Earl grey macaron – an experiment of flavour and colour

We came across this tea which has a very elegant fragrance and we decided to make some earl grey macaron. 

There’re many ways to add flavour into the macarons and the most common way is to infuse the flavour into the whipped cream used in the ganache, by putting the tea leaves in simmering cream.  We found this process didn’t yield the results we want to we tried another way – adding the tea leaves into the ganache.

Here comes the gadget we bought in the States. 

Yes, a marble mortar.  I know they’re also available in Canada but those are just not deep enough.  We bought this to make ground pistachios for the pistachio macarons.  A lot of the recipes tell you to use a coffee grinder or food processor to grind almond or other nuts but we found that will get the oil in the nuts out and make the thing too moist.  One of the solutions is to grind with powdered sugar but won’t work for macaron, which the balance of the ingredient is everything.   

And this is perfect if you just need to grind a little bit of tea leaves.  After grinding the tea leaves into a powder form, sift them to remove the bigger pieces.  We add the earl grey “powder” directly into the ganache.  Because they’re still tea leaves they won’t melt.  We got a blackish-coloured ganache just like those black sesame paste, which matched perfectly with the light purple macaron cookie. ^^ 

Ispahan bavarois – a simple recipe

If you read our previous post, you probably figured that we fell in love with “ispahan” flavour: rose+raspberry+lychee.  And we always wanted to use this formula to create some other desserts (as discussed, there is no such thing as intellectual property rights in the dessert world LOL).

We organized a dessert class at our house for a ladies’ gathering event.  Although requested by some, macaron was out of questions with our little kitchen and 10+ participants.  Hence we chose this mousse dessert as it was easy to make and they can replicate at home without worrying about oven temperatures.

Bavarois is also called Bavarian cream, and it’s basically a solid form of whipped cream.  It’s very easy to make and you can incorporate any flavour you like.

Ingredients (for 8 servings):

Powdered gelatine - 1.5 packets

Rose water - 1 tablespoon

Water - 3.5 tablespoons

Milk - 150 mL

Whipping cream - 300 mL

Raspberries - 75 g

Lychee - 12 pieces

Sugar - 4 tablespoons

I created this recipe based on traditional and easy-to-make recipes.  You might have noticed that traditional bavarois recipes contain egg yolk.  Since there were expecting moms in our group, I modified the recipe to make sure it’s raw egg-free.

Now let’s start.

1. In a bowl, mix powder gelatine with rose water and water. Put the mixture in the fridge for 10 to 15 min. 

2. Chop the raspberries or use a blender to make raspberry puree.

3. While waiting for the gelatin to set, cut lychee into small pieces.

4. Remove the rose water gelatine from the fridge. Cut the gelatine into small pieces. Pour the milk into the bowl. Set aside.

5. In a stand or hand-held mixer, whip the cream in medium speed until stiff peaks formed.

6. Put the bowl with rose water gelatine and milk in the microwave for 30 seconds under approx. 500W, or until the gelatine has dissolved.  Because we were using powder gelatine instead of sheet gelatine, we needed to make “gelatine jello” first before dissolving it to the mixture.

7. Put raspberry puree into the whipped cream and use folding motion to incorporate. 

8. Put the milk with dissolved gelatine into the cream and continue folding until the mixture looks like a thick batter.  We were trying to explain to the ladies what it would look like and they all got it when one said “oh you mean like baby food”. =)

9. Put the mixture in small plastic cups. The lychee can be put in as a layer or mixed in. Cover with plastic wrap.

10. Freeze for 30 to 45 min. for quick serving. Alternatively, leave in fridge overnight.

11. To serve on a plate, put the plastic cup in hot water for 15 seconds. Use a knife to scrape around the edge. The bavarois will come off easily.

12. Put decoration on top as desired.  For this one we put a little buttercream flower (no egg yolk).  Some put the leftover raspberries.  The choice is limitless!

Enjoy~

Let there be rose – Ispahan throwdown in Paris

We were in Paris last fall and one of our must-do was to try Pierre Hermé’s famous “Ispahan”.  Although there are numerous PE outlets in Paris this delicate pastry is only sold at the St. Germaine store.  There’s no seating in the store but there’s a park conveniently across the street. 

“Ispahan” is a species of rose so it goes without saying that this “Ispahan” dessert is of rose flavour.  It’s about the size of the palm so it’s like holding a burger when eating it (so much about elegance).  We read a lot about this before so we knew exactly what it is made of: rose flavour macaron, raspberry buttercream, lychee and fresh raspberries.  However, actually tasting it is a totally different experience – the complex aroma was just breathe-taking.  The subtle rose flavour mixed very well with the fruitiness of raspberries.  And the hint of lychee was just the perfect highlight of the dessert.  No wonder people say Pierre Hermé is a genius.

Pierre Hermé started off at another renowned patisserie Ladurée, where he created this gem.  Apparently there’s no such thing as intellectual property rights in the dessert world and there are many places in Paris you can get Ispahan, including Ladurée of course.  So our “try Pierre Hermé Ispahan” mission became an Ispahan throwdown.

Our second stop was Ladurée.  Unlike PE you can get Isaphan at all locations (unless they’re sold out).  This one tasted much like PE’s actually.  But we still like PE’s more, probably due to first mover advantage so this Ladurée one didn’t give us the wow factor anymore.

The other place we tried was Angelina.  We were there for the hot chocolate and Mont Blanc but we spotted it while waiting in line to be seated.  They’re not called Ispahan but some French name we couldn’t pronounce so we called it Ispahan anyway.  Hope they were not offended.

This one was our least favourite.  As you can see there were sprinkles of licorice and it did have taste of licorice.  We are not big fans of licorice so this Ispahan to us was an acquired taste.

The conclusion?  When we get the chance, make sure you try it and let the roses blossom in your mouth!

Grand Opening!

Welcome!  Here we will share our love of treats (sweet or savoury).  As our first post, why not having a little toast to celebrate the opening of our blog?

This is basically a drink of Japanese plum wine, sparkling water and raspberries.  We found this recipe on Cookpad, a Japanese cooking site.  With our limited Japanese literacy and the help of Google Translate we often get new ideas for our dinner and dessert tables. 

The ratio we used here was 1 part of plum wine to 4 parts of water.  The colour first came out just like champagne.  And guess what?  After a while the colour from the raspberries infused into the drink and it became pink!  So it’s like champagne and rosé in one drink ^^.

Cheers~