fraise tagada macarons

Macarons again! Not as delicious as pistaccios macarons, but better-looking. I don't know if you can find "fraise tagada" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraise_Tagada) in many other countries, but I hope so! If you really don't fing fraise tagad and you really want to try this recipe, try to find a kind of marshmallow candy with colored sugar around it...

ingredients:
-3 egg whites
-225g icing sugar
-125g almond flour
-30g caster sugar
-re food-coloring
-150g fraises tagada ("strawberry tagada")
-30g white choclate (no idea why, but it's what the recipe says...)
-10cL whipped cream

recette:
The recipe is exactly the same as the one for the pink macarons (http://shrimpinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2007/03/pink-macarons.htmln.blogspot.com/2007/03/pink-macarons.html), except:
-some more red coloring
-in order to customize not-yet-baked macarons, why not some fraise tagada's sugar (often in the bottom of the packet)?
-for the filling: let the whipped crem boil, then add fraises tagada and chocolate while mixing. The original recipe didn't say it, but I also added the rest of almond flour that was too big to sieved (not too much of course). The ideal situation is too stick couples of macarons together with the filling not too long after it is finished, otherwise if you wait too long it will turn into a real glue. If it does, don't worry, just warm it upand it becomes soft again.

#BON APPETIT#ENJOY YOUR MEAL# (and I promise, no more macarons before some time!)

apple-bars

As everybody knows, when you do sport, you need energy, and these apple-bars are energetic and ways healthier than chocolate-bars. I had this recipe from http://unspeculoos.blogspot.com/2007/02/jai-une-gastro.html , but I changed some things, like the fact that I didn't use pineapple or violette syrp.

ingredients:
-150g oatmeal
-100g flour
-80g bown sugar
-150g soft buter, cut in pieces
-4 little apples or 4 bigs
-2 eggs
-70g caster sugar
-several teaspoons cinnamon

recipe:
#Preheat your oven th6 (quite hot). In a salad bowl mix together the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and butter (with bare hands or with some ustensile). Crumble this dough to get a sandy mix, like the top of a crumble. Overall, resist to the tentation of eating evrything now!
#Cram it with the bottom of a glass into a square tin if possible (it will give better bars), or any other shape is also good, it will just make strange bars. And if your tin is anti-stick, it's even better (like flexipan). Let it bake 15 minutes.
#Cut apples in quarters, peel them and take the seeds out of them. Then cut them in little squares (or blend them coarsely). Add the eggs, the caster sugar and the cinnamon.
#Pour teh apple mix on the pre-baked crumble bottom and let it bake 20 minutes. Let it cool before cutting it in bars or squares. You can eat them directly as a dessert or a snack or take them with you during a hiking.

#BON APPETIT#ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

rebel financiers

I love green pistaccios, because it brings colors and originality to easy recipes, like madeleines or financiers. I took this recipe on http://popotedevero.blogspot.fr , and I just added pistaccios. On the other hand, traditional financiers are baked in rectangle-shaped small tins, but I don't own these ones, so I improvised with little tartlets tins and small kougloffs tins (that's why they are rebels).

ingrédients:
-70g almond flour
-50g flour
-120g icing sugar
-50g butter
-4 egg whites
-a teaspoon vanilla
-1,5 teaspoon bitter almond extract
-some green pistaccios

recipe:
#Preheat the oven medium heat.
#Mix sieved flour (it's not compulsory, but it will avoid lumps) with almond flour and icing sugar. Add the melted butter and the egg whites, then vanilla and bitter almond.
#Grind quite thinly a part of the pistaccios and add them to the dough.
#Pour it in financier tins if possible or otherwise any little tins, decorate with the rest of the pistaccios and put them in the oven 15 to 20 minutes.
#Remove them from the tins.

