Exactly 10 days to go until I leave for Holland... escaping this wet rainy season here onto more (miserable) cold, freezing Holland's Winter... But people who know me well they know I prefer cold climate than hot humid one, as the last one tends to give me "boiling" temperature and don't get near me when it happens, I remind you! ;-)...
So I won't complain that I'll be in who knows who many minus temperature I'd have in Holland, I'm sure I will enjoy it, plus who know I might have white Christmas there which I can't wait!!!
It's been raining almost the whole day again in Jakarta today, but I was lucky I managed to go out this morning when it was still dry to my now favorite hang out/shopping place, a baking supplies shop where I took several cooking class before. I feel like in candy land when I'm here... almost anything you can think of and you wish for, if you are into baking they have it here, it's like a mini baking supermarket. All different kind of flour, chocolate, butter, food coloring in all shades of rainbow colors, different shape and sizes of cake molds, edible flowers or cartoon characters, and so on and so on... very comfortable place as it's air-conditioned and the whole floor smells like cake, but also it can be jam packed during busy hours so expect long queue at the cashier!
I didn't buy much today, I already planned last night that I wanted to practice and perfecting my French Macarons (have I succeeded? keep reading!)so I just bought all the essential ingredients for Macarons, in total I only spent less than Rp. 100.000 (USD9) and I didn't use all the ingredients yet, so I can still make at least one more batch of Macarons. One batch makes about 4 dozen of Macaron shells and I'm using recipe from joyofbaking.com
This time I decided to make only 1 color of Macaron, baby blue... almost like Tiffany's blue color, yup... I'm a sucker for light pastel color, I think it's part of being Virgo? and gay???... As for the filling I just use simple ready made sweet-sour blackberry jam.
So, the moment of truth... how was the result? I was almost convinced that my Macarons would end up perfect compare to the last time I made, but sadly I still couldn't get that "feet" effect on my Macarons and even some of them some cracks appears on top of the shells but this could be because I made some alteration like I put two drops of food coloring (I think once is enough), adding extra corn starch to the batter or simple because it was undermixed or overmixed or my oven temperature was too low... or simply because of the humidity, as you know Macarons are quite delicate to make, there are several do's and don'ts to make the perfect Macarons, simple ingredients but quite demanding technique...
I'd say I'll make another batch as soon as these ones disappeared and I will try without using the alteration and see if it comes up perfectly. So it's about Practice, practice, practice...
I'll keep you posted!!! ;-)
