LittleIsland

I made a butterscotch sauce to eat over ice cream, cooking together brown sugar, cream, corn syrup and butter, and tempering in an egg. It tastes good but is grainy - I think I stirred it too much perhaps? How do I rescue it, if it's rescue-able?

Leftovers from my 4-year old's party cake - it was carrot cake and all the coloured frosting was cream cheese frosting. Happily, loved by the kids and adults alike.

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP That martini glass of glistening tea caviar looks absolutely stunning and awesome, K8 !

urrr ok then I guess we might have to make do with plain white chocolate deco's !

Thanks for that reassurance, alanamoana. I wasn't able to get fat-based colours from the bake shop near me and it's too late to venture farther afield or buy online. Plus not quite worth it for just the few bits and pieces I have to make, so I will try miniscule amounts of the water-based pastes in the white couverture that I bought and keep my fingers crossed it won't ruin it. I'm just piping flat shapes anyway.

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. I have some Wilton pastes which are for icing not the candy colours which I did see on the Wilton site but which I have to check if are available in our baking goods store. They're not for professional candy-making, just making some coloured choc deco for my son's Bob the Builder cake next week

Thanks very much Robert. Yes it helps. I guess I have to go check if the Wilton colour pastes are oil-based.

Can I colour white chocolate with paste (like Wilton) and pipe out decorations without having to temper it? Is there specific white chocolate that is sold for this kind of use? What should I be looking for?

Congralations Shalmanese, on an incredible effort... and for clearing up any confusion about your gender Also, from her picture with her challenge results, I am pretty sure now that Mette is a gal !! And, I think it would be interesting to try your Vegemite cheesecake... I ate the stuff when living in Oz but didn't find it too different from what we already had here in Singapore - Marmite. Both yeast extracts. Yummm on hot buttered toast.

Well here are my efforts from the CDPH recipe. This time there was only a tiny bit of cracking across the tops of a few macs. The things I did differently: 1. Subbed some granulated sugar for the powdered. Am not sure whether this made the difference, can't really think how it could have. Wouldn't want to bother with this again in the future as it's a pain to grind down. 2. Dried out the almond/sugar mixture in the oven for a while before using - think this might have been the difference 3. Used italian meringue 4. Lowered oven temp to about 150 deg C Feet are very small still but at least visible and with no air pockets. Teeny bit of wrinkling but not enough to bother me I'm thinking the key must be drying out the TPT because it's so humid here in the tropics. Though I wouldn't know why a moister TPT would cause cracking. Opinions on this theory?

Ling - I'd be really rather proud if I could get half as wonderful photos as you do, using an old crappy camera! I'm using a pretty old 3.2 megapixel Nikon Coolpix and have been told my shots would improve a lot if I'd upgrade my camera, but methinks it's the photographer not the equipment... as evidenced by your work

Well, I have you beat in at least ONE respect... ← Well. I Out-Linged the Ling quite a few times up till the end of the Mooncake festival. Hmm.. ← I can't eat a whole one because they're so gooey sweet...it has nothing to do with stomach capacity. ← Hey yeah, then I've outLinged the Ling before too... in previous years (when the ol' metabolism was a lot higher! Sitting at your desk at work with a mug of steaming jasmine tea by your side and a slice of mooncake in hand, makes it too easy to devour an entire one without realising it. Unfortunately.

Stupid question of the day, but what's malt flour made from? Mette, it sounds like you milled your own malt flour but from what? That malt shortbread sounds really good but wondering if it's something we can replicate once you post the recipe...

I saw recently a single yolk lotus seed mooncake is 1,000 - yes ONE THOUSAND -calories!! I love traditional mooncakes - not all the new fancy schmancy ones - but thankfully (because of afore-mentioned caloric content) have not had too much of a craving this year - been sampling too much of my own baked goods!

when you want to eat/bake/cook something or need to buy a food-related item and the first thing you do is a search on eG to see what's already been written about it.

gfron1... a baker AND a sculptor???!!! My hat's off to you!! How long did that cheese bust take?