#BON APPETIT# ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

rebel madeleines

philosophical thought from the very witty movie "Camping" (I know, this movie is no recommendation, but this sentence is the only thing I remember from the movie):

"if you take the legs and the arms off of a hunchback, well it gives a madeleine. (referring to the typical shape of this traditional cookie)"

I adapted this recipe from http://alatabledel.canalblog.com/ , who herself adapted it from http://mercotte.canalblog.com/ .

ingredients: (for 18 madeleines)
-3 separate eggs
-120g butter or margarine
-120g flour
-1/2 packet baking powder (about 10g)
-70g sugar (the recipe originally said 120g sugar, but I made a mistake and used 70g but we don't feel at all the lack of sugar so we won't complain!)
-the zest of one lemon
-5 tablespoons lemon juice
-a little hanful of non-salted green pistaccios
-as mush cashew nuts
-as mush hazelnuts
-a very little handful coconut powder
-as much poppy seeds
-some chocolate squares (dark, milk or white, whatever)
-some marshmallows

recipe :
#Preheat the oven th6 (medium hot). Let the butter melt in the microwave or in the bain-marie. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar and egg yolks. Whip the egg whites apart, without whiping them until stiff, then add them to the mixture with the melted butter and then the lemon's juice and zest.
#Prepare the fillings (we can change unlimitedly, following what you have at home: we could have used dried fruit, other candies, carambars…). Grind roughly (separatedly) pistaccios, cashew nuts, hazelnuts and chocolate. Cut the marshmallows in little pieces with a scissor. Mis coconut powder with chocolate nuggets.
#The amount of paste gives about 18 madeleines, the equivalent as two batches of flexipan tins of 9 madeleines each ( a flexipan tin is a kind of flexible rubber tin in which very easily turn out all your cakes. Some exist for big cakes, other for muffins, other for cannelés... and other for madeleines. It's about the same shape as a very little boat). Otherwise, take regular madeleine tins and butter them. Put some filling in the bottom of the tins and put some madeleine paste in it but not too much because it rises and risks to overflow, and sprinkle again with some filling.
#Put the madeleines high in the oven during 4 minutes quite hot (th6) then 4 minutes medium hot (th4). Normally at this time you should have madeleines that melt in the mouth, cookes but not dry, just as it has to be. Turn them out as soon as they are out of the oven, and continue until you don't have paste anymore. Marshmallows madeleines are not very presentable, because the marshmallows go down when they cool, so there are little gaps, but you can trust me, they are the first gone!

#BON APPETIT # ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

two-coloured chocolate- pistaccio rolls

Excellent recipe taken on a super French blog: http://gourmandises.blogspot.com/

ingredients : (10 green rolls and 10 browns)
(brown for everything that concerns the chocolate roll filled with pistaccio / green for everything that concerns the pistaccio roll filled with chocolate / black everything that concerns both of them)
-20g sugar (10g/10g)
-160g flour (80g/80g) + some more
-2 eggs (1/1)
-10g cocoa powder
-10g green pistaccio mixed in a very thin powder
-green food colouring
-1 can ricotta (half/half)
-about 30g pistaccio paste, or if you don't:
-30g green pistacio
-icing sugar
-almond flour
-almond extract
-100g whipped cream
-1 packet vanilla sugar
-1 egg yolk
-10g soft butter
-some Nutella
-some almond flour
-icing sugar

Recipe :
#Mix the flour, the cocoa, the sugar and the egg, with the spoon and then with the hand in order to form a little dough ball. Do not hesitate to add some flour if the paste is too sticky.
#Spread on a flat surface sprinkled with flour and flatten it with a rolling pin. The paste has to be elastic and overall not to stick. When it is thin enough, cut 10 rectangles 5x12 cm in it, and keep them on the side.
#Mix the flour, the pistaccio powder, the sugar,the egg and the green colouring likewise (without putting, like I did, green colouring everywhere on my hands) and acting the same way for what follows (same number of rectangles). Alternate on a flat surface, take a nice picture, congratulate yourself and continue this recipe.
#Cook together the 2 kinds of rectangles during some minutes in salted and oiled boiling water, until the rectangles float. Drain them, then take them out one by one, dip them in cold water and dab them in order to remove the flour left if need be. Act quickly not to give to the rectangles the time to stick together or to fold or even break. Alternate again on a flat surface and admire the wonderful lively and sparkling colours the rectangles take once they're cooked and flourless.

