M: Macaro(o)ns

 

I left Edinburgh on May 15th and have been travelling to a few different places in Europe ever since.  So far I have been to Lisbon (check out the photos here), Porto (further north in Portugal), Madrid, Barcelona, and Berlin (photos to come soon). I am halfway through with my trip before I head back to Toronto on June 15th. 

I have family here in Berlin and have finally had the chance to spend a little extra time in front of the computer--you can always feel people breathing down your neck in the hostels, waiting for you to get off. Before leaving Edinburgh, I actually made two different recipes, but with work, packing and saying my goodbyes, I never got the chance to post them on the blog. This macaron recipe is the first of the two I made. About a week before, I cracked and bought a new cook book (my weakness). I'm travelling and don't need to lug anything else around with me but I was about to start letter 'M' for the blog and Irresistible Macaroons by Jose Marechal was indeed so irresistible with all of its pretty pictures!  I was also really inspired to try making macarons (which is what the French call them...I think they just call them macaroons in the UK but I know that at home those are something else..) after my friend Hilda visited me in back in February and brought me a box of them from Paris.

These definitely are not the easiest treats to make.  In order to end up with the perfect result, everything needs to be meassured (and weighed) exactly. There are also certain tools that should be used such as a scale, piping bag, food processor, thermometer, a good oven (I was using a tiny electric one..) and specific kinds of food colouring. The main reason why I picked this recipe for double chocolate macarons was that it was the only one in the book that did not require the use of gel food colouring. I did not know where to find this and it wasn't really a purchase I wanted to make if I was only intending on using it once.  I didn´t have a scale either so I ended up using a conversion chart to help me make the most precise measurements possible. 

I think for a lot of the recipes I have made since I have been overseas, I often did not have ALL of the recommended equipment and tools but I usually came up with some sort of solution. The basic macaron recipe is probably not the best to try and be inventive with. I do think that the result I ended up with was still so delicious although less delicate and perhaps slightly more "rustic".  The cookies were a bit flat and there was no consistency to their shape. Some of them were cracked but more from the later batches were smoother and I think that this was because they had a little longer to dry before being baked.

Although the macarons were very time consuming, I am definitely going to try making them again (perhaps a different flavour) once I get home to a better equipped kitchen!

A taste of Lisbon

A taste of The Netherlands

L: Lemon and Blueberry Cloud Tartlets

I have less than a week left in Edinburgh before I continue on with my travels. I will be making some stops in different places for a month and then I will fly back to Canada. That being said, I am going to try to push myself to produce as many recipes as possible before leaving the comforts of my apartment here..

This recipe once again comes from Tarts by Maxine Clark. Stupidly I didn't look at the recipe closely enough before scanning the page in Toronto. It refers to other pages in the book for making pate brisee  (for the crust) and also to explain how to "bake blind" which is just baking the pastry without the filling; it usually involves parchment paper and beans. These instructions can all be found on the internet but quite frankly I still don't have a food processor and just couldn't be bothered to make pastry so I bought some ready-made shortcrust pastry. Instead of using parchment and beans for "baking blind", I hung a little bit of the pastry over the edge of each ramekin so it wouldn't shrink when I baked it. I baked the crust on its own for approximately 5 minutes but a few more wouldn't have hurt.  For presentation, you can gently saw off this extra crust from the edge once it has been baked with the filling.

Luckily I was able to find ramekins that were quite cheap. If I didn't have any I probably would have used a larger baking dish and I would have baked the dessert at a slightly lower temperature and for longer. If you do have smaller individual dishes, they are much nicer for presentation and I'm not sure how well the tart would fare once sliced otherwise. 

All of my flatmates were very fond of the dessert. The result is an almost mousse-like, yet slightly more solid, texture...kind of like a soufflé. It tastes great no matter the temperature but serving it straight out of the oven is probably better for presentation.  As it cools, the filling sinks and starts to separate from the crust a little bit. 

On a slightly different note, I treated myself to a new camera lens (a Canon EF 50mm f 1.8) which is a bit of an upgrade from the one that came with the camera. It's ideal for portraits and still life so I hope you enjoy all the pictures below!