Home Bake Box: Lavender Macarons

Getting things in the post is such fun – I still hand-write letters, shop online both for ‘proper stuff’ (clothes, household goods) and also craft supplies from Ebay, which is usually such a spur of the moment 99p (or less) purchase that by the time a little packet of die cuts or beads arrives, I’d forgetten I bought it!

 

I’ve written before about Degustabox and how much I like the idea of a parcel of goodies turning up once a month, so I was excited when I came across a new company called Home Bake Box.

 

They deliver a box every month containing all the ingredients you need – already weighed out and sealed in separate packets – to make a particular recipe. There’s also a recipe card, a longer leaflet and a whole load of online content you can go onto their website to access (eg different flavour combinations).

 

Home Bake Box is a small family run business so the kind of thing I like to support – they haven’t paid, or asked, or even know, that I’m writing this blog post. I subscribed for a couple of months though ended my subscription as I just wasn’t finding the time to bake along with all the other things I had planned.

 

Communication was great – when I tweeted a question about whether something was gluten free, I had a reply from Abhi straight away. As as aside, the macaron mix was gluten free but she said they couldn’t guarantee it was fine for coeliacs essentially due to other variables, so I thought it best not to chance it. But according to their website, gluten free and vegan mixes are coming soon!

 

Abhi admits on her website she thinks there is room for improvement with the look of the packaging and that the first time they tried to send out jam (as a filling for one of the cake recipes) the sachets leaked, though mine didn’t- I think I received one of the double-bagged ones! I actually like the plain and simple packaging though, and how neat all the little packets look inside the box. It makes the whole thing seem quite accessible and achievable which is good for more inexperienced bakers.

 

I also love the fact that the boxes are small and flat enough to go through the letterbox. While I love getting parcels, it’s a pain when it means knocking on elderly neighbours’ doors when I get home in the evenings as the courier has left my parcels with them! These however came straight through my letterbox.

 

So what were the two boxes I’ve received so far? Well, my heart sank – but in a good way – a little when I opened the first one. Macarons! I find macarons really hard and have even been on a one-day course to improve my technique. In a way I was pleased I would get to try again but at the same time a bit disappointed the recipe wasn’t something different that I hadn’t come across before. On the other hand I think for the majority of bakers, that would be true.

 

Similarly, the following month, which I haven’t baked yet, was Sachertorte. I was a bit disappointed again as I made a Sachertorte once before and it turned out fine – it wasn’t a particularly difficult or unusual bake. I guess it’s because I’m a fairly experienced baker but one thing that I would like to see Home Bake Box doing as the company expands is perhaps offer a beginner’s box, with something simple or something that most bakers won’t have tried before, and an advanced box, with something that is either more technically challenging or uses unusual ingredients that are hard to find in the shops.

 

Having said that, I’ve just seen on their website what was in their October box: ingredients for a pan de muerto, in honour of Mexico’s day of the dead – which is something I’ve never even heard of. I should have stuck with my subscription perhaps!

 

The box that I subscribed to cost £8.99 a month which is actually quite a lot for some of the recipes – though with the Sachertorte kit it even included gold leaf, which is expensive.

 

However, they also offer a Classic Bake Box, which looks much better and is £19.99 a month. If I had realised this when I first subscribed I probably would have bought one of these. In October for instance, as well as the pan de muerto mix, you got a 9-piece skull cookie cutter set and ingredients and icing for decorated sugar cookies, and the kit for a lime, marigold and orange genoise cake. I like the idea of being given a piece of baking equipment as well as the ingredients for the recipes.

 

So how did the macaron recipe turn out? Not quite as well as I had hoped, but macarons are notoriously difficult to make.



I followed the instructions, mixing the ingredients and piping the mixture out onto a silicon macaron mat I already owned.

I waited until they were cool to peel off the baking sheet but unfortunately a lot of them stuck. Perhaps they were too big and therefore not quite cooked through, I'm not sure.

I then made the filling, which was called buttercream but actually involved mixing the powder sachet with egg and milk to make a sort of custard, which was then allowed to cool. I filled the macarons with this and they did taste good, even if they didn't look all that great!

The pack came with a tiny little box to package a few of the macarons up in, which I did to give to my mum as a gift.

I'm sharing these macarons with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is M.

 

Raspberry Macarons

I've never found making macarons easy - and while I managed to make them as part of a group lesson, I had rather less success when trying to make them at home. I'd even tried making them from an expensive packet mix, which cost £7.50, so when I saw that Sainsbury's had introduced a new macaron packet mix costing only £2, I knew I had to try it.

