Sweet dots

1. Drying before baking

December is definitely the month of the year where pastries are highly fashionable! I have made a few more batches of cupcakes and Christmas cookies.

Now everyone seems to get crazy about New Year's Eve. I never understood the big fuss around that night. I will have a fairly quiet one and I am happy to do so. However I could give myself a little treat... a sweet treat :o)

2. Gently rising in the oven

One pastry I absolutely love in France are macarons! They are so fluffy, soft but crunchy at the same time! I asked my mum if she had done any before, but she said she never dared too since many women told her that they'd failed, that it is incredibly difficult to make them. That's maybe the reason why they are always so ridiculously expensive.

3. Cooling down

Anyway I was in town yesterday and I had to have a stop in the cooking book section in the bookstore. I had a look on the macarons books. There are not many of them. Actually only two. The one by a French chef, José Maréchal, got my attention. I started to have a look into it and realised that indeed you need first to study before baking. I had time so I got the book and a thermometer for cooking which seems vital for macarons. I studied till late last night how to make your sugary sirup, how to beat the eggs, which quantity was necessary etc...

4. Putting the ganache on the cookies

And today was the big day: the day of baking macarons!

If took me a couple of hours, especially the sirup was tricky since I needed to get a certain temperature. But I have to say making macarons is not that difficult it is just a very exact way of preparing those little round dots. And really do not mess around with the quantities!

5. Ready to serve!

I made vanilla macarons to keep it simple since they are just plain ones with a bit of vanilla pod. I first wanted to see how this works. Next time I will definitely try to experiment on the colours and flavours!

6. Yummi!

They are very tasty, very sweet (maybe a bit too much for my taste), and the texture is pretty good too. I am sure that I can optimise this over time but I am fairly satisfied with my first macarons batch!


Happy New Year 2012 to you!

Sackboy

Real Sackboy

My home-made-Sackboy

My better half is very much into computer games and he particularly likes a very sweet game called "Little Big Planet".  A beautiful game with a nice environment and great music. The player can create levels him/ herself and share it with the community. Anyway the little creature you are in the game is Sackboy. So for my boyfriend's birthday I tried to sew him a little Sackboy. However I have no experience in sewing nor do I have a sewing machine. So I stitched everything by hand. I was quite happy with the result and I hope it is possible so see some similarities with the real Sackboy...

 

Let it snow!

I mentioned a few days ago that we Germans love our Advent time. Today it's already the 2nd Advent and for this matter we also love backing. We love making all sorts of cookies which usually have some jam, all sorts of nuts and christmassy spices such as oranges, tangerines, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, lemons, rum, chocolate... I'd usually be very traditional I make every year the same cookies which I've done for many many years which my mum gave me on the way.

However this year after spending a year in the UK I really got hooked on cupcakes! I love them because they are usually fairly simple to make, so far they always were a huge success and decorating them is a simple and nice way to do a bit of artwork. And are cupcakes not ideal for a little sweet snack in between? Not as big as a piece of cake but not as small as a tiny cookie. And I rarely go crazy on my icing, because usually in shops I think it is just way too much and ends up to be too sweet!

Two of my best friends were very kind and gave me for my birthday a great cupcake cooking book ("Eat Me!").  I rarely have used a present that much before!

So yesterday for for the weekend of the 2nd Advent I decided to let my traditional German cookies rest in their book a bit longer and find a recipe which has all those lovely Christmas spices I love so much. And I found one in my beloved cupcakes book: ginger, cinnamon, zest of clementines, cloves and almonds! When my better half had a bite he said "It tastes like a ginger man!". This is a perfect description of a Christmas cake!

Whilst I was in Brighton I also found those really cool snowflakes for decoration. I bought them in summer, which felt awkward but now I couldn't wait to use them! So I tried to make those Ginger-man-tasting-cupcakes look like a winter wonderland. The icing turned out pretty nice and the sugar gives the whole cover a little extra shine!


Ho!Ho!Ho! Let it snow!

Knock-Knock...

The advent period has finally arrived! And in Germany it is a big tradition to have an advent calender with 24 doors, or mini socks or so. Each day a little surprise is waiting for you and suddenly Christmas doesn't seem that far anymore.

Usually those calenders contain chocolate or other sweets and you can buy them in supermarkets. But isn't it fun to make one for a friend? I have already done a few in my life and this year I thought it's time to make one again for a very special friend of mine who is not living in Germany at the moment. Therefore she can have a bit of German "Heimat"-feeling in London.

I simply wraped up 24 little presents and put them in a box. The box was also nicely wrapped. And now my friend can enjoy every day a little surprise. Hopefully they'll all be somehow usefull for her, some may just be funny and some just pretty.


Now we can only wait for the snow to come to have the Christmas feeling around us!