Posts Tagged ‘Cooking’

Because we’re moving, we’ve been trying to spend as much time with our friends up here before we have to say goodbye for a while.

We had so much fun with our other “Cooking with Susie” sessions that we decided to give it one more episode!

What did we decide to cook? Sushi! Well not really sushi but erasers that are shaped like sushi in a a little kit thingy.

We bought the kit as a present for Susie while we were in Singapore so she brought it over to play with.

Basically it’s a little box that comes with clay and molds and when you put them in the microwave it magically transforms them into erasers. You can read more about it here.

With these sort of things reading he instructions is very important. Even more so when they are written in Japanese!

You should fill the little molds with some water so the clay doesn’t stick to it!

Add some clay to each side…

Squish the sides together

Pull the extra off and you’ve got a piece for your sushi!

Use something pointy to wedge the clay out.

No matter how realistic they look don’t eat them!!!

Bad Susie!

Keep making them until you’ve made all of the pieces!

This is the reaction you get when you tell two girls that you’re going to eat all their sushi…

These are some of the parts that will eventually make the wholes: rice, egg and roe! Susie made these ones so they are all perfect.

This is an example of the crappy ones I made…

Eventually she wouldn’t let me touch the clay anymore because of my shoddy workmanship mwahahaha! This mismatch of skills tends to lead to some jealousy.

But you know all of that can be fixed with our awesome dancing!!

So enough messing around, making sushi is serious business!

Fill the paper container that came in the kit with water and add the sushi pieces.

Wait patiently for them to come out of the microwave!

Then dump the pieces into cold water.

Cut out all the bits of paper for the nori wrappers etc!

This is a good point to exchange presents too… Susie made me this awesome gigantic leopard print bow!! She is so talented and awesome. On the other side of that because I’m an awesome friend I got her…. my love and admiration

And here is our finished sushi!

Yummy yummy yummy Congratulations you have successfully completed a craft project made for children! I will claim that the language barrier was the reason it took us several hours. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But also even after it’s cooked you probably shouldn’t eat it.

Thanks for watching Cooking With Susie… and Violet!

Come visit Melbourne soon Susie!!! Let’s start a petition to make her come live in my spare room and do stupid stuff like this all the time?

Macarons… it’s become a serious obsession now. I blame Lolita brands for this obsession. If they didn’t keep including them in prints or in sweets deco maybe I could forget about how melt-in-your-mouth-delicious they are… maybe I could ignore the fact that they are incredibly pretty… and maybe I could stop thinking about how I desperately want one for breakfast today with a cup of tea…

But no!

And so it goes on until one day I got so frustrated I decided to make them myself. I suppose that’s in keeping with the spirit of this blog ^_^

I searched and searched for a recipe. Many were too complicated with things like measuring the temperatures in the room and comparing the humidity to get the correct amounts for different parts of the world!? Macarons are apparently the most fickle of all deserts.

Finally just as I was about to give up a friend sent me a link to Not Quite Nigella’s Recipe. It seemed easy enough but I wasn’t too keen on the idea of pistachio as I wanted James to actually eat them too. I kept searching until I found the Tasted By Two version. Seemed easy enough… and so the experimenting began! After maybe 10 batches I have modified the recipe for our kitchen/temperature/humidity/what ever other ridiculous things macarons are scared of. I am not a baking purist, I just did what worked! These techniques might not work for you but I assure you that my result was freaking awesome

So here is everything I’ve learned about macarons and my modified version of the Tasted By Two Recipe:

What you need:

Ingredients for chocolate macarons with chocolate filling-

For the outside bit:

• 65 grams Almond Meal
• 80 grams Icing Sugar
• 40 grams  Caster Sugar
• 1 table spoon Cocoa Powder
• 50 grams Egg White at room temperature
• Oil spray
• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• Cooking chocolate
• Butter
• Thickened cream
• Icing sugar

Utensils-

• Scales
• Sieve
• Aluminum foil
• Mixing bowls
• Electric beater
• Baking trays
• Spoon etc
• Piping bag/Small plastic bag

Gather everything together

Line your trays with aluminum foil. Yes in the photo I’m using baking paper… and you know what, it sucked. Every recipe I found said to use baking paper but EVERY batch that I did using baking paper failed miserably. So what I ended up using for the successful batches was aluminum foil *very* lightly sprayed with olive oil. I’ll talk more about the failed batches and how to avoid that later!