The instructions are very easy to follow and you only need a couple of ingredients beside what is included in the packet - they even give you a piping bag. First you have to whisk two egg whites to stiff peaks.

Here are the two packets of mixture, one for the macarons and one for the filling.

Simply mix the macaron packet mix into the whisked egg whites. It's a very bright pink colour and has a zingy raspberry taste but is also quite sweet.

The instructions say to pipe the macarons onto a piece of greaseproof paper on a baking tray but I decided to use my macaron mat. It has two sizes of circles marked out (on the back and front) to use as a guide and is made of silicon so it's easy to peel the macarons off when they are cooked.

There's a paper piping bag included in the box. I was a bit dubious but stood the bag in a tall glass so I could fill it, and snipped off a little piece at the bottom. I was pleased to find that the macaron mixture was quite thick so didn't start running out of the piping bag until I was ready.

 

I found it quite easy to pipe the macarons onto the marked circles - definitely easier than the last time I made macarons where my discs were all shapes and sizes (even using the mat, as my mixture was quite runny).

Bake in the oven- the instructions say to put the macarons into a cold oven and turn it to 50C for 20 minutes, then turn the oven up to 150C ( I think - don't quote me on that) for another 15 mins. That was different to how I've made them before; I also put my silicon mat onto a baking tray to keep it flat, and banged it on the worktop a few times to eliminate any bubbles, something that wasn't in the instructions but I've been taught to do.

They came off the macaron mat very easily and many were almost perfect circles with only a few that had spread.

To make the filling, I whisked the packet mixture together with some butter. It's pink and has a zesty raspberry taste; it's also a good consistency - not too thick, not too thin.

However, I didn't quite have enough to sandwich all the macarons together (and I don't think I was particularly heavy handed with the filling). I had some leftover raspberry puree I had made from a punnet of raspberries that I have been eating in a breakfast fruit pot I've made so I mixed this with some icing sugar to make some more filling for the macarons.

The homemade filling

It was very easy to sandwich the macarons together and the filling stayed put and did not run out. For some reason though the macarons had lost their pink colour and turned more brown on the outside - mine always seem to do that, I wonder why?

The inside is a lovely bright pink though!

I decided to package these up in a small box and send to a friend for his birthday. I hope they made it in the post OK!

I'm sending these raspberry macarons to Alphabakes, the challenge I co-host with Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter we have randomly chosen this month is R.

Raspberries are the ingredient for this month's One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima from Franglais Kitchen and Laura from How To Cook Good Food.

Macaroons - from a packet mix

As you may have gathered from previous posts, macarons or macaroons are not my strong point. I'm not usually one for using packet mixes but when I saw this on a baking website, I couldn't resist. It wasn't cheap - £7.50 - but considering how much macarons cost to buy, and even to make if you are making pistachio flavour for instance, I decided it was worth the money. I hoped this would be the answer to all my macaron problems!

Another bonus was that these seemed pretty quick to make and I was trying to bake about five different things over two days for my birthday party, so that was a bonus. The 250g box said it contained all the ingredients and only needed to be mixed with boiling water. So that's indeed what I did....

I also added a little pink food colouring.

 

 The next step was piping out the circles. I recently bought a macaron mat, as described in the limoncello macaron post, which has a guide to follow when piping. It is a two-sided silicon mat, and last time I used the larger circles, so this time decided to use the small ones. Unfortunately it's quite hard to pipe something into an outline that is only about the size of a two pence piece, and I also found the mixture was very runny - a lot more so than when I took the macaron-making class with Caroline's Tea and Scones. As you can see, the mixture ran outside of the guidelines and several of the macarons joined together. I knew this wouldn't bode well when I took them out of the oven!

The instructions didn't say to leave these to stand, but Caroline impressed on us the importance of leaving the macarons to form a skin, so I did leave them for about half an hour and then put them in the oven at the temperature recommended on the packet.

Yep, they're still fused together....
At least they came off the macaron mat more easily than last time!

I sandwiched them together with some white chocolate buttercream left over from another recipe I was making at the same time (I'm a real multi-tasker!).

Well, they look a bit rubbish - all different shapes, and quite cracked and not particularly glossy on top. But they still tasted really good!
I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting the packet mix to work miracles- unfair I know, and the main problem came down to my piping skills (or lack thereof). I thought it was interesting that the macarons turned brown in the oven, much as my yellow limoncello ones did; once you bit into them you could see they were pink on the inside but I have no idea how the professionals make different pastel-coloured macarons. Does anyone know?

