up is the smiley face cake pop. They make me smile, even more when I bite their silly faces off.... hmmm.
Anyway, the smiley face cake pops are standard oreo flavoured ones, with royal icing faces.



Next we have Blue cake pops, which are white chocolate Tim Tam on the inside. Believe it or not, Coles still has a sale on Tim Tams. So winning!!!





And finally the Turkish Delight cake pops. Sorry, there are no pics without wrapping, but I think they still look good. They have pink hearts on top with glitter in the middle. Yay for sparkles :)









Garden Cookies







We received MORE cookie cutters at work!! They are like an addiction. Plus it gives me reason to practice my icing consistencies, I'm still learning there :)

Australia post experiment launched this week, so I sent my volunteers 3 cookies, a snail, apple and mushroom. I love that they are all the same theme (garden) and that they turned out quite vibrant. :)

Blue snails complete with shiny foot


Magic mushrooms?!

Or fairy mushrooms

Apples mmm apples


All together


Australia Post Experiment Part 2



I posted a couple of weeks ago about trying out our post system to see how well my food travels. Well, I got organised, had volunteers and sussed out postage costs.
Over the weekend I cooked up everything and got down to packaging up the food so that they wouldn't break. I hope.
I ended up with 6 volunteers, most of which are from QLD, but thats cool. One volunteer is in the NT and one from NSW. Not too bad, still only east coastish, but that was more of a time thing, not a lack of volunteers thing.
Anyway, I'm rambling. 
I want to keep postage cost to a minimum, obviously, so I kept all the packages under 500gm and went with standard express post. I guess, if it fails I can upgrade postage options, but I didn't see the point jumping straight in without at least testing it first.

I will post results as I get them :)

What my lucky volunteers will be receiving

Whoo production line!

Again

Packing peanuts at the bottom, bubble wrapped cookies and to be topped with more nuts


All boxed


Bubble wrapped, coz you can never be too careful


Brown packaging, you know, coz all good things come in brown packaging?!


Hokey Pokey Ice cream



I find myself with lots of left over egg yolks, quite frequently. Possibly a result of making IM buttercream so often.
So, what do I do with the egg yolks? Make ice cream.... or popcorn flavoured buttercream, but that will have to be another post :)

This weekend I made Hokey Pokey ice cream, which is really just a fancy way of saying honeycomb ice cream.
I dont have an ice cream churn, so I do it the really old fashioned way, which is every half an hour or so for a couple of hours, I pull the ice cream mix out of the freezer and whip it up. Yes, a bit of effort, but well worth it in the end when you get creamy delicious ice cream.

HOKEY POKEY ICE CREAM

Honeycomb Ingredients
400g caster sugar
20g honey
30g golden syrup
80g water
1 tablespoon bicarb soda

Firstly prepare your tray. I think this is one of those times when those horrible silicone trays would come in handy as you could just pop the honeycomb out once its set. However, if you dont have one of those, line a tray with baking paper, allowing the paper to overhang the sides (so you can pull out the honeycomb once set)

Then, add all the ingredients EXCEPT the bicarb, into a pot and place onto a high heat. Stir the ingredients until the sugar dissolves and it starts to boil. Stop stirring, and leave to boil until a light golden brown colour. You dont want it to be too dark, as it still cooks off the heat and it will be bitter if it is too dark.
Once the syrup has reached a nice colour take off the heat, and working quickly pour the bicarb in and start whisking. It will bubble up. A lot! Once the bicarb is all whisked in (this shouldn't take more than a minute at most) pour the honeycomb into the prepared tray and leave at room temperature until set. Pull out of the tray and break into pieces and store in an air tight container.


Ice Cream Ingredients
1 cup full cream milk
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 cups Thickened cream
pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise & scraped
6 large egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a pot combine the milk, caster sugar, salt, vanilla bean & seeds and 1 cup of cream over medium heat until hot, but not boiling. Remove from the heat, cover and let sit for 15 minutes.
In a bowl, whisk up the egg yolks until they are pale. Slowly add the milk mixture whisking constantly so you dont cook the egg. Place the mix back into the pot and back onto medium heat. Stir constantly until the mix thickens and coats the spoon. Make sure to frequently scrape the bottom so the egg doesn't stick and burn. Take off the heat, add vanilla extract and pour through a sieve into a bowl. Cover and place in the fridge for an hour to cool. 
If you have an ice cream churn, you can then take this mix and use the churn as per the manufacturers instructions.
If, like me, you dont, this is where the fun starts. Once the mix has cooled, take it out of the fridge and whisk it for a couple of minutes. Pour into a freezer safe container (or a loaf tin) cover with cling wrap so that the wrap touches the mix and then cover with foil. Place in the freezer.
Repeat this process at least 3 times over a 3 hour period (whisk every hour) On the last mix, before leaving to set over night, add as much or as little honeycomb as you want :)

When you serve you can add more honeycomb to the top. Coz you can!