“We’ll drink a drink a drink
To Lily the pink the pink the pink
The savior of the human race.
She invented medicinal compound.
Most efficacious in every case.” Brobdingnagian Fairy Tales
The MacTweets time again, and this time we’ve gone PINK in support of Breast Cancer Awareness for Pinktober. Through the month of October, I tend to think a lot of PINK. Often, the first song that comes to my mind is this funny pub song. Have you heard it before?I’m not sure if we were taught it in school {a pub song seems somewhat inappropriate to be taught in school}, but I can sing it out loud, along with the ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’, and of course Ob-La-Di-Ob-La Da ! Hmmm, hail the human mind – complex, intriguing, and connected; and this month, musically inclined to sing PINK too!
Jamie and I thought we’d go PINKthis month, as October is officially the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and October every year is kicked off with a PINK cake on Mr PABs birthday. We were sure the mac gang would rise to support the challenge {Lori, you put words into my mouth}, and would be more then happy to strut their PINKS.Cancer has touched so many of our lives, a 6 letter word that can create havoc in a small space of time, can turn the world upside down … yet it throws up amazing survival stories and celebrates the human spirit.
About my macaron saga … when you least expect it, you will see the mountain move! FEET, the bane of my baking life. Feet that have the power to bring me to my knees with ingredients as few as sugar, nut meal and egg whites repeatedly. Who was to know I would find feet? Sigh, I cannot but tell you of my woes of the lack of feet, the trials and tribulations, reading, tweeting, silently trashing the failures after sugar overdoses of every sort. Looking at yolks and weeping, yet not having the courage to make a batch larger than a single white. Quite unbelievably, I found feet on one batch, and that too baked out of a new oven!
You see, with the kitchen finally remodeled, a few weeks ago Mr PAB decided it was time for a new oven. This followed a rather alarming in depth ‘interrogation’ about macarons and those evasive feet. He is super confident of my baking skills, but is majorly perplexed at my repeated macaron failures. He sits and takes in the Mac Tweet round up month after month & wonders why I am still so foolishly footless!So off we went oven shopping, with loads of advice from all quarters, market researches done to the hilt, models, price ranges, everything. We barely entered a store, and he said “That’s the one”. All the research fell to nought. “This is the one”, he insisted. I whispered, “It’s out of budget, it’s imported and I’m not sure if it’ll work”. The guy who owned the shop sang the virtues of the ‘model‘, and Mr Man suddenly turned to me, “What about feet?“. I didn’t know whether to answer him, or try not to laugh at the shop owner who couldn’t figure out what ‘feet’ had to do with all this! Whatever… but we came back with THAT one!
So here are my feet this Pinktober … Pinkarons with some degree of success. Will fine tune the macarons in the days to come. This month has been far too busy, so I haven’t had the time to try more batches. I added the ‘pink ribbon‘ on top after the shells were baked and had cooled. It’s pink royal icing which I let dry for a day.
I had some fun on the side with origami. Clearing my files I found some old print outs of origami boxes I used to make ages ago. The lad loves origami and is constantly making complex storks and inter-locked stars, so I invited him to make star boxes with me. One disdainful look and he exclaimed, “From a print out? No!! I can only make them from you-tube!’Ugh, the sign of the times to come. I sat in solitude and made my own boxes, and used one for my pinkarons!
Do you want to join Jamie and me making MACARONS?? If you do, you are most welcome to join the ‘Attack’. You can find all the information at our dedicated macaron blogMacTweets. The rules for can be foundhere. You can always join us next month too. Just drop us a mail or tweet.
CHOCOLATE MACARONS Recipe & inspiration fromNorthside Kitchen For the Macarons: recipe from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess
1 2/3 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of ground almonds
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
4 large egg whites
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 baking sheets
1/2 inch plain pastry tip and pastry bag For the ganache filling:
6 tablespoons of heavy cream
5 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Sift together the powdered, ground almonds, and cocoa powder
Whisk the egg whites until half stiff, and sprinkle the granulated sugar into the egg whites. Continue to whisk until very stiff, but not dry.
Fold the sifted ingredients into the stiff meringue in increments using a silicone spatula.
Fit the piping tip into the bag, sit it in a tall glass, turn the bag back to form a cuff, and fill with the macaroon mixture.
Pipe out 2-inch rounds on the baking sheet and leave to stand for 15 minutes (will form a skin).
Bake for 12-15 minutes. The macaroons should be dry on top but chewy underneath.
Remove the macaroons from the oven and let them cook on a wire rack. When they are cool, spread the ganache on the underside of one, and stick another (right side up) on top to create a sandwich. Should make around 18 macaroon sandwiches.