Another question for Patrick, hopefully you see this: What do you think you are doing that gives you such high, frilly feet? Mostly the feet on my macarons (if they sprout) are pretty low. I've noticed yours have pretty much consistently high feet. And, does anyone know why some macarons' feet puff out horizontally a little - so that there is a little rim around the bottom - instead of just rising upwards? The ones with the rimmy feet look better, I think. I've now made the CDBPH recipe twice - once as written, and the second time using Italian meringue... both times they developed cracks, but only the Italian Meringue version developed teeny tiny feet.

Sweet meats bring to mind: - Chinese barbequed pork (char siu) - Pork jerky - known in Singapore and Malaysia as bak kwa or rou gan - it is seasoned in a sweet glaze and then barbecued over charcoal. In our part of the world, it used to be only available just before Chinese New Year, when it would be given as gifts, but is now available year-round. Perhaps in your Chinatown? - Pork floss (which could be used as a garnish) - Chinese sausage I luuuurve all the above

Gotta add my awe to everyone else's, Ling... as always, gorgeous work, beautifully presented and wonderfully photographed. I wish I had a fraction of the ability. Congratulations on a fabulous start to this challenge!

True, true. But, as with Iron Chef, taste won't be everything you'd be judged upon - e.g. how well the updated dessert has stayed true to the essential original elements, etc. And, admittedly it was a throwaway suggestion... without thinking through all the logistics

What about a panel of judges is selected or volunteer themselves for a live tasting at the end of this event... but who's baking the final recipes and the how's of getting them to the one place would need to be worked out. And of course, the rest of us must get to participate in the tasting/judging vicariously through lots of photos.

I think the problem actually was that the egg whites were not thick enough, so the batter was too runny. Today I used Nicole Kaplan's recipe again but this time adjusted with more powdered whites to thicken them. I think I'm getting there - except the batter was a touch thick and the macaroons do not have the slight sheen that I see on everyone else's cookies. Could anyone enlighten me if this could be because the batter is too dry? Therefore if I added a touch more water to the batter, would the cookies have the sheen? Also, I'm a bit confused by the number of Pierre Herme recipes posted by people, none of which appear to be producing the gorgeous dark chocolate macaroons in everyone's photos. With Valrhona cocoa which is quite dark, I got the same colour macaroons as those in Patrick's photos of the Nicole Kaplan recipe - very pale brown. Would someone be a wonderful kind soul and point me to the PH choc mac recipe that everyone is raving about please?

Coming back to the whites issue, I've been comparing the different amounts of powdered whites to liquid or fresh, and the original Pierre Herme recipe that Wendy posted had 0.25% of powdered whites out of the total weight of whites. Wendy said she tweaked it up to 7.24% of powdered whites out of the total weight of whites. That's quite a bit, however of course she was at the time using all fresh whites as opposed to 2/3 "aged". So I guess I still have more batches to make, because today's batch AGAIN are a bit too thin and runny. I used the PH recipe posted by Nicole Kaplan, added about 3g of powdered whites but did not reduce the liquid whites which were mostly fresh - as in, broken out of their shells yesterday. First batch out of the oven are flat with no feet. Yesterday's batch, although flat and very dull matte, had tiny feet. Perhaps they need to dry longer - but even before baking they look too flat!

Thank you schneich for resurrecting this thread! Been reading the other long macaron thread and doing searches for more tips but for whatever reason this thread never came up in my searches. This one has been VERY helpful!! (And so has your tip, not that I have a hot air blower but someone else mentioned the Italian meringue macarons dry very quickly)

Gawwwwwd those are GORGEOUS CookieBoy! How did you stick them together, did they break apart and leave hunks of macaroon behind when people went to dislodge them? {And, thanks May for pointing me right about the powdered whites... this thread has been sooo long and there's been so much to digest, I now remember something like that but every time I want to look back on a tip I have to go back and start reading from the first post again! Agh.}