Chocolate Dipped "Strawberry Girl" Macs

This months mactweets challenge: Bake a mac inspired by a favorite summer childhood memory.

When I was younger I loved eating strawberries. They were my most favorite treat.

I loved them so much that quickly I became Strawberry Girl.

All throughout my childhood I collected all things strawberry. Cute outfits with strawberries on them. Little strawberry figurines. And many sweet strawberry tea sets. I think I remember having 10 different ones or something like that and I was so proud of them.

I ate strawberries all the time. Then one day something glorious happened. I was introduced to chocolate dipped strawberries. I had no idea a strawberry could even get any better- but dipped in chocolate! what a treat!

I remember being so excited dipping strawberries with mom. We would buy a Symphony chocolate bar, which I thought was so fancy and dip them and I could eat a bunch.

It was perfect.

So this months macs are appropriately chocolate dipped strawberry flavor. I even found one of my favorite strawberry tea sets to display them on.


They are filled with fresh strawberry Italian meringue buttercream.


And drizzled with delicious Callebaut milk chocolate.


I've been dreaming about macarons for months! These delicate little treats are not easy to come by and expensive when you do (but worth it!) so it is advantageous for macaron lovers to learn the art!

And learning I am! It took me a few trys to get into the mac-making groove. After my little hiatus my first batch of macarons came out looking like this:


bleh. We still ate all of them though :)

The results helped me remember a few things to do differently and the next batch came out like this:


Getting consistently uniform size is so hard for me! I really need to work on my piping! For now, I do my best to at least match both sides of each macaron so the cookie itself is uniform!

Dainty Passion Fruit Macarons

I had so much fun on my first batch of macarons that I decided I would give it another go. This time, joining on the Mactweets challenge: spring fling, where I was encouraged to let my favorite springtime flowers influence me in the kitchen!

Also influencing me in the making/naming of these cookies was the conversation I had with Dashing Boy a couple of nights before these were made...

Sometimes Dashing Boy talks in his sleep. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it is very entertaining and usually he says a bunch of jibberish and stuff that makes no sense at all.

On this particular night Dashing Boy had already been soundly asleep for over an hour, while I had just gotten to bed. Suddenly, I sneezed.

Dashing Boy sweetly leaned over to me and said,

"It's ok. It's more for sauces. It's not really meant for dainty things."

The remainder of the night and many moments the next day were spent laughing and laughing at such randomness.

And so these macarons are appropriately named "dainty." Because if there is anything meant to be dainty, I believe it would be a macaron.


When I think of spring and all of the colorful, fresh flowers that introduce it I think of happiness and the sun. The arrival of spring makes me feel alive.

Passion fruit- both the taste and the color make me feel happy and alive.

I was thrilled that I was able to find both passion fruit concentrate and passion fruit pulp at the Mexican market.

So first I whipped up a batch of milk chocolate passion fruit ganache- yum! Then I did my best to color the macarons the same vibrant color of delicious passion fruit.

I was pretty happy with how these turned out. But they were still lopsided- need to work on my piping technique! My biggest problem of all though was that on both batches I made half of the macaron tops cracked!


Next time I'm going to double up my baking sheets and see if that helps... Luckily macarons still taste good even when they don't look as dainty and cute!

Block of Bliss.

I just purchased an 11lb block of chocolate and have another 11lb block on the way. I am crazy. But boy this big block makes me so happy:

Yum. I did this awhile back when I worked at a bakery and that chocolate faithfully lasted me a whole years worth of yummy truffles, mousses and other treats.

It is very dreamy.
I woke up this morning and couldn't help myself. There is already a batch of ganache cooling in the fridge!

So there you have it. I have yet to truly put my food storage supply together but I do have 22lbs (well 21.5 now:) of very good chocolate in case I need to barter one day.

le French Macarons.

Friday Evening I tried my hand at French macarons. These petite beauties are all the rage right now.

And so after trying one for the first time, reading the ingredients: egg whites, sugar, powdered sugar, and nut flour (I mean, really, how could anything not be delicious with those ingredients! nut flour as a base for anything is always so good), and being completely inspired by other women venturing into this baking art I decided to try it.

