Archive Hot

Real Food Festival 2011

This is the 4th time that I've been to the Real Food Festival (read my 2010 round up here). The festival is built around the idea of bringing great tasting, sustainably and ethically produced food to as many people as possible.

I've been to so many food festivals in last five years that I thought I'd give my top ten tips for those wanting to make/eat the most of their day.

1. Look at the list of stalls before you go (if available). Get an idea of which ones are on your "must hit" list
2. I always find it best to arrive shortly after the festival opens. It's less busy and easier to look at stalls and chat to the people running them
3. Set a budget for buying food (I always try but end up blowing the budget!)
5. If you have a "favorite" like me, cake/desserts, don't fill up on bread, cracker and chutney samples (as tempting as they are) they are super filling
6. Check out the demonstration timetable when you arrive if you want to watch any
7. Bring a bag to carry your purchases and bring a Tupperware container for lose purchases that you don't want squished
8. Bring cash as most stalls won't be equipped to take cards
9. Bring water (you'll need it after all those samples)
10. For festivals that have restaurant tokens, look at the menus on line before you head out so you don't end up with and odd amount of tokens left over that can't buy anything

Some photos of what I ate and purchased

Fruit punch cocktail. My ticket came with a free cocktail.

Halen Mon Sea Salt from Anglesey, Wales (where Wills and Kate live). I bought some sea salt and smoked salt to use for roast potatoes and steak. I also bought a small tube of vanilla sea salt for fruit and fish.

Mini cake pop from Sweet Tooth Factory. I see them at every food festival and Brick Lane. This is the first time I've bought anything. I really like that they had minis for 50p. I got a vanilla but I honestly couldn't tell if it was vanilla or chocolate. The cake oddly tasted of nothing and was grayish inside. Good chocolate coating and moistness though. I'd maybe try one of their cupcakes next time.

I bought a set of rainbow colored tea spoons at Bellevue Tea

The Dessert Deli was one of my favorite of the day!

Seriously loving the mini cheesecakes in a shot glass for £1.50

I bought a marble whoopie pie from one of my favorite places, Outsider Tart.

Blueberry and Champagne macaron from Lorchidee

Hot chocolate and mini whisk from Jaz & Juls

I bought 2 mini cupcakes from Sweet Things as recommended by Anne

I also bought some chocolate tea from Premier's Tea Limited, a "snacking salami" from Serious Pig and some Freshburst Pearls for cocktails from Imaginative Cuisine (like the ones that were on top of my Choboba bubble tea).

I'm pumped for Taste of London 2011 now!

· cupcakes, festival, london, macarons, tea, whoopie pies

Prêt-à-Portea at The Berkeley

I have really great friends. They took me to the designer tea at The Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge as part of my Hen/Bachlorette weekend. I love the tea here because each piece is creative and really cute and they also keep bringing out more until you tell them to stop!

The cakes are in the colors of the fashion season and inspired by the world's finest designers!

The menu, the dresses that inspired the treats and the cute little name tag on our table.

Everything is served on Paul Smith china. I love the stripes.

They had about 10 or more different kinds of tea. I'm partial to flavored black tea so I chose Pear and Carmel. My friends chose a white Peony, African Amber and Green Tea.

A selection of tea sandwiches

A selection of savory options: skewers and taster spoons. The crab cone on the left was excellent and the shot glass is filled with a watermelon and basil soup. It was different!

Christopher Kane pale pink almond macaron filled with white chocolate and elderflower ganache, topped with a pink checkerboard.

Belted Jason Wu poppy seed cocktail dress biscuit embellished with ruffled purple icing.

Season's must have Chanel clog biscuit adored with chocolate brown studs and white leather glaze.

Jean Paul Gaultier fluorescent cheese cake on almond and oat base accessorized with a bright yellow sugar twirl.

Anya Hindarch light apricot summer 'Halen' bag, wrapped in almond marzipan with playful bow.

Erdem dark silky chocolate cake filled with passion fruit and delicate lace.

Paul Smith orange, papaya and pink lavender bavarois topped with chocolate bowler hat.

Yves Saint Lauret soft romantic white mousse and raspberry custard finished with a crunchy meringue scattered with mini strawberries.

Sonia Rykiel nautical vanilla and raspberry jam layered mousse topped with humorous yellow hat.

I had such a great time and this tea is so fun. You can keep going back because the cakes change with the fashion season! You can see from all these lonely hats how much I ate.

They also give you a small take away box!

· cake, cheesecake, chocolate, cookies, macarons, yummy places

Vanilla & Honey Macarons

I ordered the book I ♥ Macarons by Hisako Ogita. I do love macarons and I've been practicing and trying to improve my macaronnage. This book is perfect for that. It's more of an instruction manual with one recipe for vanilla macarons with a few pages of variations at the end. I think that it's not a bad thing. Making macarons is hard and it's best to start with a basic macaron and work up from there. There are lots of helpful tips and photos of what to do if your macaron comes out wrong. I hope she writes a follow up book!

