macarons

Ingredients (about 70 plain macaron shells):

• 160g ground almond 
• 160g icing sugar
• 140g egg white
• 130g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 drops or so of liquid food colouring, unless you are using powder, don't go excessive on it, or it will ruin the consistency (use paste if possible)

1. Sift and weigh ground almond and icing sugar and mix with a spoon until everything has been mixed 
2. Whisk egg white with an electric whisk until soft peaks and add 1 tbsp caster sugar at a time whilst continuing the whisking until all the the sugar has been added and dissolved. Continue whisking for a few more minutes until the meringue is stiff and glossy
3. Pour almond/icing sugar mixture, vanilla extract and colouring into the meringue (if you are any particular flavouring, now would be the time to add it)
4. Start by gently folding in the dry ingredients into the meringue until combined, then the mixing can be speeded up slightly to get even distribution of the colour, but slower mixing the better to prevent removing any trapped air in the egg white
5. Keep mixing/folding until mixture JUST falls off spoon and mixture from the side of the bowl runs back to the centre slowly 
6. Pipe it onto a baking parchment on a baking tray, I do the size of a 2 pound coin, make sure they have good volume as they will flatten when tapped and they only rise a little, always do an odd number, you'll see why in a bit
7. Tap baking tray on the table to remove trapped air and flatten the mixture, if you still have small peaks after tapping, that means you haven't mixed the batter enough
8. Leave the piped mixture at room temperature in a dry(ish) room until soft shells have formed on the macaroons 

For chocolate macaron shells, reduce ground almond by 6g and replace with 6g of sifted coco powder.

How do you know whether you macarons have formed a good enough shell? Use the tip of a dry finger and poke a macaron shell. It should not stick at all, and also, you should see cracks form around the area where you poked it. This is the shell you've just sacrificed for testing, that's why I told you to pipe odd numbers. 

1. Bake for 150 degrees C for 15-20 minutes (I'm afraid this is very oven dependent, best way to test it is to see if the top shell has become crisp
2. Take it out of the oven and see if you can lift the macaron off the parchment paper without it sticking, you have to be quite gentle with this. If it sticks, put it back in the oven for another  two minutes

For filling

I used chocolate ganache, so this really is a very generic recipe, for chocolate ganache, you can read my other blog posts. Similarly, buttercream also works really well. 

This recipe is practically foolproof (I hope), great texture and a lovely shine on the surface. Again, HAPPY BAKING!

Helpful tips

• If you have not mixed the meringue with almond enough, then your mixture will be quite stiff and looks like it is full of big lumps
• If you have over mixed the meringue with almond, then your mixture will be VERY runny, unfortunately at this stage, you can only put it in the oven and hope for the best, but don't get your hopes up
• Always add colouring and flavouring last to avoid changing the consistency of your mixture
• Absolutely make sure the shell has formed on the macarons, or it WILL crack when you bake them

Fraisier

The fraisier cake, it's a beautiful cake, sometimes I think they look better than they actually taste, call it personal preference. It's not actually very difficult to make as long as you follow the instructions perfectly. 

Ingredients (genoise sponge):

• 4 large eggs
• 125g self raising flour
• 125g caster sugar
• 50g unsalted butter

1. To make the sponge, pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Grease and line 9 inch baking tin with baking parchment
3. Weigh out the butter and warm it in the microwave until melted, set it aside and let it cool down for 20-30 minutes 
4. Sift and weigh flour and set aside, we'll come back to this
5. Heat water in s saucepan until it starts to simmer and keep it on a low heat
6. Put the eggs and sugar together in a large bowl and gently whisk to break eggs and incorporate the sugar
7. Put the bowl containing egg/sugar mixture over simmering water and beat with hand held electric whisk continuously at high speed until the mixture has at least tripled in volume and leaves a trail of ribbon. This can take about 10-15 minutes of continuous whisking, so, be patient (if you have a stand up whisk, put it on high speed and let it whisk away until again, you see a trail of ribbon)
8. Add in the butter to the egg mixture from the side of the mixing bowl and whisk for 1 minute at medium speed
9. Add a third of the flour into the egg mixture and fold it in
10. Add the rest of the flour and fold in the rest very gently 
11. As soon as everything has been mixed, immediately pour cake mix into baking tin. 
12. Bake for 35-38 minutes and start preparing the fillings 
13. The surface should turn golden brown and sides start to shrink away from baking parchment
14. Cool in tin for 5 minutes and then take it out and cool on a wired rack 
15. When cooled, slice the cake horizontally into 2 thin sponges 
16. Line the tin with baking parchment and put one sponge back in the tin

Ingredients (strawberry jam) 