 

So the macarons went down well at the party, but I probably won't try to make any more for a while...

L is for...Limoncello macarons

I wanted to try making macarons again after recently taking a class at Caroline's Tea and Scones and came across a recipe for some using a lemon liqueur, so decided they would fit the Alphabakes theme for February as well. I had a feeling they wouldn't turn out as well as the macarons I made in the class, but I was hopeful!

The recipe was from a book called "Biscuits and macaroons" from Marks & Spencer. It was a different recipe to the one Caroline gave us in her class, but as I wanted to add the limoncello I decided to follow this one from the book.

Ingredients:

3 egg whites

55g caster sugar

yellow food colouring

200g icing sugar

120g ground almonds

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind

60ml single cream

150g white chocolate

4 tsp limoncello lemon liqueur

The recipe didn't say to age the egg whites, but following Caroline's advice in the class I took, I cracked them the day before. So to begin, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Add the sugar

Add a few drops of yellow food colouring and beat

Add the ground almonds and icing sugar

This is my silicon macaron mat that I bought over the internet. It is flat and the circle shapes are only slightly raised, so it is as if you are piping onto a baking sheet but with a guide and a slight edge that will help keep the macarons the same size and shape. It's also easy to remove the macarons afterwards as the mat is flexible so you simply peel it off.

I'm not sure why this picture came out sideways as I did try to rotate it. Here's a trick I learnt from Caroline, and I can't believe I never knew about it before! When you're filling a piping bag - I always use disposable ones these days - stand it in a glass (this is a pint glass) and fold the excess bag down over the top. You can fill the bag without needing to hold it or get messy, and when you're done, simply fold the rest of the bag up and remove from the glass.

Piping onto my macaron mat - it really does work! It's important to leave the macarons to stand for at least half an hour, so they form a slight skin on the top. Meanwhile preheat oven to 150 C. Bake for 20 mins.

Unfortunately the macarons spread a little and became attached to each other, though they were fairly easy to separate from each other....

... unfortunately, they weren't so easy to get off the macaron mat in one piece! Some of them were a bit stuck on and left half of the macaron behind when I took them off. I don't know if they weren't quite cooked enough, or if I should have greased the macaron mat, or if I was just too heavy-handed when I took the first few off, as they came off fine after that. So I only had about half as many macarons as I'd expected - at least the ones I did have looked OK if not perfect!

For the filling, I used a bottle of Limoncello I had bought back from Italy and not opened yet. I'd never tried this lemon liqueur before - it's really sweet but has quite a kick!

Bring the cream to the boil, take off the heat and stir in the white chocolate. Add the liqueur and allow to cool until it is thick enough to spread on the macarons.

The finished product

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When I made the macarons in Caroline's class, they had shiny, glossy tops. Mine were a lot more matt, and also they tasted more grainy as if you could taste the ground almonds inside. I don't know whether to put that down to the fact that I used a different recipe or not - next time I will try Caroline's own recipe and see how they turn out.

The macarons tasted more of white chocolate than of lemon in my opinion - next time I would try to adjust the recipe so the lemon flavour comes through more. The filling  was also runnier than I would have liked - it set when it was in the fridge and it was easy enough to fill the macarons, but when they had been out at room temperature for just a couple of hours, the filling went quite runny and started to seep out the sides of the macaron. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't think I could give these away as gifts like I did with the chocolate macarons I made in class.

Overall I wasn't too disappointed with my attempt at macarons, even though they were quite different to the ones I made in Caroline's class. I think next time I will have to try to recreate her recipe and see if I have any more success!

I am entering these into February's Alphabakes challenge - the letter L - hosted by me and Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker.

I'm also updating this to send to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as her ingredient this month is Limoncello.

It also happens this month that the Classic French challenge is macarons so this recipe fits the bill for that too (and I'm not going to attempt to make macarons again in a hurry!).  The challenge is hosted by A Kick At The Pantry Door this month on behalf of Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.

How to make macarons - a foolproof method?

Macarons, macaroons - however you spell them, they are a little piece of heaven! But they are also a real challenge to cook!

The macarons of today are not the same as the macarons of my youth - I remember eating lumpy coconut biscuits with a piece of rice paper on the bottom. But a couple of years ago I had my first bite of a proper French macaron from Paul's patisserie - they are two discs of almond meringue, sandwiched together with flavoured buttercream, and probably one of my favourite indulgent treats!