#If you already have some pistaccio paste skip to the next step.
Prepare 30g « pistaccio paste» : mix very thinely 30g pistaccio with some icing sugar and some almond flour. When it's a nice thin powder, add some almond essence and a little whipped cream, just to give it the glummy modelling clay consistency, but not before the powder is really thin otherwise it won't work.Thin this paste down in 100g warm whipped cream, in a saucepan. Let the mixture boil. Mix one vanilled sugar packet with the egg yolk and add it into the saucepan. Mix, add the butter, and let it cool.
#Mix in a bowl half of the ricotta with green colouring, some sugar, pistaccio paste and whole green pistaccios. #Mix in an other bowl the other half of the ricotta with some tablespoons Nutella an almond flour.
#Put a knob of brown filling in each one of the green rectangles and vice versa. Roll widthways (well, in order to get rolls 5 cm long in the end). Alternate in a buttered dish sprinkled with a little icing sugar, then sprinkle the rolls themselves with icing sugar. Put in a hot oven in grill position (high in the oven) until the rolls caramelize, then let them cool until diner time. Appearance suggestion: in the shape of a cross in each plate with knobs of each filling between the rolls, whole pistaccios in the middle, and cocoa powder or almond flour sprinkled above other colour's rolls...

#BON APPETIT#ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

Scottish brownies

Sorry, but this recipe isn't Scottish at all. Hence the question: "so why are these brownies called Scottish?" Well, given that they were invented in order to finance (0,50€ each piece!) thet travel my high school will make to Scotland next Easter, and that at this moment I didn't have any imagination, the name "Scottish" stayed.

ingredients :

-350g dark chocolate

-3 eggs

-225g butter

-225g sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-100g flour

-half a packet baking powder (in France, they sell very little packet, so half a packet is maybe 10g)

-cashew nuts

-2 yoghurts

-350g carambars (a kind of caramel chewy sweet)

Recipe :

#Make the caramel sauce: take the paper off the carambars (or any caramel sweets), put all of them in a little saucepan and melt them until you get a uniform cream. Once out of the cooker, add the yoghurts, more or less according to how sweet or to how soft you want the sauce to be, and serve it with the cheese cake. If there is too much sauce, it is reusable and it can be served with any other cake, yoghurt, cream...

#Preheat the oven medium heat and grease a pan. Melt in a bain-marie (it is a sauce pan put in another saucepan in which there is boiling water) the chocolate with the butter. Mix steadily, and once out of the cooker don't let it freeze.

#Whisk eggs, sugar, vanilla, and some tablespoons caramel sauce together until you have a bright cream. Add melt chocolate, sifted flour, baking powder, and a part of grinded cashewnuts. Mix well. It is possible to add white or milk chocolate, pecan nuts, nuts, hazelnuts, almond powder, coconut powder, marshmallow bits...

#Pour into the greased pan. You can decorate the surface by drawing a caramel spiral (or anything else), by sprinkling with grinded cashew nuts...you have the choice. Bake about 45 minutes th5 depending on our oven's power, and keep an eye on it if you're not sure. Let it cool and enjoy!

#BON APPETIT # ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

Molly's New York cheese cake

For once, this recipe won't be the translation of the one I put on the French blog, because the girl who gave it to me, my American penpal Molly, gave it in English, so I will write it as it was originally, without any change like I did in the French version.

NEW YORK CHEESECAKE

Preheat oven to 500°F.
Make crust w/: shortbread cookies or graham crackers, 1/2 stick of butter, + 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar



Cake: Mix well:

5 boxes of cream cheese (2 1/2 pounds)

1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
5 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/2 cup heavy cream
Pour into pan.
Bake at 500°F for 15 minutes; then at 200°F for 1 hour.
Let cake cool.
Refrigerate.

