Category Archives: Food & Recipes

Matcha Macarons with White Chocolate Ganache

Posted on June 26, 2018June 26, 2018 by Melissa Harrison

Where I live, in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada, we have very dry winters and incredibly humid summers. The dry winter months are great for making macaron, I’ve had them dried and ready to pop in the oven before I’ve had time to preheat, but even a clear, sunny summer day here can bring too much humidity for these finicky little cookies. After waiting 6+ hours and still getting cracked shells from a too wet batter the last time I made macarons, I endeavoured to develop a less moist version of my recipe for the summer months. Here it is in an exotic matcha green tea shell with a rich white chocolate ganache filling!

Ingredients

for the macaron shells

¾ cup ground almonds (as finely ground as you can find)
1 cup icing sugar
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
3 tbsp + 1 tsp sugar
1½ tsp matcha powder (I get mine here)

for the white chocolate ganache

6 oz (one package) white baking chocolate
2-4 tbsp whipping cream

Method

for the macaron shells

Prepare your parchment sheets by drawing 1″ circles, ½” apart across the entire sheet (or using silicon baking mats with the circles already printed on them) and placing them on a large flat surface suitable for drying your batter, like a dining table. You will need 2-3 half sheet pan size pieces.
Sift ground almonds, icing sugar and matcha powder together, twice. Set aside.
In a large stainless steel mixing bowl, beat egg whites with a hand or stand mixer on high speed until you have a foam with no liquid remaining.
Slowly add the sugar while continuing to beat the egg whites. Beat on high speed until the egg whites reach stiff peaks. You’ve made meringue!
Fold your almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue in two parts.
Here’s the part that takes practice: it’s time for the macaronnage! With a spatula, spread the batter, with some force, against the side of the bowl. Then scoop it up by running the spatula along the side of the bowl again and try to flip it all over and sort-of lightly smack it back into the bottom of the bowl. Gather the batter up again and repeat 15 times. It takes some time to figure out the best way to do this, don’t be afraid to play around with it. When doing the macaronnage correctly, repeating more than 20 times can result in oily, blotchy macarons, but I’ve found that doing it incorrectly doesn’t count towards this limit. If you are doing it right, the batter will take on a noticeable and somewhat sudden change in consistency, this means you are about half-way to that limit. When finished, the batter should be thickened and drip slowly from the spatula. You will have to pipe it onto your baking sheets/mats and it won’t work if the batter is too runny. This is the technique that defines macarons, this is what makes mastery of them impressive.
For perfectly round macarons, use a large, 0.4″ plain tip with a pastry bag, or do it the lazy way and cut a corner off a zip top bag for mostly round macarons. Twist (or don’t yet cut) the bag at the tip and place it, tip side down, in a tall glass. Fill with your batter and twist, close or clip the other end to help keep the messy batter moving in the right direction. Pipe the batter into the centre of the circles on your sheets/mats and stop before reaching the edges as the batter will spread out a bit.
Once finished piping, carefully pick the sheets/mats up and drop them back on to the table from a height of a couple of inches. The theory is that this helps the cookies keep their round shape and form the little bubbles around the bottom (the pied) when you put them in the oven.
Leave the cookies on the table, uncovered, for 15-30 minutes to dry (or more on a humid day). This is a good time to preheat your oven to 350°F. You will know the macarons are dry when they look smooth and are no longer sticky to the touch.
Place an oven rack in the centre of your oven. Place a sheet of macarons on two stacked sheet pans (this will stop the bottoms from getting too hot, resulting in cracked macarons) and bake for about 15 minutes. Rotate the pan half way through baking. At this point, if you want to try to keep your cookies light in colour, place a second oven rack directly below the first and move your cookies down to it, then place a third sheet pan above the cookies on the higher rack to protect them from the heat above. It can be hard to tell when the macaron are done. I pull them out when the kitchen smells sweet and the cookies look crisp, have just started to brown, and don’t look blotchy in the middle.
As soon as the parchment sheet/baking mat is cool enough to handle, take it out of the pan with all the cookies on top and place it on a cooling rack. The macarons will be too sticky to remove from the sheet/mat now; once cooled, they should peel off easily. I usually wait a few minutes for the pans to cool a bit and for the oven to come back to a steady temperature before moving the next sheet to the pans and baking the next round.

