Happy Chinese New Year!

red bean french macarons

For Chinese New Year I wanted to make something a little different and special. I decided to make red and white french macarons with Chinese characters on them and fill them with red bean buttercream. My mom helped me write the Chinese characters.  She was so fast and writes so well, probably because I can't read or write...just decent at copying. The characters on the red macarons (from up, down, left, right) say "Sun Nin Fay Lok" (Happy New Year) and "Gung Hay Fat Choy" (Best wishes and Congratulations. Have a prosperous and good year). The characters on the white macarons say "Fook" (Happiness). 

Happy Chinese New Year! Wishing everyone good health, peace, and happiness in the new year.

Go Ducks!

UofO french macarons

Happy New Year everyone!

Today the (University of Oregon) Ducks are playing against Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.  For the big game I wanted to make a special little treat.  At Christmas I made the peppermint macarons (see the "Christmas Macarons" post) and my dad had the great idea of making them yellow and green for the Ducks! There are quite a few Ducks in our family and my parents were heading down to Pasadena for the game.  So, I thought I'd make these macarons for them to take down for the game. 

I used the same recipe I've been using for the macarons and just like the peppermint and snowmen macarons I divided the batter and colored one batch yellow and the other green. Using green edible marker I drew an "O" on the yellow macarons. For the green ones I used black edible marker and wrote "Go! Ducks" on them.  All the macarons are filled with dark chocolate ganache. These were really fun to make and I hope everyone enjoys them.

Go Ducks!

Update: The Ducks pulled through today! It was a tough game but in the end we "won the day". It's a good day to be a DUCK!

Christmas French Macarons

peppermint macarons

snowmen & penguin macarons

I really wanted to make french macarons again, but for Christmas I wanted to figure out some creative way to make them more Christmas-y. At walmart I found a bag of Andes Peppermint Crunch (they're the Andes mints that you sometimes get at the end of a meal at restaurants like Olive Garden...but these were peppermint and in little crushed pieces). I thought these would be perfect for the macarons.

Just like the jack-o-lantern macarons, I used this recipe I found on Bakerlla's blog.  The only difference is instead of grinding up almonds in a food processor I use almond meal (from Trader Joe's).  I found this really cuts down the time and the pain of trying to get the right consistency of ground almonds and then trying to sift them when they're freshly ground from the food processor. It was difficult because you can easily grind the nuts just a little too much and turn it into almond paste or not grind the nuts enough...both of which make it impossible to sift.  So, based on my limited experience, I found the almond meal works best for me.  Just make sure to sift it first then measure it out.

For the peppermint macarons I made the batter and divided it into two to add the red food coloring (I wish I had made them more red...they turned out more hot pink). I filled them with the chocolate ganache and then sprinkled the peppermint crunch on the outer part of the chocolate ganache before sandwiching it with the top macaron. They turned out pretty cute and festive but I do need to work on making my macaron sizes more uniform...that's the hard part!

For the snowmen/penguin macarons I just piped two rounds close to each other so they'd run into each other as they spread out a little. When they baked up I had a body of a snowman (one looked like a penguin to me)! I used orange rainbow chip sprinkles for the nose/beak, edible marker for the eye/buttons/penguin body, and piped the scarves/bow tie/feet with tube icing.

Happy Halloween!

I wanted to make something special for my niece and nephew for Halloween. They're only one, but I just love making them little treats for holidays. I've been learning to make french macarons and had the idea to make them orange, draw jack-o-lantern faces and fill them with dark chocolate ganache. I was so excited how they turned out. My husband is a much better artist then I am and drew almost all the faces. He's so creative in making all different facial expressions. We used edible marker to draw the faces. The smooth surface of the macarons are perfect for drawing on.