Minion Macaron with Mango cream

  French Macaron is any Baker's desire.  They are one such bakes, which needs highest precision.  You need to tame these each and every step, yes almost like handling your toddlers :D  For those, who are new to this term, French Macaron is an meringue-based confection which has an usual filling of ganache, buttercream or any fruit jam.  They differ from Macaroons, since they include almond flour and icing sugar for their crispy shell with an feet.

With Mango season around, I made Mango buttercream as an filling, and played around gel colours and edible marker pens with Macarons to get this Minion theme done.  The base recipe is from Pooja Dhingra's The Big Book of Treats.  Please make sure that you age egg whites for 4-5 days for this recipe.  And yes, all ingredients should be brought to room temperature before use.  

Wow, look at these Minion cuties - if you have any Minion fans back at home, you should definitely give this an try.  And yes, considering complexity of this recipe, make sure you follow each and every step.  

The following recipe yields 18 pairs of Macaron.

Opera cake - Baking partners challenge

    This month's Baking partner challenge was suggested by Savitha,  Opera cake is an famous french pastry where almond flavoured sponge is filled with  coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache with an liberal soaking of coffee syrup.  The final layer is glossed with tempered chocolate and is refrigerated overnight for the coffee flavour to infuse.

The first time, I tried almond sponge, it completely broke, and yes, sadly landed in garbage.  After watching an lot of youtube vidoes,   I gave them another shot.  Yayy... my sponge came out right!  I, divided the recipe by one third as I had an small oven, with baking tray supporting 9 inch by 10.5 inch.  This cake requires an lot of labour, so prepared sponge by day one.  Day two,  morning, prepared syrup, ganache and buttercream.  Assembled by evening and refrigerated overnight, this cake was ready for consumption by third day.

One bite into this pastry, was fabulous with an strong hint of coffee and some chocolate.  Initially, I was  worried when both sponge recipe and buttercream recipe demanded eggs.  But, this pastry had no eggy smell at all.  They were soft and delecious, like Bakery bought ones.  I never though that I could make them this delecious, thanks to Savitha and Swathi Iyer for bringing out such an challenging recipe.

Rainbow cupcakes

    CUPCAKES.......those wonderful, tiny delights topped by an gorgeous swirl is my all-time-inspiration. I love to experiment with cupcakes, but running almost an nuclear family, restricts me to bake  twice an month.  And with not-so-cream loving hubby, I had to opt for an minimal or no-creamed cupcakes.  So, once when I came through sour rainbow strips in an super-market, I really knew what to make from them.... :D  :D  Do check out my other cupcakes collection.... Dairy cupcakes, Butterfly choco cupcakes, Orange cupcakes, Panda cupcakes  Vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate icing. 

Rainbow-themed cupcakes, which can also be smeared by blue coloured buttercream, topped with white buttercream swirls with rainbow crossing over, is an perfect party food and would please any kid with an summer boredom :)  I avoided blue buttercream, and replaced it with an blueish cake batter, thus my icing-usage was reduced, an fact to satisfy my hubby's soul :D

How to make an small batch of buttercream?

     There is always an need to stay in shape, isn't it?  Most of us are foodies and we try to explore with high-calorified contents, forgetting about their impact with our waistline:P  So, what happens when we make more than needed buttercream or any other sinful delights? We try to consume them someway or the other, adding more fat to our peaceful life.  So, as an extra-cautious tip, let me start my post about making an small batch of buttercream for your delicious bakes.

And, what is extra special about this batch is that, it has cornflour, which stabilizes the cream from high temperature. Also, due to hot summer, I prepared them with an touch of 'icebath'.   The resulting buttercream was super-creamy and delecious.  They can be cling-wrapped and stored in refrigerator, for upto two weeks.