• 40g caster sugar
• 200g strawberries
• 2 leaves of gelatine

1. Wash and chop strawberries into thin slices
2. Soak gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes
3. Heat strawberries with sugar until it simmers and the mixture begins to go watery
4. Cut up the gelatine into small pieces and add to the strawberries and mix well
5. Heat for further 3 minutes
6. Leave it to cool down

Ingredients (mousseline)

• 175g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs and 2 large egg yolks
• 120g cornflour
• 600ml milk
• 1 and a half tbsp vanilla extract
• 80g unsalted butter

1. Beat sugar and eggs together until it is a pale yellow colour 
2. Mix in cornflour into the eggs until it resembles a lose paste consistency
3. Heat milk until it simmers and pour a little bit at a time into eggs and continue whisking the whole time
4. Pour eggs/milk back in saucepan and put it on medium heat and whisk the whole time until it has thickened
5. Add the butter in small chunks and incorporate into the custard
6. Add the vanilla and fold it in 
7. Set aside to cool

Ingredients (chocolate ganache)

• 70ml double cream
• 40g plain chocolate
• 30g muscovado sugar (if not, any sugar)

1. Heat cream and sugar together until simmer, set aside to cool for 2-3 minutes
2. Pour hot cream onto chocolate and melt it, whisk with spoon until chocolate has completely melted

Assembling

1. Put one half of sponge at bottom of tin
2. Spread strawberry jam over the sponge
3. Cut strawberries in half and line them on the side of the sponge (inside of strawberries facing out)
4. Pipe half of mousseline over the bottom sponge and place a layer of strawberries on it
5. Pour cooled chocolate ganache over the strawberries
6. Place remaining mousseline over the strawberry/chocolate layer, pipe mousseline over the strawberries on the side too
7. Place 2nd sponge layer on, use your palm and push down gently to push the mousseline to cover the gaps between strawberries
8. Spread remaining jam on the 2nd sponge
9. Place a thin rolled up marzipan on top
10. Decorate with strawberries and chocolate

Helpful tips

• Weigh out all genoise ingredients before you put egg/sugar mixture over simmering water, as you cannot stop whisking to weigh the other ingredients halfway through. And if you do that at the end after the eggs have built up the volume, then it can de-flate before you got the flour weighed out
• Warm the butter first thing, you want it to be completely cool before adding it to the cake batter
• Useful to have marzipan at room temperature when rolling it, or it will be quite hard
• Some people add the cornflour directly into the milk, don't do that, it's much harder to get rid of the lumps in the flour in such a large volume of liquid, do the mixing with the egg
• Once eggs have been added to hot milk, you MUST stir continuously and rather vigorously! 
• Useful to have a ruler to hand to measure how big your cake is so you can cut out your marzipan accurately (I didn't, hence my marzipan was much bigger than my cake)

Layered tropical fruit chiffon cake

What is the point of a chiffon cake when you can have a much richer buttery sponge which is full of flavour? Well, the chiffon cake on its own doesn't contain much flavour that's right, BUT, it is excellent a brining out other flavours. Any flavour from the fillings, whether it is cream, mousse or fruits, they won't have the flavours from the sponge to compete with. Also, because the fat ingredient is oil instead of butter, it remains moist in the fridge for 2-3 days and can be kept frozen much better than the traditional victorian sponge.

This particular cake consists of 2 separate sponges of different size. If you count each sponge is sliced into two for fillings in between, then it has 4 layers. But it looks like it has two, but call it what you want, 2 layers, 4 layers, what difference does it make?!

Ingredients for the sponge (enough for two sponges in 20cm tins. It may be easier to make one 20cm and the other slightly smaller, but if you have two tins of the same size, trim down one to make it smaller)

• 225g self raising flour
• 300g caster sugar
• yolks from 6 large eggs
• whites from 7 large eggs
• 2 lemons
• 120ml vegetable oil
• 1tbsp baking powder
• pinch of salt

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C and grease 2x20cm (or 1x23cm and 1x18cm) baking tins, do NOT line with parchment paper
2. Sift self raising flour and 250g caster sugar together into a large bowl (This bowl will have to be very big, as you will be folding the egg whites in later)
3. Mix with baking powder, salt and finely grated lemon rind from 2 lemons until all the dry ingredients have been equally distributed
4. Add in vegetable oil, juice from 2 lemons and egg yolks and beat until well combined
5. Beat egg whites in a separate bowl, make sure the bowl is free from any grease, or it will reduce the volume that the egg whites can form. Beat until soft peaks and then add in the remaining 50g caster sugar, 1tbsp at a time until the egg whites have formed STIFF peaks
6. Add 1/3 of egg whites to cake mixture and gently fold it in, then add another 1/3 and fold and then the remaining 1/3 and fold. Make sure the egg whites and the cake mixture is well combined and there are no large areas of egg white on its own
7. Divide cake mix into the 2 baking tins and bake for 55-65 minutes
8. Test whether cake is cooked through with skewer, it should come out completely clean
9. Cool by turning the tin upside down for 1 hour
10. Slice each sponge into 2 layers so you can put filling in-between