The only thing that didn't work for me in this book was the temperature the macarons were cooked. I think it will vary from oven to oven and depending on how many trays you use and stack. She suggests 190 C for 15-18 minutes. The first batch I made doing this came out perfect with feet and everything but they were rock hard and had to go in the bin! My second batch I cooked at 150 C for 14-15 minutes and this worked much better for me.

They look perfect but they were inedible!

Vanilla Macarons

Ingredients

85g ground almonds

150g icing sugar

3 large egg whites room temperature

65g granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract or seeds from vanilla bean

1. Cut a sheet of parchment paper to fit your baking sheet. Draw 1 inch circles on the paper, spacing them 1/2 inch apart. This is a pattern to squeeze the batter on later. I turned mine pencil side down.

2. In a food processor, grind the almonds and icing sugar together to a fine powder. Sift the mixture twice and set aside.

I caved and bought a mini food processor. It's great and it's really cute!

3. In a stainless steel mixing bowl (it does make a difference what kind of bowl you use but I only have plastic bowls and they came out OK) beat egg whites until they are foamy. Gradually add the granulated sugar to the egg whites.

I added the vanilla and blue gel coloring just before it was done mixing and finished it by hand to stir the color in. The batter really needs to be bright as it fades a lot during baking. I didn't really add enough.

4. Add vanilla and food coloring and stir lightly. When the meringue is stiff, firm and has a glossy texture, it's done.

5. Add half of the sifted flour mixture. Stir it with a spatula while scooping it up from the bottom of the bowl. Add the rest of the flour and mix it lightly in a circular motion.

6. Press and spread out the batter against the bowl's sides. Scoop the batter from the bottom and turn it upside down. Repeat this 15 times. This is called Macaronnage and is the most important part of getting the batter right.

When the batter is firm and drips slowly off the spatula it's done.

I forgot to take a picture of batch #2

7. Get a pasty bag with a small circular tip ready and carefully scoop half of the batter in. I put all the batter in with the clip on top and it still leaked out the top.

8. Put the parchment on the baking sheet and squeeze the batter onto the center of the circles. Rap the baking sheet against the counter (this gives the macaron it's pied/foot). Dry the batter at room temperature until the batter does not stick to your finger when touched. This can take 15-30 minutes.

9. I placed one baking sheet in the oven at a time on 2 heavy black oven racks on top of each other at 150 C for 14-15 minutes. Using 2 baking trays stacked is recommended as it stops the heat from over baking the macarons. I only have 2 and they didn't fit together well. You can see I had one crack.

10. Remove from the oven and cool. When the macarons are cooled remove them from the baking sheet. Spread filling between 2 of the macron shells. I like to refrigerate mine overnight to let the flavors sink in.

Honey Buttercream

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter at room temperature

3 tbs water

40g granulated sugar

1 egg

2 tbs honey

1. Cut butter into small pieces and put in microwave safe bowl. Heat for 10 seconds. Stir butter until it's creamy and smooth (like mayonnaise).

2. Put water and sugar in a heat resistant container and stir well. Heat in microwave for 1 minute, take out and stir until sugar is absorbed. Heat for another 3-4 minutes and stir again.

When they say heat proof they really mean it! I should have known better than to use plastic. I should get a pyrex one.

3. Break an egg into a mixing bowl and beat it lightly with a hand mixer. Pour the syrup in like a thread and beat on high speed. Reduce speed to medium and then to slow, and continue beating until the bottom of the bowl is not hot and the mixture becomes white and heavy.

4. Add the butter in 2 or 3 batches. Beat with a hand mixture at medium speed each time until well mixed. Add in the honey and stir. Put the cream into a pastry bag and pipe between 2 macarons.

· macarons

Swiss Macarons - Luxemburgerli's from Sprungli

I'm fascinated by macarons lately. I've also just bought a book from Amazon and plan on making more.

There are different variations of maracons. There are French Macarons, Italian Macarons and Swiss Macarons. I'm sure there are others out there but these are the main ones I've come across in my research.

A French Macaron is meringue and almond based. Like the Rose ones I made not that long ago. The Italian Macarons are meringue, almond, and made with a sugar syrup that has to be heated to a certain temperature. Like the ones at Pierre Herme.

A Luxemburgerli is a Swiss Macaron.

The recipe for Luxemburgerli's are top secret and I couldn't find anything to indicate what makes them different than a French and Italian Macaron. They are more light and airy than a traditional macaron.

There is another layer of macarons under the paper!

From what I can tell these are only available around Zurich. Luxemburgerli's are only made by Sprungli. Someone bought me these at the Zurich airport. I've already checked the Sprungli website and they don't deliver these to EU areas as they are very perishable.

The box I had was fairly big and had an assortment of flavors. They were all delicious and I can still taste them when I look at these pictures. These were mostly traditional flavors like vanilla, champagne, coffee, chocolate and pistachio.

I've been very bad. I was given these just after Easter and I'm only writing about them now. Finishing this post has inspired me to make more macarons!

· macarons, yummy places

Macarons, Whoopie Pies & More

I go to Selfridge’s Food Hall fairly often to drool over everything. On the occasion I actually buy something I usually get a Lola’s cupcake. Recently, the food hall has been changed around (for the better I think). Where the baked goods used to be together in one case it is now 2 separate areas. One area is a Lola’s cupcake bar with a few small tables. It looks very cute.

