Anyway, in mid January I was super busy preparing for Pink Polo Events' ' Mad Pink' Party. Before I go any further I guess I should explain what Pink Polo Events is all about. My good friend, Pat, is an up and coming event coordinator and is the owner of Pink Polo. There aren't many male wedding planners that I know of in Vancouver so Pat seemed like the obvious choice for my own wedding (summer of 2014---yay!). I am sure my fiance appreciates the balance of a male opinion among my pink, gold and yellow dream. Whoops, getting of topic, anyway...Because Pat and I were constantly meeting up so that I could gush about all of my ideas for my wedding, we decided that we should just join forces and offer our brides both of our services in one neat package. I promise to tell you all about our upcoming wedding fairs and events (and all of the crazy business that will inevitably follow...) Back to baking:
For the Mad Pink party I wanted to be prepared. Not only was I having to make the sweets for the event, but I also had to prepare the appetizers too. Luckily, I was able to prepare all of the sweet treats beforehand. Making the cookies ended up being so much fun! I had never made Alice in Wonderland themed cookies before and Pat explicitly said not to make the actual characters so I had to get creative. I wanted to promote SD Bake Shoppe's Valentine's Day cookies so I decided to do a 'Queen of Hearts' bouquet. This is what it ended up looking like:
I wasn't planning on giving the cookies from the bouquet away, but at the end of the night, everyone was asking me if they could have them so of course I said yes! Have to share the love baking.
I prepared and served hundreds of hors d'oeuvres that night with my best friend and occasional assistant, Andreya, by my side. To ease your curiosity (and increase your hunger), I made smoked salmon canapes, mini cucumber sandwiches, meat and cheese skewers, one hundred small sugar cookies, one hundred chocolate ganache and baked strawberry buttercream macarons and vanilla meringues. It was a crazy night, but well worth it. The Mad Pink Party was a success!
So yes, you heard me correctly, I did mention baked strawberry butter cream macarons. Please keep reading if you love these amazing cookies as much as I do...
Last time I made the cookies, almost everything was perfect except that the shells were quite bumpy and lacked that luxuriously smooth texture. I quickly emailed Connie of J'adore les Macarons and asked what the deal was with that. As usual, she promptly replied and said that I needed to beat the air out of the meringue a little bit more (she is the best teacher you will ever have, seriously visit her pronto if you are in the area and love macarons!) so beat is what I did. For some reason, this time around when I made the actual meringue portion of the shells, it was a disaster! As an avid meringue maker, I was utterly shocked when I messed up during the meringue portion of the recipe. However, I will say it wasn't completely my fault. My digital candy thermometer started melting when I was heating the sugar water. I guess my gas stove is a bit too powerful, but luckily my thermometer is great quality so it was salvageable. I restarted the meringue portion and carried on as usual. I was nervous about beating the mixture because I didn't want to make it too soupy, but I also wanted to avoid those horrendous bumps. As soon as I began piping the batter, I knew right away that I had done something right. There were no longer those annoying little bumps and the batter felt like it had during the macaron class I took.
For the filling, I made baked strawberry Italian butter cream. For the most part, I find butter creams far too, well, buttery, but the recipe I used tasted much more like marshmallows without the sugar headache (that I always get after eating marshmallows). It was also super easy to make. All you do is take some strawberries, lightly coat them in sugar and then toss them in the oven at 400 degrees F. After about 30 minutes, you should have soft and syrupy strawberries. Throw that into your food processor without the liquid to make it into a chunky paste (you could make it into a super smooth paste, but I like the chunkiness of the strawberries---Pink Polo's party guests also appreciated the chunky texture). Take the strawberry paste and mix it into your favourite Italian butter cream recipe. Voila, delicious, very strawberry meringues. I would personally steer clear of using any synthetic or powdered strawberry type flavourings. I tried using Wilton's powdered strawberry flavouring for butter cream, but it was awful tasting. Far too sweet and synthetic for me. Use the real deal, people, I assure you that you will enjoy it.
Woohoo! No bumps!
Check out our Facebook page to look at the final product!
Yesterday, I made some candied lemon macarons. I had so many lemons left over from the party (yay for buying from Costco!) so I have been tirelessly trying to get rid of them. The other day I made lemon bars, then I made some candied lemon peels and yesterday I had some time so I decided to make macarons.
Each time I make macarons, it goes faster which is an excellent sign. I made the shells a bit too big though so some of them ran into each other. I nearly cried, but I think they still turned out well. For the filling, I decided to use the same recipe as I did for my baked strawberry butter cream, but instead of using strawberries, I used lemon juice. The only problem with the filling was that I definitely over beat the meringue and butter. I will make sure to keep a closer eye on my amazing KitchenAid next time.
This flavour along with dark chocolate ganache is now available for order!
Beautiful Baking Sweeties
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