Measure out your almond meal. Having the correct weights is very important so be quite careful. Now about the almond meal… many recipes I found said that you should crush the meal even further in a food processor to make it extra fine. I don’t have a food processor so I used it straight from the pack. No problems so far.

This is how fine it was:

Do the same  with your icing sugar and sift them into your bowl. Make sure there are no lumps.

Then mix them together very well and make sure the consistency is even.

Now weigh your castor sugar.

And your egg whites. Egg whites are another highly debated point of this recipe. Some say you should leave them out over night, some say leave them for a week. I made macarons with eggs right after cracking them, over night and week old… and they were all exactly the same in my opinion. I really don’t think it makes a difference. Just make sure they aren’t too cold or else they won’t froth well.

Put your egg whites into a mixing bowl.

Add a pinch of salt to them

Now using your electric mixer beat them until they become slightly frothy.

When they look like this you should start adding the castor sugar a little bit at a time…

Keep beating…

… until it looks like this The eggs should be light fluffy and peaky.

Now this part is quite fun! You should take your mixed up icing/almond and add 1/2 of it to the egg mixture.

Mix it up carefully, don’t be over zealous otherwise it will end up like cake. Once the first half is mixed in, add the rest and repeat.

According to a lot of recipes it should form ribbons off your spoon when you’re done.

Now mix in your spoon of cocoa

Delicious yes?

Ok time to get ready to pipe them. You can use a proper piping bag but if you’re not keen on cleaning one you can just use a plastic bag and throw it away after ^_^

Put your mixture into the bag!

And tie a knot into the top of it.

Now cut off the corner with a pair of scissors and pipe circles onto your tray.

Apparently some people will actually draw circles onto the baking paper to make sure they are completely perfectly shaped… I don’t really think that is necessary. If I wanted perfection I would go and buy them, I like he idea of mine being a little individual ^_^

Ok! So we’ve done the hard part! You should take your tray and bang it on the counter a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. Then leave the macarons on the counter for 1 hour to settle. While they are settling let’s talk about some other variations!

James doesn’t like chocolate much either so he asked for some blueberry flavored ones.

I used tinned blueberries, crushed them and added to the mixture just before piping.

This is easy enough, you just need to add slightly more of the dry ingredients to counter the wet of the blueberries. If you’ve made a couple of batches you should be able to roughly guess at what the correct consistency should be.

My absolute FAVORITE flavor is green tea with pistachio filling. OMG this is seriously awesome. All you need to do is add 1/2 a teaspoon of matcha powder to the mixture instead of your chocolate powder. I’m using one from Tea2 but any will work.

Green!

They all look so pretty!

When you come back to the macarons the icing should have formed a very slight shell, you should be able to touch the top without getting your finger wet. Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius. When the oven is ready you can put in the tray and cook for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes you should be able to see the little crinkly bottom feet, if not something has gone wrong! Cook for another 4 minutes and then allow them to cool on the bench.

This is a picture of the first time I tried to make them, they weren’t very pretty but you can see the little crinkly feet I’m talking about…

Leave the macarons to cool while we make the filling.Basically all that is involved in that is melting chocolate in the microwave, adding a little cream, butter and a little icing sugar so it doesn’t go solid again. Very delicious. Be sure to taste it along the way

The pistachio variation on this is basically crushed pistachios with butter and icing sugar to make a delicious paste:

Now it’s time to remove the macarons from the tray and turn them over… the bottoms should look like this:

Below is a good example of failed bottoms. The reason this didn’t work is because they weren’t cooked long enough so the insides were liquidy. They stuck to the (stupid) baking paper and collapsed when being removed. Still tasted good though.

Take a half and spread some filling on, pop another half on top and you’re done

Taadaa! Success!

And here are the delicious green tea ones:

So there you have it! No longer will I be a slave to sweets deco and brand prints! Next time I crave macarons I’ll bloody well make some! Mine may not be the prettiest ever made but they tasted damn good and nobody complained so I’m happy!

Hope you all enjoyed the adventure as much as I enjoyed eating all of the failed and successful batches!

Ok first off let me say that there are a bajillion photos ahead so if you’re on dial up this may not be the post for you… Now without further ado let me present….

Today on the Cooking with Violet and Susie show we will be preparing Mochi which will then be made into Strawberry Daifuku (also known as the yummiest thing on earth).