Bon appetite!
Enjoy!
Molly (taken from Joy of cooking book)

bananarambar

(recipe taken from «Cheesecake», by Keda Black)

ingredients :
-120g crackers
-40g butter
-6 bananas
-1 lemon
-3 eggs
-2 soft white cheese yoghurts (petits suisses)
-300g cream cheese, like Philadelphia
-100g sugar
-cinnamon
-2 yoghurts
-350g carambars (a kind of caramal chewy sweet)

Recipe:
#Preheat the oven medium heat. Mix the cookies and the melted butter, then cram it in the bottom of a cake tin. Put in the oven from 10 to 15 minutes.
#Smash 3 bananas with a fork and add a tablespoon lemon juice (you can also mix them in a blender). Add the eggs, the chream cheese, the "petit suisses" ( a kind of soft white cheese yoghurts), always by whipping energetically in order to obtain a homogeneous liquid. Pour on the cookie base and put it in the oven about an hour.
#Let the cake cool another hour in the oven off, then take it out and put it in the fridge or in a cool place.
#Just before serving, slice thinly the left bananas, dip each slice in the lemon juice (so it doesn't turn brown later) and arrange them on top of the cake. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
#Make the caramel sauce: take the paper off the carambars (or any caramel sweets), put all of them in a little saucepan and melt them until you get a uniform cream. Once out of the cooker, add the yoghurts, more or less according to how sweet or to how soft you want the sauce to be, and serve it with the cheese cake. If there is too much sauce, it is reusable and it can be served with any other cake, yoghurt, cream...
#BON APPETIT #ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

pink macarons

These ones are my most successful macarons up to this day, they are nicer and more macaron-like than the previous ones, but concerning the taste I still prefer the green pistaccio ones.

ingredients: (for 12 macarons)
-3 egg whites
-225g icingsugar or confectioner's sugar
-125+30g almond flour
-30g regular sugar
-red food colouring
-redcurrent jelly (or any red or pink jelly)
-brousse (a kind of ricotta, with a less strong taste)

Recipe :
#A day or two before, separate the egg yolk from the white, and keep the whites.
#Mix very thinely the 205g icing sugar and the almond flour.
#Whip the egg whites until stiff. It has to be quite solid and not to slide if you move the bowl. As soon as the whipper draws points in it, add a tablespoon regular sugar, then add progressively the rest of the sugar and then pour 40 drops red colouring.
#Sift the powder above the egg whites, by keeping too big fragment apart for the decoration. Keep patience, it's a boring work. The thiner the powder, the smoother and the brighter the macarons. Mix gently with a spatula.
#Prepare 2 oven sheets with a double layer greaseproof paper (if you're British) or wax paper (if you're American). It's important for the formation of the famous ruff. You can draw little circle with a pencil (3 or 5 cm diameter) at regular intervals in staggered rows, to make the sequel easier.
#Create little regular domes with a pastry bag. You can decorate it with the almond flour left over, sans exces. Let it rest minimum 20 minutes but a few hours or even all the night in a flat cool place, under, so that the macarons can "crust". This "crust" phase isn't advised in all recipes, indeed it's possible to avoid it, but the macarosn you obtain in that case are slacker, more fragile and less swollen, so it's more difficult to unstick them.
#Originally, the filling was simply made with rasberry jelly, but the taste seemed too strong and it conceals the biscuit's delicate taste, so we might, among other things, replace it by some brousse (or ricotta) mixed with some tablespoons jelly (I accidentally bought redcurrent jelly instead of raspberry jelly) and also some almond flour, in order to strenghten the filling, especially is the brousse is kind of damp.
#Let the oven preheat about 160°C, and bake the macarons about 15-17 minutes (in any case not too hot, not too long, and while watching: the skin has to be crunchy, but tender inside, a consistancy between meringues and almond paste).
#Let the macarons cool some minutes, it is still hardening, and then unstick it gently with a knif of a spatula. Return all of them on the back, without breaking them, and try to make couples of the same size.
#Spread the pink filling between each couple (there must be about 12 couples), and stick them together. You can eat them immediately, keep them in the fridge or even freeze them.
#BON APPETIT#ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

pistaccio macarons

I juste want to precise that "macarons" aren't the same as "macaroons". Just to avoid a misunderstanding.