Ingredients (mousseline filling)

• 300ml double cream
• 50g unsalted butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbsps corn flour 
• 250g melon chunks
• about a bowl of mango and pineapple chunks

1. Blend your melon chunks and put on low heat until it simmers
2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well mixed, smooth and silky
3. Beat in corn flour into the egg/sugar mixture until smooth
4. Pour 1 tbsp of simmering melon puree into the egg whilst beating the mixture continuously to prevent the eggs from cooking and forming lumps. Add another tbsp of melon puree and repeat the procedure two more times 
5. Pour all the egg/caster sugar/corn flour mixture into the melon puree and mix continuously until the mixture boils and keep stirring for 4-5 more minutes after that, the mixture should thicken considerably at this stage, it should be thick enough for you to pipe, or it will run off the cake!
6. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature
7. Spread just over half of the mousseline filling onto the bottom sponge
8. Chop mango and pineapple chunks into small cubes and layer half of it onto the mousseline filling
9. Whisk double cream until it forms stiff peaks using an electric whisk
10. Spread double cream ontop of the fruit and put on the second layer
11. Put 2 tbsp of mousseline filling ontop of the second layer and lay the 1st of the 2 smaller layers on it
12. Repeat the same filling step for the smaller sponge and put on the final layer
13. To decorate, I used leftover mousseline and whisked double cream and decorated with mango and pineapple chunks, but I'm sure you can be more creative than me, so decorate away!

Just cupcakes?

Everyone would have had a cupcake sometime during their life and in most cases, the cupcake really is about the icing and decorations you put on it. I am no decoration expert, in fact, if anything, the exact opposite of an expert (as you can see from my piping above). This is in fact, a piping disaster, as Paul Hollywood would probably say, calling this a disaster would be a humiliation to disaster. But I swear to god, the taste of this is divine, promise!

Ingredients (for 12 cupcakes):

1. 100g unsalted butter at room temperature
2. 150g self raising flour
3. 130g caster sugar
4. 3 tbsps milk
5. 2 large eggs
6. Finely grated lemon rind from one and a half lemon

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C, or 160 fan
• Combine sugar with butter briefly, so the butter is equally incorporated later on
• Sift flour and add the milk and lemon rind to the mixture and again briefly combine the ingredients
• Add one egg and mix briefly and then add the other one until mixture becomes smooth. Take care not to over mix
• Add equal amount of mixture into 12 paper cases and into the muffin tin and bake for 25-30 minutes. The surface of the cupcakes should turn golden brown 
• Take the cupcakes out of the oven and out of the baking tin and leave to cool for at least 2 hours to make sure it is completely cooled
• In the meanwhile, prepare the icing

For the icing, it is really up to you what to add. In this case, I made lemon buttercream, rose cream and chocolate cheese cream (or chocolate cheesecake if you prepare this nomenclature). 

Rose cream

1. Whisk 50ml double cream until firm peaks have formed
2. Add 20g icing sugar, just enough colouring for your desired colour (I used red as it fits rose flavour right) and 1 tsp rose water
3. Fold in the icing sugar, rose water and colour until well mixed

Lemon butter cream

1. 50g unsalted butter
2. 50g icing sugar
3. finely grated lemond curd from half a lemon and 2 tsp of lemon juice

Chocolate cheese cream

1. Melt 50g plain chocolate over simmering water and cool to room temperature
2. Mix with 100g cream cheese and 50g icing sugar until combined

Cappuccino cake

This is a classic sponge cake, amongst one of the easiest but also delicious cakes to make. I normally make and eat this when I need to stay up, but don't really fancy coffee. This cake is marvellously buttery and rich in flavour, goes very well with a cup of tea as per always. 

Ingredients:

• 175g self raising flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 250g golden caster sugar (sometimes I play around with the sugar a bit, 200g caster + 50g icing sugar also works very nicely)
• 4 medium eggs
• 1 heaped tsp baking powder
• 50g coco powder
• 50ml milk (full fat or semi-skimmed)
• hot water 
• 1 tsp of coffee granule
• 250ml double cream

