Rum Macaroon with Rum Chocolate Ganache Filling

Look at my feet! (Except they're kinda rough)

Stack of macaroons!

What I think:
After making the amaretti cookies and realizing how similar it is to macaroons, I finally decided to try making them. It was a relatively good success, except only about 1/3 of them was decent. The rest had either a cracked top or no foot. I assembled the good looking ones, using a rum chocolate ganache as the filling. However, the chocolate was slightly too bitter, perhaps because I might've added too much rum. I had too much ganache left and a bunch of broken macaroons. I salvaged them and turned them into chocolate truffle with macaroon bits filling, which turned out amazing. I guess now I know what to do when I failed at making macaroons :)

Bonus:

Rum Chocolate Truffle with Macaroon Bits Filling

Amaretti Almond Cookies

What I think:
I tried this because I wanted to use up some almonds that I have bought this semester. While baking it, I realized that it almost looked like macaroons, except rougher. It also tasted similar, with a crunchy outside and a soft inside. The almond flavor of the ground almond and amaretto was amazingly good.

Mango Jelly, Teacake, Mochi, and Fruity Pebble Treat

Fruity Pebble Treat

Mochi

Teacakes & Fruity Pebble Treat

Bento box with all four!

What I think:
I went on a baking binge and decided to make four things over one night. As I don't want to spend too much time, I chose recipes that are easy and would allow me to work on multiple things at once. The mochi took about an hour to bake, so I started off with making the mochi and got it into the oven first. The teacakes mix need to be refrigerated for a while before being baked, so I made the batter and put it in the fridge. While waiting for the two most time consuming things to be done, I made the two simpler ones.

The mango jelly turned alright, although not as good as I wanted it to be. It's probably the mango extract I was using. The fruity pebble treat was really tasty. Definitely something I would do again when I don't have too much time. The teacakes was similar to the one I made before, except I used walnut instead of cashew and no Wisjman butter. They still turned out well though. The mochi turned out to be the most time consuming one because somebody forgot to grease the pan, which made taking them off the pan a pain and left a considerable amount that we need to scrape of the pan.

Scones!

Slightly burnt scones :(

Yum!

What I think:
I haven't had a good scones in awhile, so I tried making my own. Since I had extra Heath crunch from the sandwich cookies, I decided to add them into the mix to add the toffee flavor in, which turned out really great as they melted inside the scones and gave a sweet caramel smell. Unfortunately, they were overcooked and the outside was slightly burnt. Since they don't have Devonshire cream over here, I tried a substitute recipe that uses mascarpone cheese and whipping cream. It wasn't as smooth as the real one, but it worked pretty well with the scones.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with White Chocolate Filling and Mascarpone Cream Icing

Added icing and white chocolate swirls

White chocolate filling on the inside!

What I think :
Somehow I decided to bake two red-velvet stuff consecutively, except this time I decided to use more red food coloring! I was too lazy to use the cupcake plunger that I bought several weeks ago, and filled it straight from a piping bag. The white chocolate filling was a bit too sweet, but it goes well with the cake. The mascarpone icing added a light creamy taste to it, except there wasn't enough for all the cupcakes. I tried making some more chocolate swirls using the the remaining white chocolate and added them to the top as decoration.

Snickerdoodles

Fresh straight out of the oven

Packaged in cling wraps :)

What I think:
Another easy recipe to try out. Best served warm, as it will still be chewy. I tried packaging it in cling wraps, as they're made as gifts. I think it looked pretty decent, perhaps tying it up with ribbon would make it even better.

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies with Heath Crunch

The cookies!

Fully assembled with the frosting

What I Think: 

The cookies are supposed to be much  thinner than what I've made them, which made it really hard to eat them as the filling would fall out. The cookies were still chewy and tasty though, but not red enough. I should've added more red food coloring, to make it more red-velvety. The filling however, was way too sweet. It was essentially made from two sticks of butter, 1 lb of cream cheese, and a whole pack of icing sugar plus we added some Heath crunch to it. It was literally tooth-aching to eat, yet so good in a really really bad way. Now, I still have an excess of the filling sitting in my fridge.