I didn’t see this until I looked at the picture but it looks like they have special GU cupcake at the moment. I might have to go back and try that one! They've just opened another location in Mayfair too.

The other area is a Pierre Herme counter which is 2/3 macarons and 1/3 fancy chocolates. I made this trip for the macarons. I ran out on my lunch break and was able to make it there and back in 45 minutes. I didn’t plan on going so I didn’t have my camera and I had to take pictures with my blackberry.

This guy was inconveniently blocking the sight of the macaroon case and I didn’t have much time.

There were about 10 different flavors and before I got there I said to myself that I would only get three. It was a hard decision, they all looked so pretty. It was £5.10 for 3 macarons (£1.70 each). They’re not cheap but for a special treat they’re worth it. I went with chocolate and fruity combinations but some of the stranger ones looked really interesting. Strawberry & Wasabi, Vanilla & Olive Oil to name a few.

I would reccomend buying 2. They're very rich and eating 3 was almost too much (almost!).

Milk Chocolate & Passion Fruit: I thought that this was an interesting flavor combination. I love passion fruit.

The chocolate passion fruit was my favorite. The passion fruit flavor in the cookie part was amazing and the macarons taste so light

Pistachio, Griottines & Cinnamon: A griottine is a small cherry. This one aesthetically is my favourite. It has a purple gold dust on top.

The cinnamon is really strong in this one and the griottine was in the middle!

Apricot, Pistachio & Pistachio Praline

I ate this one and forgot to take another picture! The peach flavor was so delicate. I really enjoyed this one

And since I was over there I decided to try one of Selfridge’s Whoopie Pies. They had 3 flavors Chocolate & Vanilla, Banoffee and Carrot. I chose carrot. Out of all the ones I’ve taste tested so far these looked quite plain and not very big compared to the Harrod’s pie that looked incredible and the Hummingbird pie that was very large. The cake part tasted very good. I could taste the spices and it wasn’t too dry or dense. It had a vanilla filling which also tasted very good. It wasn’t too sweet which isn’t a bad thing. I would say that I don’t think the Carrot Cake and Vanilla filling are the best combination. I expected a cream cheese frosting. Regardless, for the price it was good and hit the spot for an afternoon snack. I will go back to try their chocolate and vanilla.

Rating: 6.5/10

Price: £1.99 for a Regular and £1.25 for a mini

· macarons, whoopie pies, yummy places

Rose and Vanilla Macarons

I love macarons. They are all the rage right now but they are also very hard to make and it's fun to find a new challenge and master it. They also taste really good! I've read about what other people are guessing the next big trend will be. I haven't seen anything really exciting just yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's going to be elaborate three layer cakes or something crazy like one dessert stuffed into another dessert (like the brookie, my friend Sophia spotted this).

This is the third time I've made macaroons and I think this is my best result so far. My first attempt came out a little chewy (but not bad) and the second pretty good.

I made my first batch all the way back in 2008. Before they were hip! These were vanilla and lemon

These second ones my sister and I made. They were chocolate peanut butter.

This recipe is from April 2010 Delicious magazine.

I thought rose water would be a good flavor for a delicate macaron

Ingredients

175g Icing sugar

125g ground almonds

3 large egg whites (should measure about 90g)

75g caster sugar

½ tsp rose water

pink gel food coloring

Vanilla Bean Filling

1 cup butter

1 pound icing sugar

1 vanilla pod

1. preheat the oven to 160 C. Whizz the icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor till fine and then sift into a bowl (I don't have a food processor so I skipped that and they came out ok. They'd be smoother with this step).

2. In a seperate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peaks, then gradually whisk in the caster sugar until thick and glossy. Stir in the rose water (or any other flavor you want) add the food coloring.

3. Fold half the almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue and mix well. Add the remaining half, making sure you use a spatula to cut and fold the mixture until it's shiny and thick, ribbon-like consistency as it falls from the spatula. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle.

I wish I had used more color. It faded when it was in the oven a little bit

4. line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. Pipe small rounds of the macaroons about 3cm across, onto the baking sheets. Give the baking sheets a sharp tap on the work surface to ensure a good 'foot'. Leave stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes to form a slight skin. This is important - you should be able to touch them lightly without any mixture sticking too your finger. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

With my batch I got 13 macaroons but they were on the large side

Vanilla Bean Filling

1. With an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium-high until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes.
2. Reduce speed to medium. Add the icing sugar ½ cup at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed; after every two additions, raise speed to high and beat 10 seconds to aerate the frosting, then return to medium. This should take about 5 minutes. Frosting will be pale and fluffy.
3. Cut vanilla pod in half and scrape into bowl, and beat until frosting is smooth.

When the macarons are cooled down spread or pipe the filling between two of them. Invite your friends over for a fancy tea!

· macarons

Archive HOT

Real Food Festival 2011

Prêt-à-Portea at The Berkeley

Vanilla & Honey Macarons

Swiss Macarons - Luxemburgerli's from Sprungli

Macarons, Whoopie Pies & More

Rose and Vanilla Macarons

Lưu trữ Blog