Spumoni Macarons

 I love spumoni ice cream especially from the Old Spaghetti Factory. I thought I'd take the flavors, chocolate, cherry and pistachio and make macarons this week. These macarons have chocolate and pistachio shells and are filled with a cherry Swiss buttercream.  I also made chocolate cherry macarons.

Macarons are finicky. As you can see above, the one on the right was overbaked and turned out a little brown. The one in the middle was underbaked and also didn't sit out long enough to form a firm shell and the one on the right was too big because I didn't trace circles on the parchment. Macarons are affected by temperature of the air, temperature of the oven, recipe, baking time, amount of mixing, age of egg whites, and length of time the batter sits out.

I used a recipe for Italian macarons for the pistachio shells. I used ground pistachios as well as ground almonds. This recipe heats the sugar, egg white and water and then adds it to more egg whites and whip it into a meringue before mixing it into the other ingredients. I used a recipe for French macarons for the chocolate shells.  This recipe combined the egg whites and sugar and then mixed in the other ingredients. It was much easier and yielded better results.

I traced the circles onto the parchment before piping the batter on. The chocolate ones still turned out slightly smaller than the pistachio. I rapped them on the table a few times and let them sit for 30-45 minutes till as skin formed. I read that it's better to overbake them a little than underbake. Underbaking will leave hollow, fragile macarons. Overbaking may dry them out more but it will fix itself in the fridge. Aging egg whites, I leave them in the fridge for a couple of days but if I'm pinched for time I will microwave them for 10 seconds. I've also read that adding powdered egg whites to your recipe works well too. But do not use meringue powder. It's not the same thing.

Melt in Your Mouth Shortbread

This is by far my favorite shortbread recipe. It is from Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. I went there once and the line was really long. People will wait for an hour just to eat their morning buns. This shortbread is easy to make and melts in your mouth. Unlike most shortbread cookies, these are very soft and moist.

Crack Pie

This recipe is taken from Momofuku's Milk Bar. One of their best sellers is Crack Pie aptly named due to it's addictive nature. The crust is made from crumbled oatmeal cookie and the middle is a smooth mixture of butter, eggs and brown sugar. It tastes best cold from the fridge. That way it is also easier to cut, not as sticky. I dusted it with powdered sugar but I think it tastes just as good without. Most of it was sent away, I did not trust myself with too much of this dessert at home.

Cake Ice Cream Cones and Cake Pops

Sage was looking through Bakerella's cake pops book and picked out these cake cones to make. Despite it being a rather elaborate project, we went ahead and made them. First we started with a yellow cake made from scratch. Then we crumbled the cake and rolled it into balls then put it into the fridge to chill. He had fun using the serrated knife to slice off the tops of the cones. Then we melted candy melts, dipped the cake balls, sprinkled them with jimmies and set them on the cones. We melted chocolate chips and drizzled it on the top and added a red M&M to represent cherry on top.

Our mini cheesecake pan upside down made a great holder for the cones while the dried. The only problem I encountered was the chocolate was soft and when I tried to place the cones in a bag they got smudged. I opted instead to place them in a container cushioned by parchment paper and handed them out to friends at the park. If I plan to bag them again, I will use candy melts for the chocolate. The leftover cake balls we placed on sticks and turned into cake pops.

Purple Penguin Ice Box Cookies

I saw these cookies on the Diamonds for Dessert website. I couldn't resist making them because they are so cute. There were even lion and turtle ones too. I tried out my own totoro design which actually turned out to look more like an angry cat. The recipe says to set aside 1/3 of the dough for the white and 1/3 of the dough for the lavender. I guess my calculations were off because the white was really soft and impossible to roll and the purple was hard and kept cracking. I mixed the two colors together, redivided them and added more purple. Thus my penguins turned out lavender and purple instead of white and lavender.

Strawberry Frozen Custard

I was walking down Davie Street and a sign proclaimed Frozen Custard. Sage wanted strawberry ice cream and I had some extra heavy cream in the fridge. We made strawberry frozen custard. It's rich and creamy and bursting with summer organic strawberries.