Sunday, December 5, 2010

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.