Friday 17 July 2015

Adventures in macarons

We had a cake sale at work today, so I decided to be real fancy and make some more macarons - with varying degrees of success!

These plain ol' vanilla ones were the stars of the show - they were genuinely pretty decent, if I do say so myself.


I tried, unsuccessfully, to make some strawberry ones with freeze-dried strawberry powder, which I was disproportionately excited about. Unfortunately, I think that the mixture was too damp - I got a nice rise, and cute little feet, but they cracked horribly and would not dry out.

The last ones were some chocolate ones. They looked... ok. However, I think I baked every last hint of moisture out of them and they were distinctly, well, hard. Very disappointing. Some very kind people told me they were nice, but I think they were simply trying to spare my feelings!

Moral of the story - let's try and get the plain ones down pat first, ok?

Sunday 12 July 2015

Marvellous Macaons

The macaron bug has bitten again!


I made my first macarons about 2 years ago, baking hundreds of them in the space of a month, then haven't been near them since. I was inspired by an abundance of egg whites, and made some this week. I'd forgotten how much fun they were & I'm already plotting the next batch...

These ones were a plain macaron shell, filled with a lemon and lime curd.

If you want to try your hand at them, the macaron recipe was from BraveTart and the lemon and lime curd was from The Kitchn.

Enjoy!

Thursday 2 July 2015

#MandalasForMarinke

I know it's been ages (I think I've been avoiding here as it's a constant reminder of all those ends I need to weave in), but I just had to pop in to share #MandalasForMarinke

Marinke (Wink) of A Creative Being tragically took her own life last week, after suffering from depression for many years. I was a huge fan of her work, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about her all week.

I read about a crochet mandala project being run in her memory by Crochet Concupiscence, and decided that this is something that I really want to take part in.

I know I don't have many (any?) followers, but just in case anyone sees this, I'm spreading the message to raise awareness of the horrific impact that depression can have on individuals and their families.