I tried to make them myself a year or two ago - before I had this blog, so there is no photographic evidence, thank goodness! The meringue spread when I piped it onto the baking sheet, so instead of perfectly rounded discs I had a mixture of random shapes, that didn't rise properly and just didn't taste right. I've always wanted to have another go, and have had my eye on the various macaron classes offered at cookery schools in and around London for a while. Unfortunately as they are so hard to make, and now in such demand, most of these classes cost £100 or more. So I was chuffed when I found an offer on Time Out's website for a macaron-making masterclass for only £22 - half the usual price of £44. So I signed up right away!

The class was run by Caroline of Caroline's Tea and Scones, who has 15 years' experience of specialising in goodies for afternoon tea. The class was held at her central London flat, and I have to admit spending the first few minutes of the class gazing around her beautiful apartment in awe! We had a huge long table in the centre of the room with enough space for everyone in the class - I think there were 11 of us - to sit around. Caroline showed us a few books on making macarons (which had some really unusual flavour combinations in the recipes) and the equipment that we were going to use.

I won't reproduce her recipe here as I don't think that's fair - if you want to learn from an expert, sign up for one of Caroline's classes! But I don't think that you are losing out by not getting to see her recipe- Caroline explained that macarons are indeed very difficult to make, and every baker has one particular recipe that they swear by - and if they use a different recipe, they might not turn out so well. So have a look on the internet or through your recipe books, give one or two a try, and when you find a recipe that you're happy with and that works for you, stick with it! Caroline even commented that there are so many different factors that can affect the quality of macarons, from weather and humidity to the brand of ingredients (she personally recommended Co-op ground almonds) and that as far as she knows, even the famous patisseries will probably throw away about half the macarons they make! So while the piles of macarons you see in their windows look absolutely perfect, there are an awful lot that didn't make it that far!

Frankly I wasn't aiming for perfection, just something a lot better than my previous attempt! So I took note of all Caroline's advice and tips and also resolved not to lose heart if I try them again and they turn out wrong - after all, it could be down to the weather, rather than anything I did wrong!

We began by sifting icing sugar, ground almonds and cocoa powder into a bowl and mixing. Then take the egg whites and whisk into peaks. Add caster sugar and whisk again. Combine with the dry ingredients and pipe onto a lined baking tray.

We were split into two groups, with one group making pistachio macarons and the other making chocolate. Do you really have to ask which one I did? ;-)

It's important to leave the macarons for about half an hour after piping them onto your baking sheet, as this allows a slight skin to form. This means they will (hopefully) be smooth with a shiny top when they come out of the oven. Some recipes also say to leave your egg whites out at room temperature for 24 hours before using; Some recipes even state the egg whites should be separated two days in advance! It's all down to molecules and basically means the moisture in the egg whites starts to evaporate. I also learnt a new word: macaronage! It's the technical term for mixing the egg whites with the dry ingredients. So now you know.

While the macaron shells were in the oven we made the filling, which seemed a lot easier. You basically make a ganache from chocolate and cream - yum!

When the macarons came out of the oven, Caroline sighed that the tops were all a little cracked - but I could have practically danced a little jig, I was so pleased with them! There was one single perfect macaron, which of course we all took a photograph of! You need to leave them to cool a little and pipe a little of the buttercream onto one half, sandwich them together... and eat!

We all had a couple of the macarons to try - both the pistachio and chocolate flavours were lovely (it's a shame pistachios are relatively expensive to buy, then again they are a lot cheaper than buying a whole box of macarons!). Caroline gave us all a little gift box to take another 7 or 8 home, but I was particularly good and managed not to eat any of them (well, I am supposed to be on a diet). Instead, I carefully packaged them up and sent them to my grandmother, who hadn't been well. I've had a report from my mum that she thought they were wonderful, and kept showing them to anyone who visited!

I definitely recommend Caroline's classes - check out her website.

The big challenge now will be to have a go at making macarons myself! This was admittedly a group effort and we were working under Caroline's watchful eye. I also think my oven is a bit rubbish - never seems to be at the right temperature, and I haven't been using it long enough to have understood all its little quirks (Caroline for instance said one side of her oven was hotter than the other so she always accounts for that). And I'm the sort of person who gets half way through a recipe for dinner in half an hour's time and get to the part of the instructions that says "Now marinade in the fridge overnight". So I will probably forget to age my egg whites! Still, I am planning to have another go at making macarons soon, so watch this space!