The mecca of Sweet: Adriano Zumbo's

Finally I went to Adriano's! It's my Mecca of sweet, delish goodness!! 

I felt like Charlie, walking into Willy Wonka's factory and most definitely, I would end up as Veruca Salt, the brat who wanted everything!! 

These were the Zumbarons that were available at that moment! They had toasted marshmallows, caramelised white chocolate, which were my favourites, and banana, mojito (which tasted of fresh mint leaves), Francesco Brownie (his father's name), fingerbun (which was coated in desiccated coconut), caramel au beurre sale, and hazelnut praline. They had other flavours which were not ready at that moment, which were red velvet, berry brûlée, SBC on Toast (salted butter caramel), popcorn, and a couple of others which I cannot remember! 

In the end, we chose just a few items, which included some macarons, a Cronut (which was what I was there for) a croissant and a I-forget-what-it's-called some Calamansi thingy. 

Here it is. The Calamansi thingy. 

Black Forest Cronut, it was actually very good! Having tried the mediocre one in Singapore, this one exceeded expectations. The lack of a queue made me think it wasn't that good. Perhaps it was the wrong criteria to judge it by!! 

The pastry was crisp and slightly crunchy, as if when you spread butter on croissant and toasted it, and the cherry was tart/citrusy enough to balance out the sweet, light cream, and the frosting was a little chewy/sticky to balance out the many flavours bursting in that one mouthful. Mmmm:) 

The Zumbarons- Zumbo's macarons. 

The brown one on top, Francesco Brownie, and the bottom row, from left to right, toasted marshmallow, mojito, caramelised white chocolate, and fingerbun. 

The Francesco one was chocolatey, taste n texture a lot like a fudgy brownie, but it didn't hit the spot. Maybe because I like my chocolate, chocolatey. The toasted marshmallow was a really interesting flavour, I cannot tell what went into the filling, but it was sweet gooey goodness, just like a toasted marshmallow would be. The mojito was a mint flavour one, but it was not the regular spearmint or eucalyptus mint, it tasted like mint leaves, as was described "like the mint leaves in the Vietnamese Pho". It was a refreshing taste (excuse the pun) and it wasn't too heavy on the palate. I could go for 2 at a time. The caramelised white chocolate was a really interesting twist on regular run of the mill caramel. There was the added dimension of milky chocolately goodness. But, just a hint of it. There wasn't the heaviness of regular gooey caramel macarons. I might just have been converted from a caramel lover to this caramelised white chocolate. Hah. 

🍭 23 March 2014

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.