for the white chocolate ganache

Fill your smallest saucepan with a couple inches of water and put it on the stove to simmer over medium-low heat.
Chop up the white chocolate pieces and place them in a small stainless steal bowl that fits in the top of your saucepan but doesn’t touch the water.
Warm 4 tbsp of cream up to a simmer. (I use a metal measuring cup on my gas stove top.)
Place your bowl of chocolate in the top of the simmering saucepan and whisk until it just starts to melt. (This is called a double boiler and is used to gently melt the chocolate.) Be careful! The bowl can get hot and there will be steam coming from the saucepan.
Remove the bowl from the saucepan and place on a heat-safe surface (a folded up tea towel does the trick). Pour the cream, starting with 2 tbsp and then 1 tablespoon at a time, into the chocolate and whisk to combine and melt the chocolate. White chocolate does not behave the same way as regular chocolate and can get too runny to work with if too much cream is added. You want it just loose enough to be able to whisk it for the next step. If your chocolate doesn’t seem to be melting enough, you can pop it back on the double boiler for a few seconds between cream additions.
Whisk your ganache about 100 times until it’s smooth and shiny.
Let cool slightly then pour into a zip top bag and continue cooling to room temperature. Once cooled, the ganache can be stored in the refrigerator and warmed back up to room temperature in a double boiler for use.

Once everything has cooled, snip the corner off your bag of ganache and pipe it onto half of your shells. Then place another similarly sized shell on top and gently press them together. Best stored in the refrigerator to keep the ganache firm.

All photos by me.

Garden Rhubarb Macarons

Posted on May 31, 2018May 30, 2018 by Melissa Harrison

I decided to keep it simple with this month’s new macaron recipe. I made simple vanilla/almond flavour shells and used rhubarb, cut from my garden, to make a quick coulis to flavour a luxurious pastry cream filling. The result is a decadent looking cookie with a subtle sweet rhubarb flavour that tastes just like springtime.

Ingredients

for the rhubarb coulis

1 cup fresh rhubarb, chopped (about three stalks)
¼ cup sugar
3 tbsp water

for the macaron shells

1 cup ground almonds (as finely ground as you can find)
1½ cups icing sugar
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp high quality vanilla extract
pink gel food colouring

for the rhubarb pastry cream

(adapted from Joy of Cooking)

1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp cornstarch
4 large egg yolks
1 1/3 cups milk
¾ tsp vanilla
5 tbsp rhubarb coulis
pink gel food colouring

Method

for the rhubarb coulis

Wash the rhubarb and chop into 1 cm pieces.
Add to a small saucepan with the sugar and water and bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar and coat the rhubarb.
Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and pushing the rhubarb pieces against the side of the saucepan to break them up.
Move to a small bowl and set aside.

for the macaron shells

Prepare your parchment sheets by drawing 1″ circles, ½” apart across the entire sheet (or using silicon baking mats with the circles already printed on them) and placing them on a large flat surface suitable for drying your batter, like a dining table. You will need 2-3 half sheet pan size pieces.
Sift ground almonds and icing sugar, together, twice. Set aside.
In a large stainless steel mixing bowl, beat egg whites with a hand or stand mixer on high speed until you have a foam with no liquid remaining.
Slowly add the sugar while continuing to beat the egg whites. Beat on high speed until the egg whites reach stiff peaks. You’ve made meringue!
Add vanilla and beat in.
Fold your almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue in two parts.
Here’s the part that takes practice: it’s time for the macaronnage. With a spatula, spread the batter, with some force, against the side of the bowl. Then scoop it up by running the spatula along the side of the bowl again and try to flip it all over and sort-of lightly smack it back into the bottom of the bowl. Gather the batter up again and repeat 15-20 times. It takes some time to figure out the best way to do this, don’t be afraid to play around with it. When doing the macaronnage correctly, repeating more than 20 times can result in oily, blotchy macarons, but I’ve found that doing it incorrectly doesn’t count towards this limit. If you are doing it right, the batter will take on a noticeable and somewhat sudden change in consistency, this means you are about half-way to that limit. When finished, the batter should be thickened and drip slowly from the spatula. You will have to pipe it onto your baking sheets/mats and it won’t work if the batter is too runny. This is the technique that defines macarons, this is what makes mastery of them impressive.
Add a small amount of the gel food colouring and lightly marble it through the batter.
For perfectly round macarons, use a large, 0.4″ plain tip with a pastry bag, or do it the lazy way and cut a corner off a zip top bag for mostly round macarons. Twist (or don’t yet cut) the bag at the tip and place it, tip side down, in a tall glass. Fill with your batter and twist, close or clip the other end to help keep the messy batter moving in the right direction. Pipe the batter into the centre of the circles on your sheets/mats and stop before reaching the edges as the batter will spread out a bit.
Once finished piping, carefully pick the sheets/mats up and drop them back on to the table from a high of a couple of inches. The theory is that this helps the cookies keep their round shape and form the little bubbles (the pied) when you put them in the oven.
Leave the cookies on the table, uncovered, for 15-30 minutes to dry. This is a good time to preheat your oven to 350°F. You will know the macarons are dry when they look smooth and are no longer sticky to the touch.
Place an oven rack in the centre of your oven. Place a sheet of macarons on two doubled up sheet pans (this will stop the bottoms from getting too hot, resulting in cracked macarons) and bake for about 15 minutes. Rotate the pan half way through baking. At this point, if you want to try to keep your cookies light in colour, place a second oven rack directly below the first and move your cookies down to it, then place a third sheet pan above the cookies on the higher rack to protect them from the heat above. It can be hard to tell when the macaron are done. I pull them out when the kitchen smells sweet and the cookies look crisp, have just started to brown and don’t look splotchy in the middle.
As soon as the parchment sheet/baking mat is cool enough to handle, take it out of the pan with all the cookies on top and place it on a cooling rack. The macarons will be too sticky to remove from the sheet/mat now; once cooled, they should peel off easily. I usually wait a few minutes for the pans to cool a bit and for the oven to come back to a steady temperature before moving the next sheet to the pans and baking the next round.

