Raspberry and Chocolate Zumbarons, Adriano Zumbo's macarons

 

Previously I had posted on my initial successful attempt at the salted caramel macarons: 

http://bakewithdin.blogspot.com/2013/12/zumbarons-adriano-zumbo-macarons-salted.html

Here I'll go through step-by-step on how I used Adriano Zumbo's DIY kit to make macarons. 

This is the box to look out for in the supermarkets. 

You'll find these items in the box. Very simple, just a meringue mix, the almond flour mix and the chocolate for the filling. There are 2 piping bags, one for the shell and one for the filling. And the little white doughnut is a stencil to draw little circles on the baking parchment. 

It's really simple to make. Just follow the instructions on the box. 

First off, empty the meringue mix into a mixing bowl. 

I used two boxes, so you're looking at double portions. 

For one portion, add 62ml of water. 

Then start mixing.

You can already smell the tart scent of raspberries at this juncture: 

Slowly, it is coming together, the colour gets lighter and the texture is stiffer. 

Looks almost ready! But don't give up now..... 

Not yet......... 

And then, suddenly, it all stiffens, and it's ready now. The colour is a lovely Bandung pink. And it has formed stiff peaks. 

See how it holds the peak and doesn't fall over easily? One measure to test the stiffness is actually to hold it over your head and if your hair isn't a messy gloop, it's stiff enough. Lol. I think just observing stiff peaks worked for me. 

It's time for the almond flour. 

That is one portion, 

That is the second portion in. Now, to start folding. You wanna fold gently and not knock out too much air out from the meringue. 

It will be a little sticky and goopy, but stand your ground and fold, fold, fold. 

You're supposed to fold it til you get the consistency of molten lava. Having lived in a mostly volcano-free environment, I can only guess what molten lava flows like...... The instructions also say to stick the mixer back in and give it a few whirs. 

Is this the consistency? Let's check.... 

 Yup, slowly flowy.... I think that is about right. 

Now, to start piping. Once they have been piped, two important steps. Knock the tray against the table to ease out the peaks and then leave them to dry out so a "skin" forms and the color of the shells is no longer glossy but matte and dry to the touch. Then they are ready for baking at this stage. 

I don't have a photo of the raspberry ones waiting to form the "skin", so here are the caramel ones having been piped out and the "skin" has formed and you can see the shells are not too glossy looking. 

Here they are, fresh out of the oven and we are back with the raspberry shells. I used two different trays, and I think they give very different effect, maybe due to the heat conduction. 

Time to make the filling.... It's a simple chocolate ganache, meant to be put in to the microwave to be melted, but I used the Bain-Marie method, which is to place it over a boiling pot, and I whisked whipped cream into one portion, and the other portion, I mixed in some left over caramel sauce. Here, the caramel chocolate ganache is ready to go into the piping bag. 

So, flip the shells over, pair them up (if u had piped them well, they should all fit / pair nicely with each other) pipe the filling onto the shells, sandwich them and it's noms time! 

What time is it? It's macaron time! 

Mmmm... Oh yeah! 

🍬 24 January 2014 

Salted Caramel Zumbarons, Adriano Zumbo's macarons

Adriano Zumbo's macarons, otherwise known as "Zumbarons" and they have nothing to do 

with the Zumba dance. 

He has interesting flavours of macarons sold at his outlets and for the DIY enthusiasts, he has boxes of 

macaron kits you can DIY at home. 

There are 3 flavours available in Coles or Woolworths (Australia), and they are Salted Caramel,

Raspberry with Chocolate filling, and Passionfruit. 

I've tried the Salted Caramel one with much success and was a little reluctant to try the Raspberry one, 

But after having tried it, my only regret was not having tried it earlier. 

Here are the first batch of Salted Caramels: 

That's the DIY box you can buy off the shelf.

 

Here they were, all piped out and waiting for the skin to form. 

The kit even comes with a piping bag! 

The kit comes with a stencil that you can use to draw circles for a more uniform size when piping.

Otherwise you could print out the stencil from his website. 

It's pretty much fail-safe, the legs formed without much effort on my part. I wonder what was in the mix?

Well, ok, there is still a chance of failure, as you can see here. The baking temperature was stated as 

160 deg C or 140 deg C if fan-forced oven. And of course, I used 160 deg C fan forced. 

This was just the first batch, and it looked terrible but it tasted yummy nonetheless. 

Baking at Shou Min's

So, Shou Min had gotten a spanking new kitchen oven for Christmas. And he asked me over to bake. We set a date, and I went over on 28 Dec '13. I had a solemnisation to attend and the dinner was in the evening. In between, we managed to squeeze out some time to create some yummy goodness with his oven. 

That's the first batch of chocolate chip cookies getting ready to go in. They smell like milo. 

And there they are in the oven..... Looking mouthwateringly gorgeous. They smell like warm milo. Haha.

We had also baked Quiche and here is the chicken ham one. There was also a bacon and honey-baked ham one. Since the crust was baked-blind prior to adding the filling, the pastry crust turned out crisp and the filling was still moist and eggy. I forgot to add the onion so it was on the salty side. But it was still yummy overall. Looks like even chicken ham works. I wonder how the bacon and ham one turned out, cos I had crisp fried the bacon first.