Tag diy

50 Countries in 50 Weeks

Anxiety Kitchen Leave a comment

I’ve spent the last few weeks since my birthday trying to decide what my next cooking project would be. After consulting with my wife and trying to get her coworkers input (lets be honest, they’ll be eating most of it) we formed a plan. I’m using the royal “we” as it was really all my brilliant wife and I just took the idea and ran with it.

Pick 50 countries, and make a dessert from each of those countries. I did tweak it a bit, since I decided to diverge into non-dessert items for some countries. Nonetheless, the list has been made, the strips of paper cut out and now all I need to do is draw the first randomly selected assignment.

Since I have a clearcut path and a deadline, I think this will definitely force me to keep a schedule. Lord fucking knows I need one. These are crazy times we’re living and even crazier since I quit my job and started house-wifing it full time. I stay busy, but I also want to focus on my personal projects, no matter how down I find myself getting.

Is it just me or has literally everyone decided to start a cooking channel on youtube during this fucking pandemic? Fuck it. As it currently stands, I have a whopping 44 subscribers. I know, I know..going to start getting recognized in public soon. Alas, earwax.

Onwards and upwards, my friends. We started this for fun and we’re going to keep fucking going; learning and creating new and exciting things along the way ❤

See you next Tuesday

M

French Fucking Macarons

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Learn from my mistakes please.. This was a trial by fire but we made it out alive. Just do yourself a favor and buy almond flour…

Ingredients

Macarons

  • 100 grams egg whites
  • 50 grams granulated sugar
  • 200 grams powdered sugar
  • 110 grams almond flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • pinch of salt

Buttercream

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • optional: 2 teaspoons of homemade raspberry jam (or literally whatever flavoring you want)

Step 1: Assemble all of your essentials. Silpat or Silicone baking mat..or two. and get your scale ready and set for grams. You could theoretically make this with american measurements, but I’m personally going with the “if it ain’t broke” method and weighing everything out..when in Rome and all that

Beat your egg whites until foamy. Gradually add in your granulated sugar, cream of tartar, and pinch of salt and then beat until glossy, fluffy, and holding soft peaks. At this point, I added the coloring as well.

Sift together powdered sugar and almond flour

Gradually fold into your egg whites..as few strokes as possible to avoid deflating your mixture

Now this is where is got a little dicey for me..you want to incorporate it in as few strokes as possible but you also want it to be mixed well enough that it will flatten down into itself…so…just play with it and hope for the best

Put your mixture into a piping bag with a regular round piping tip..or if you’re fancy..a large ziploc with the end snipped off 🙂

I recommend keeping your sploops of batter fairly small…1 1/2 inch diameter-ish. The smaller ones definitely seemed to work a lot better.

After you’ve piped out all of your batter, put your baking sheets in a semi warm, non drafty area to sit for an hour. Your macarons need to dry and form a skin. You’ll know they’re good to go if you can lightly touch them and not have your finger stick.

Preheat your oven to 285F

Bake for 10 min. They should be set but not browned.

Once they’re done, put them on a cooking rack to cool completely. Don’t try to peel them off immediately..you’ll regret it. Once they are COMPLETELY cooled, gently..GENTLY pry them off your baking mat. About half of mine got jacked up because I made them way too big. But you know what? They still tasted the same.

Make your buttercream by creaming together your butter and powdered sugar. Add in your flavoring (jam in my case) and voila!

Pipe your buttercream on your macarons and make lil sandwiches. Easiest part of the whole process!

Don’t come for my sizing hahaha Do as I say..not as I do.
As you can see, the little ones did the best. The little ridged part at the bottom is what you want to see. Letting them sit and dry is essential to form the “foot”

Victoria Sandwich

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I’ll preface this recipe with the apology that I do not have a recipe for the jam. While mine turned out excellent it was also trial and error and of course, I did not write it down.

Preheat oven to 350F

Ingredients Needed:

Cake

  • 2 1/4 cup butter – softened
  • 1 1/2 cup sugar
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 1/4 cup flour
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 6 tablespoons milk

Buttercream

  • 1/2 cup butter – softened
  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla

Store-bought or homemade raspberry jam

Start by creaming together the butter and sugar and gradually add your eggs. This is a pretty no-frills recipe so no need to separate everything out. Just add your flour, baking powder, vanilla, and milk next and mix until everything is fully incorporated.

Make sure you grease 2 – 8 inch round cake pans thoroughly and cut out a circle of parchment paper for the bottom of the pan

Evenly split the batter between the 2 pans and bake for 25 minutes, but depending on your oven, it may take up to 30. (Make sure that a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean or at least mostly clean with few crumbs.)

Let your cakes cool in the pan for about 10 minutes and then run a butter knife around the edges before turning them out of the pan. They should come out nice and clean, as long as you weren’t stingy on the greasing step 🙂

For the buttercream, simply mix your softened butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth. This recipe doesn’t make a lot, nor is this a super sweet buttercream. Its honestly perfect for this cake because you don’t want to overload it with diabeetus inducing sweetness.

When you’re ready to assemble your cake, choose the smoothest looking one for the top layer. This doesn’t matter a whole lot since you’re going to hide your sins with a dusting of powdered sugar, but humor me.

For the bottom layer, if you wish to, you may take a serrated knife and level off the top before adding your buttercream and jam. *also, then you get yummy little cake scraps that no one needs to know about but you*

When I assembled mine, I had planned to pipe on the buttercream so I put the jam on first and it was a bit of a mess. So, learn from my mistakes: put the buttercream down first. Then spread your jam on top of that and place your top layer of cake on top of all that delicious filling.

If you wish to do so, like I did 😉 you may put a stencil on top of your cake before sifting the powdered sugar over it. Totally optional, but also a total missed opportunity if you don’t 🙂

This is a super simple and easy to make cake and SUPER yummy. I mean, with so much damn butter, it better be!

I made this cake for my favorite (now former) co-worker. Thanks for believing in me and always eating my creations – no matter how lackluster they may turn out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWTY1hTpW-E