for the rhubarb pastry cream

Vigorously whisk together the sugar, flour, cornstarch and egg yolks until they are thick and pale yellow.
Bring the milk to a simmer over medium-low heat in a medium saucepan.
Temper the egg mixture by slowly pouring abut 1/3 of the hot milk into the mixture, whisking constantly.
Add this new mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat until it has thickened and any liquid is just about worked in. It will get quite thick, quite quickly so whisk constantly and be sure to scrape the bottom and sides often to keep it from burning.
Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla. Whisk in the rhubarb coulis, a tbsp at a time. Add a small amount of the gel food colouring and whisk in. Transfer to a bowl and cover with cling film to prevent a skin from forming on the surface. Cool on the counter and then refrigerate until cold before piping into the macarons.

Pastry cream doesn’t keep as well as other fillings so don’t fill these cookies until you are ready to serve and be sure to promptly store them in the refrigerator afterwards.

You will have coulis and pastry cream leftover. The coulis will keep for a few weeks and is quite a treat on pancakes. The pastry cream will only a keep a few days and can be used to make several lovely things, notably rhubarb & custard tarts. It can also be eaten with a spoon.

All photos by me.

Birthday Cake Ice Cream

Posted on April 26, 2018April 24, 2018 by Melissa Harrison

My best friend and I recently had a disagreement about whether cake and ice cream were best or worst served together. I said I always dreaded cake and ice cream time at birthday parties when I was growing up because I hated having them on the same plate but was too shy to ask to have them one at a time. Something about cold, soggy cake and crumb-filled ice cream eaten with a fork just filled me with a sorrow I have yet to recover from. He said all of those things were amazing and the best part of childhood. We absolutely could not find common ground on the topic. With his birthday coming up this weekend, I decided to make him something special: birthday cake ice cream with the cake crumbs stirred right in.

Ingredients

1 box of rainbow chip cake mix
- (+ 1 cup water)
- (+ ½ cup vegetable oil)
- (+ 2 eggs)
1½ cups whole milk
¾ cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
3 large egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
1 tbsp vanilla paste or extract
1 handful of rainbow sprinkles

Method

Prepare and bake the rainbow chip cake in a 13×9 pan, according to package instructions.
Meanwhile, bring the whole milk, sugar and salt to a simmer over medium-low heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved.
Beat the egg yolks lightly in a bowl.
Temper the eggs by slowly stirring a ½ cup of the warm milk mixture into them, beating constantly, then stirring this egg mixture into the milk mixture.
Cook over low heat, stirring often, until this mixture starts to thicken and reaches a temperature of 175°F. You’ve made custard!
Strain into a small, heat-safe bowl to catch any lumps of egg yolk that didn’t temper properly and chill in the fridge until cold.
Once cold, stir in the heavy cream and vanilla and churn in an ice cream maker.
While the ice cream is churning, crumble half of the cake into bite-sized chunks.
Place the cake crumbs and fully churned ice cream into a large storage container with half of the sprinkles and fold everything together. Sprinkle remaining sprinkles on top, lightly press a sheet of cling wrap down onto the surface of the ice cream, place the lid on the container and freeze overnight.

All photos by me.

Froot Loops Macarons

Posted on March 30, 2018March 30, 2018 by Melissa Harrison

With their crispy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside texture and sweet, subtly fruity, cereal and milk flavour, these pale cookies with pastel flecks are just perfect for spring!