So I went to my go-to baking diva Cristie at The Table Runner. I had already studied her latest "mac" blog post, but had just a few questions before I began. I'm so glad I called her because she gave me tips such as:

• Make sure your nut flour is very fine. (I ground my blanched almonds as fine as I could then ground them further once I added the powdered sugar).
• Don't double the batch before you test it out a few times- different ovens vary in how they cook the macs and changes might need to be made in baking time/temperature for your particular oven.
• Macs really do look better with some color and spunk. I was going to omit any coloring but they really do look fun and fancy with some.
• Add a little flavor to the cookie in the middle of beating the eggs (this goes for color as well) I added 1 teaspoon almond extract.
• Pipe the macs on parchment paper with a pattern underneath- this was extremely helpful as my macs would have been a wide assortment of overconfident sizes without the pattern (pull the pattern out before baking).
• Add sprinkles or sanding sugar before baking.
• The macs are done when they pull off easily from the parchment. If they are sticking at all they are not done yet.
• Pipe instead of spread ganache and fillings as macs are pretty delicate.

I used this recipe on Passionate About Baking.

Cristie has even more tips on her blog post. She is in a group called Mac Tweets- a group of dedicated French macaron bakers. They have challenges and stuff and I kind of want to join!

Also very helpful was Bonnie's macaron post on City Home/ Country Home. She has some wonderful pictures of the process.

All in all I'm very happy with the end result of my macs. They were a bit lopsided but they did have some "feet" (the ruffle on the bottom) which made me happy. I filled mine with a milk chocolate ganache.

Dashing Boy ate a bazillion of them and said they were the best. In fact, he almost made himself sick he ate them so fast. I'll definitely be making these again!

Craving My Husband.

This last week I was all by my lonesome as Dashing Boy was out of town for business.

I cried like a baby when he left. cried and cried. Pregnancy-related?... I don't know, but I hated having him away. I love him so.

Before he left, even before he knew he was going, we laid in bed talking one night. "I want I Hos," I said to him (one of our favorite restaurants in Montana). "I want I Hos so bad," I said. We fell asleep as we joked about traveling there just for some Korean food.

Perhaps it was a pregnancy craving? I don't know... are those really real? Dashing Boy has been dutifully waiting for such cravings to occur. I have seen him laugh his head off at the watermelon and chop suey scene in Lady and the Tramp.

Needless to say when Dashing Boy headed in that direction this last week I did mention our favorite little eatery.

How on earth that food would travel I had no idea. But even if he could go eat there while he was there-- well one of us would be enjoying such yumminess.

Dashing Boy came home with I Hos in his suitcase. Which was very bold and brave because it isn't exactly a pancake or something. I Hos has the potential to saturate into every crease and cranny inside checked baggage.

I asked Dashing Boy why he didn't carry it on. He said, "That stuff smelled so bad."


He had gotten it all prepared in his suitcase- extra measures by putting it in a rubbermaid container and bagging it up. Then he said he stuck his entire suitcase in the refrigerator so in the early morning he wouldn't forget to bring it.

This man makes me smile every day. He is such a dream.

Also brought home: chocolate. oh dreamy dreamy chocolate.

I tell you what, it was like Christmas morning.


with most of all Dashing Boy's return to home as the most wonderful thing to wake up to.

Tonight will be spent

eating chocolate.

Happy Valentines Day!

oohhh...

la...

la!

Good Food Moment: Belgian Chocolate

If there is one thing I have a huge weakness for it is fine chocolate.
So huge in fact, that it is often enough to tempt me to break (or reevaluate :) the budget in order to get my hands on some.

Note: when one discovers really exceptional chocolate one piece is simply not enough to seize the moment.

Luckily, I married a boy who shares this same weakness. I'm a lucky girl! Hands down, chocolate is easily the biggest and most frequent thing we "splurge" on.

You see, chocolate is good for our relationship. Seriously, it connects us. We have so much fun together discovering new shops, sharing our passion and critique on different varieties, savoring each piece and making an evening out of it. Truly, chocolate has been there for some of our greatest moments and memories.

So, when I discovered this chocolate shop directly outside my hotel in Boise I was extremely excited. Yes, indeed it was definitely a good food moment from the moment I entered the store and saw the beautiful spread of deliciously divine chocolate. Artfully designed and exceptionally tasty- this chocolate is an experience.

I gleefully treated myself to a piece everyday I was in Boise and couldn't help myself from returning home with a nice-sized box to share with Dashing Boy! Really, this chocolate is amazing. Definitely stop by if you are ever in Boise.