Monday, November 16, 2009

The evolution of Macarune's chocolate macaron




Everyone says chocolate macarons are the hardest to achieve. Well, everyone also thinks Megan Fox is hot, and she's just so-so. Lol. I kid about this with trepidation because I know there are a ton of Fox-lovers out there who swear by their pet puppies she has never had a nose job.

Sure
.

Anyway back to the macarons, which is the real story I'm about to tell. They've come a long way from the first batch I made, back in the day when I starting toying with the idea of baking macarons, to the ones I make today. I still think they need a bit of work as with everything else, but they are very pretty to look at and I can't help but be proud of them *beam

Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz, pastry extraordinaire. Try it here> Don't forget the usual tips and tricks i.e. sift the almond flour and confectioner's sugar, don't overmix, leave freshly piped batter out in room temperature to form skins and watch them in the oven as they bake pretty quickly. Veron's blog post is a great resource for tips.


Just chillin'


Shot of the back


I got some Valrhona cocoa nibs from a baking store. Yes, I found one that carries Valrhona! :) It's called Sun Lik trading at Seah St. No more carrying truckloads of chocolate all the way from Surfas at Culver City LA :)


I don't kid when I say I use slabs of these babies for everything. Love the Manjari 64%


Piping's always fun. I had to resist eating these immediately, shiny dollops of chocolate and all


Done and ready. Any takers?


I made my own passion fruit and chocolate cardamom ganache to go with these. They were 2 different flavors, in case you're wondering :)

The cardamom was slightly overpowered by the dark chocolate. Next time, I'll try popping in a few more cardamom seeds in the cream. The passion fruit ones required a bit more work, and could use with a little more puree. Ooo, this reminds me of the other thing I love about Singapore. Passion fruits are about as easy to find as mangoes. Can you believe that?

Am ordering Pierre Hermé's book, Macaron. Guess it's time to brush up on my French.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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HoneyBubble said...

how about soursop one!!!

Unknown said...

Hello Danielle! Your chocolate macarons look really pretty. =)

I think the chocolate macarons that everyone says are the hardest to make are the ones where melted chocolate (or was is pure cocoa mass?) is incorporated into the batter and not the ones made with cocoa powder. I've not had the courage to try the former, not that I know where to get pure cocoa mass in Singapore either!

Danielle Bumblebee said...

hi karen!

pure cocoa mass (whoah!). i can't say i even know what that looks like either :) maybe one day. i've been veering towards the weirder flavors nowadays just for fun. will post more photos soon