I didn't have a pastry bag, so I created the domes with a little plastic bag which I cut the corner after having put all the paste in it. This solution gave acceptable domes, eatable, but not very presentable, well, not as beautiful nor as steady nor as bright as those for bakeries... But for a second try (the first one was botched a wednesday afternoon, without any preparation or patience, it wasn't worth being on this blog... In fact, it was an accumulation of howlers and of not-to-do things, so eventually maybe I will publish it one day, as an anti-recipe), so I was saying that for a second try it wasn't that bad. pistaccio paste is often advised for the filling, but I don't have it, so I improvised a little mixing that's all right.

ingredients : (for a dozen macarons)
-I'm sorry if you don't use grams, in this case just tell me I will turn it into other units
-20+50g non-salted green pistaccios
-3 eggs
-205+10g icing sugar (or confectioner's sugar)
-125g almond flour (if you don't find it in your country, just mix very very very thinely some almonds)
-30g regular sugar
-100g and some more whipping cream
-one teespoon almond essence
-20g soft butter
-2 packets of vanilled sugar (or regular sugar with some vanilla essence in it)
-green and yellow food colouring

Recipe :
#The day before, separate the yolk from the white: keep in the fridge 3 whites and 3 yolks.
#Mix very thinely the 20g pistaccio with the 205g icing sugar and the almond flour.
#Whip the egg chites until stiff. It has to be quite solid and not to slide if you move the bowl. As soon as the whipper draws points in it, add a tablespoon regular sugar, then add progressively the rest of the sugar and then pour 20 drops green colouring and 6 drops yellow.
#Sift the powder above the egg whites, by keeping too big fragments apart for the decoration. Keep patience, it's a boring work. The thiner the powder, the smoother and the brighter the macarons. Mix gently with a spatula.
#Prepare 2 oven sheets with a double layer greaseproof paper (if you're British) or wax paper (if you're American). It's important for the formation of the famous ruff. You can draw little circle with a pencil (3 or 5 cm diameter) at regular intervals in staggered rows, to make the sequel easier.
#Creat little regular domes with a pastry bag. You can decorate it with the almond flour left over, sans exces. Let it rest minimum 20 minutes but a few hours or even all the night in a flat cool place, under, so that the macarons can "crust". This "crust" phase isn't advised in all recipes, indeed it's possible to avoid it, but the macarons you obtain in that case are slacker, more fragile and less swollen, so it's more difficult to unstick them.
#Prepare 50g « pistaccio paste» : mix very thinely 50g pistaccio with some icing sugar and some almond flour if there's too much (recycling!). When it's a nice thin powder, add some almond essence and a little whipped cream, just to give it the glummy modelling clay consistency, but not before the powder is really thin otherwise it won't work.
#Thin this paste down in 100g warm whipped cream, in a saucepan. Add one packet vanille sugar et let the mixture boil. Mix the other vanilled sugar packet with the egg yolks and add it into the saucepan. Mix, add the butter, and let it cool.
#Let the oven preheat about 160°C, and bake the macarons about 15-17 minutes (in any case not too hot, not too long, and while watching: the skin has to be crunchy, but tender inside, a consistancy between meringues and almond paste).
#Let the macarons cool some minutes, it is still hardening, and then unstick it gently with a knif of a spatula. Return all of them on the back, without breaking them, and try to make couples of the same size.
#Spread the pistaccio filling between each couple (there must be about 12 couples), and stick them together. You can eat them immediately, keep them in the fridge or even freeze them.
#BON APPETIT#ENJOY YOUR MEAL#

macarons

Macarons: these little multicoloured and elegant biscuits have been fashionable for a few years, and we have always loved them... Some would say the best ones are at Ladurée or at Pierre (Paris), but those we find at Paul bakeries are worth it (especially Pistaccio et Praline) as Doucet's. The most classic taste Chocolate, Pistaccio, Coffee, Raspberry or Vanilla, but some bakeries or on the Web we can find choice for everybody: Haribo sweets, Salted-Butter Caramel, Liquorice, Chestnut, Olive Oil, Matcha Green Tee and so on... They are often sacrosanct pâtisseries: everybody loves them but nobody dares to make them. Macarons seem too complicated, too long, too delicate... It's time to give up these defeatist ideas! Macarons are maybe a bit long to make, but if we have a good recipe, good tools and good ingredients, there's no reason to fail! So, ready, set, go!