A Final Goodbye To The Olympics

#instagrammeetsblogging

I would say the biggest blogging trend currently would be tumblr. Its a medium where anyone can blog and no original content is required to be successful and can therefore be more appealing to the masses. Tumblr for most people is "re-blogging" vintage looking photos taken by hipsters who now probably regret ever editing that photo because now of course its too "mainstream". And now that everyone can reblog these photos the next logical step is making a device available for the masses to take their own vintage photos a la instagram.

I've got to say I am a fan of the effects that instagram makes but I wasn't too convinced for a blog. I mean who wants their food to look old?! But after baking these toffee and olympic inspired cupcakes, when my friend took these photos on her iphone I postponed taking my own photos with my dslr and then when she posted them on facebook I decided against it all together. I thought the effect seemed perfect for saying goodbye to the Olympics (which are now in the past)!

See ya in Sochi!

London 2012 Cookies

So the Olympics have finally started and despite Canada still not winning a gold medal yet I couldn't help celebrating the silver medal by the men's eight with my rower friend. And by celebrate I of course mean bake! 

These were definitely not my best cookies by any stretch of the imagination and the lines ended up being quite messy. I really need to work on flooding outside sharp corners but I've never made cookies with shapes as geometric as this, just nice, smooth, round corners so it was also a learning experience. But am I happy with them? Yes! There is just so much excitement in these Olympics that not even an ugly cookie could get me down!

Chocolate Macarons: Take One

So finally I worked up the courage to attempt french macarons. The problem with macarons are that you have so many articles that will say certain details are crucial to the perfect macaron and others that say they don't matter at all. 

So I decided to take the advice of one of my favourite bloggers: http://cakejournal.com/tutorials/how-to-make-macarons/.

And here is the series of (unfortunate?) events that occurred in the process of trying to make chocolate macrons.

Things I don't own and probably should have owned in order to make these macarons:
-Food Processor
-Kitchen Scale
-Large Round Tip (I usually just use the large coupler and it works just fine...)

Step one of the recipe was to grind the almonds into a powder. My blender has a grind button so it seemed simple enough until the blender stopped working and started smoking. After this catastrophe I needed to convert the weight measurements to cups which was partially done for me except the conversions provided did not match the conversions I found on websites I normally used for this kind of thing. So which was right? I went with cake journal on the conversions.

The meringues went okay. They were not as glossy as described in the recipe but they were stiff enough not to move when I flipped the bowl upside down. The problem was the consistency after folding in the dry ingredients was off. I find I often have this problem with folding because I tend to over-mix to ensure that is mixed enough. So the mixture turned out too thin and dripped everywhere while I was trying to pipe it. I mean globs the size of your fist on the counter, the roll of parchment paper and all over my hands.

So there were more problems with this recipe than things that went right so when I got 3 macarons out of the recipe I was kind of ecstatic! (Did I mention when making the the ganache the cream boiled over too?!) So next time I bake I need make sure to avoid ladders and black cats. Also I need to buy a couple things...