Ingredients

for the macarons

1 cup ground almonds (as finely ground as you can find)
1½ cups icing sugar
1/3 cup crushed Froot Loops cereal
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp high quality vanilla extract

for the buttercream

7 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 egg, at room temperature
3 tbsp water
3 tbsp sugar
¼ to ½ cup crushed Froot Loops cereal, depending on how smooth or chunky you want your buttercream to be

Method

for the macarons

Prepare your parchment sheets by drawing 1″ circles, ½” apart across the entire sheet (or using silicon baking mats with the circles already printed on them) and placing them on a large flat surface suitable for drying your batter, like a dining table. You will need 2-3 half sheet pan size pieces.
Sift ground almonds and icing sugar, together, twice. Add crushed Froot Loops. Set aside.
In a large stainless steel mixing bowl, beat egg whites with a hand or stand mixer on high speed until you have a foam with no liquid remaining.
Slowly add the sugar while continuing to beat the egg whites. Beat on high speed until the egg whites reach stiff peaks. You’ve made meringue!
Add vanilla and beat in.
Fold your almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue in two parts.
Here’s the part that takes practice: it’s time for the macaronnage. With a spatula, spread the batter, with some force, against the side of the bowl. Then scoop it up by running the spatula along the side of the bowl again and try to flip it all over and sort-of lightly smack it back into the bottom of the bowl. Gather the batter up again and repeat 15-20 times. It takes some time to figure out the best way to do this, don’t be afraid to play around with it. When doing the macaronnage correctly, repeating more than 20 times can result in oily, blotchy macarons, but I’ve found that doing it incorrectly doesn’t count towards this limit. If you are doing it right, the batter will take on a noticeable and somewhat sudden change in consistency, this means you are about half-way to that limit. When finished, the batter should be thickened and drip slowly from the spatula. You will have to pipe it onto your baking sheets/mats and it won’t work if the batter is too runny. This is the technique that defines macarons, this is what makes mastery of them impressive.
For perfectly round macarons, use a large, 0.4″ plain tip with a pastry bag, or do it the lazy way and cut a corner off a zip top bag for mostly round macarons. Twist (or don’t yet cut) the bag at the tip and place it, tip side down, in a tall glass. Fill with your batter and twist, close or clip the other end to help keep the messy batter moving in the right direction. Pipe the batter into the centre of the circles on your sheets/mats and stop before reaching the edges as the batter will spread out a bit.
Once finished piping, carefully pick the sheets/mats up and drop them back on to the table from a high of a couple of inches. The theory is that this helps the cookies keep their round shape and form the little bubbles (the pied) when you put them in the oven.
Leave the cookies on the table, uncovered, for 15-30 minutes to dry. This is a good time to preheat your oven to 350°F. You will know the macarons are dry when they look smooth and are no longer sticky to the touch.
Place an oven rack in the centre of your oven. Place a sheet of macarons on two doubled up sheet pans (this will stop the bottoms from getting too hot, resulting in cracked macarons) and bake for about 15 minutes. Rotate the pan half way through baking. At this point, if you want to try to keep your cookies light in colour, place a second oven rack directly below the first and move your cookies down to it, then place a third sheet pan above the cookies on the higher rack to protect them from the heat above. It can be hard to tell when the macaron are done. I pull them out when the kitchen smells sweet and the cookies look crisp, have just started to brown and don’t look splotchy in the middle.
As soon as the parchment sheet/baking mat is cool enough to handle, take it out of the pan with all the cookies on top and place it on a cooling rack. The macarons will be too sticky to remove from the sheet/mat now; once cooled, they should peel off easily. I usually wait a few minutes for the pans to cool a bit and for the oven to come back to a steady temperature before moving the next sheet to the pans and baking the next round.

for the buttercream

Make sure the butter is soft enough for you to press your finger into. On a cold, winter day, this may mean cutting it into pieces and warming it up slightly in the microwave or oven, still warm from your macarons. Cream the butter in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.
Break the egg into a large heat-resistant mixing bowl and beat lightly with a hand mixer. Set aside.
Add water and sugar to a small saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Bring to a simmer and stir until thick and syrupy, about 7 minutes. You’ve made simple syrup!
Slowly pour your simple syrup into the beaten egg while beating with a hand mixer on as high a speed as you can without flinging syrup everywhere, remember it is hot and sticky. Once all the syrup is in, beat the mixture on high speed, slowly reducing speed until it is white, thick, and the bowl is no longer hot.
Add the butter to this mixture in two or three parts and beat on medium speed until fully incorporated and creamy. If you are like me, the buttercream will split now. If continuing to beat doesn’t bring it back together, it has likely become too cold. Pop it in the still-warm oven for 30 seconds and try beating it again. Continue doing this until it comes together.
Add the crushed Froot Loops and beat lightly until mixed in.
Now pipe the buttercream between two cookies and enjoy your hard work!

All photos by me.