Here is what you will need:
-1 microwave safe bowl
-1/2 cup of white sugar
-1 cup Mochiko (glutinous rice flour) plus extra for dusting
-2/3 cup of water
-1 punnet of strawberries (or your filling of choice)
-1 chopping board
-1 very sharp knife
-1 spoon
-Optional: anko to cover the strawberries in. Not used in this recipe but a delicious variation.

Please make sure to buy GLUTINOUS rice flour, it is not the same thing as rice flour. Don’t even bother to try to substitute plain rice flour or you’ll end up with a disgusting floury mess.

Also useful to have is a gullible friend who you can trick into doing most of the work. I call mine Susie.
Another key ingredient is a boyfriend with a camera so you don’t get flour all over your nice camera. Silly photos optional.

First get all of your ingredients together and wash the strawberries.

Get your friend to take care of the boring task of cutting the tops off the strawberries.

If you have small strawberries you should use one per Daifuku, if your strawberries are larger cut them in half. This recipe will make around 10-14 Daifuku.

Measure out 1 cup of mochiko (glutinous rice flour) and dump it in the microwave safe bowl.

Also add 1/2 a cup of sugar to the bowl.

While you do something more fun (like getting 2/3rds of a cup of water) make your human slave… I mean good friend… mix the flour and sugar together very well.

Now add a little bit of water and mix it around with a spoon. Don’t add all the water yet.

It should look like this:

I’m sure your arm will be tired from all that manual labour so get your friend to add the rest of the water and mix it up into a runny kind of paste. Kind of the consistancy of honey.

/>
If she doesn’t do it fast enough make sure to beat her into submission with whatever kitchen appliance is handy…

When there are no lumps pop the mixture into the microwave for 2 minutes. Times will vary depending on your microwave, mine is 1200watts.

You should also leave it to cool for a minute or so or else you might burn yourself. This is a good time for your boyfriend to think of more artistic or flattering ways to photograph you.

Dancing is also a good way to pass the time.

When you finally get back to your dough you may be slightly confused because it looks so gross and weird. Don’t panic.
Spread some mochiko on the cutting board.

Now mix up the dough with your spoon into a giant sticky ball. I can’t think of any way to describe it other than big sticky mess. Be very careful because it will be hot, the mochi retains heat very well.

Roll the dough out onto the cutting board.
Use the spoon to roll it around until the whole thing is coated in flour. The flour will help it be cool enough to touch, don’t be fooled though the inside is still hot and will burn you.

Cut a corner of the mochi (dough) off, it should be just enough to cover your strawberry.

Pull it out so it’s kind of a flat triangle.
Take a strawberry and stick it in the middle, the following few pictures show me covering it and making it into a ball.



style=”margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 311px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_axNtgCrpfKM/Sm1qoeY0F5I/AAAAAAAABIQ/9pc1WMBsWUg/s400/DSC_0132_090723_232.jpg” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363059974852581266″ border=”0″ />Pinch the mochi closed and roll it in the flour so it’s not sticky.
Taadaa strawberry daifuku! Make sure not to let Susie have any yet, she has to make her own!

This section is titled “HOW NOT TO MAKE DAIFUKU”… or what James and Susie did.

DON’T- Get the knife stuck in the mochi…

DON’T- Get your fingers stuck to the mochi…

OCCASSIONALLY- Laugh at your friend for getting her fingers stuck to the mochi…

Especially as she desperately wipes her hands on the cutting board to try and get it off…
DON’T- Try to colour the mochi with food dye after it’s been cooked in the microwave, this should only be done while it’s still a liquid!
ESPECIALLY don’t just pour food dye over the top of it… this is asking for trouble.DO- enjoy having to clean up the food colouring you spilled everywhere.
Totally worth it right?
Now you should make many more! Use up the rest of the mochi!

Taadaa!
Again, take as much time to cam whore as possible, cooking is an achievement and d
eserves to be recorded!

Also make sure to send any beggers away empty handed. I mean you did all the work right? Why should they get any?

See we’re still friends, promise!

Not eat your delicious creation! Enjoy how warm the sugary outside is against the tart cold strawberry. Have a good Iron Chef style judging moment, you could even write a haiku if the mood takes you.
Just try not to choke…
I hope you enjoyed our tutorial! It was all very tongue in cheek in case my sarcasm didn’t quite translate over the internet…

You should all make you own mochi/daifuku, I want to see you results!