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Line the bottom of 2x23cm (9 inch) baking trays with baking parchment and grease the side of the tins
3. Weigh and dissolve coco powder with enough boiling water to make a smooth, thin and runny paste (no more than 8 tbsps)
4. Let coco paste cool down (this should be fairly quick, no more than 20 minutes)
5. Add sugar, butter, self raising flour, baking powder to coco paste and mix gently
6. Add 1/3 of milk at a time to the dry ingredients and mix continuously
7. Add 1 egg at a time to the mixture and mix very gently until just combined, repeat until all the eggs have been added, careful not to over mix. The mixture should be smooth and just run off the spoon
8. Divide the cake mixture equally into the two baking trays and bake for about 30-35 minutes
9. Test whether cake is baked with a thin skewer/sharp knife, the blade should come out completely clean
10. Let cake cool down slightly for 10 minutes in the tin and remove baking parchment from the cakes and let it cool down completely before spreading the filling (I leave it to cool down for at least 90 minutes to 2 hours to make sure it's completely cold)
11. To make the filling, whisk double cream until stiff peaks (Make your life easier here by using an electric whisk, unless you want to train your arm muscles, which defies the whole point of eating cakes and enjoy yourself altogether)
12. Use enough hot water to dissolve coffee granules completely (1-2 tsp) and let it cool down for 5-10 minutes
13. Add coffee to whisked cream and fold it in completely, if you find the taste too strong at this stage, you can add 1-2 tsps of icing sugar and fold it in with the coffee into the cream
14. Use half of the cream for the filling and the other half on the top
15. Dust the surface with coco powder, I like to have a bit of chocolate on top, so I chopped up a little bit of plain chocolate and sprinkled them on the cake to decorate. Similarly, marshmallows also work well

This cake should be very easy to make, but you also risk having so much coffee and coco powder during the baking procedure and keep yourself up all night if you are doing it in the evening. Tip, taste coffee cream as little as possible if you intend to go to bed soon after finishing the cake! 

Chocolate lemon tart

Lemon and chocolate is not the first combination that you think of. It's normally chocolate and orange, chocolate and raspberries or strawberries. But, dark chocolate does neutralise the overpowering tanginess from the lemon in my opinion. This is a very straightforward recipe, so I hope you will have fun making this. 

Ingredients 

(pastry)

• 175g plain flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 30g icing sugar
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tbsp cold water (optional)

Lemon filling

• 3 lemons
• 100ml double cream
• 4 large eggs
• 160g caster sugar
• 10g dark chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate

Chocolate filling and truffles

• 150g dark chocolate
• 130ml double cream
• 40g caster sugar or muscovado sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C
2. Mix butter, icing sugar and flour together until the mixture reaches breadcrumb consistency, do it by hand or mixer, easier by mixer, but I don't have one, it's also easily done with your hand. Just use the tips of your fingers to rub the ingredients together 
3. Add in egg yolk and mix again, knead the dough until it is smooth, but do not over knead (use as little water as possible to get the smooth consistency)
4. Roll out pastry between two cling films or on a lightly floured surface to prevent sticking to table and rolling pin, try to get the pastry thin. I prefer the floured surface method
5. Put pastry into tart tin, this is a very nice pastry to work with, if you get a hole in the pastry, simply rip off some pastry from the edge and fill up the hole
6. Use a fork to make some holes on the bottom of the pastry to prevent it from rising
7. (Optional: chill the pastry in the fridge for 20-30 minutes)
8. Cover the pastry with baking parchment and fill inside with baking beans, try to get some baking beans on the side and cover the middle entirely, this will prevent the pastry from collapsing from the side and rising from the bottom. Also, the baking beans will distribute the heat evenly across the bottom of pastry
9. Blind bake for 15 minutes
10. Take out pastry and trim off the edges with a sharp knife, put it back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes, or until the bottom of pastry is firm and dry
11. Remove baking beans
12. Bake for another 10-15 minutes at 200 degrees C, the inside of the tart should start to turn golden 
13. Take tart out of oven to cool down to room temperature
14. Meanwhile, prepare lemon filling and switch oven down to 180 degrees C
15. Mix finely grated lemon rind and juice from 3 whole lemons, eggs, caster sugar and cream together until it forms a smooth mixture. Now sprinkle in the chocolate chips and mix it with filling (Alternatively you can try and see if you can decorate some pattern of chocolate, problem is it will melt and lose some of it shape
16. Fill up the cooled down pastry and bake at 180 degrees C for 30-35 minutes
17. Take it out of the oven and cool down to room temperature
18. Once the lemon filling has cooled down, prepare chocolate filling, the is essentially a chocolate ganache, heat double cream with caster sugar until boiling and remove from heat for 2 minutes to cool down
19. Pour hot cream into dark chocolate and mix with spoon until it is all melted and shiny
20. Pour half of it over the lemon filling and leave the rest at room temperature to cool down, then put it with a cling film over the top into the fridge overnight
21. Use a metal tsp to scoop out chocolate ganache and roll into a ball and dust with coco powder and decorate the top of the tart
22. Dust top with a bit of lemon rind and icing sugar

Finished! It takes a bit of time, but it is VERY easy to make!

TAKE CARE WITH THE FOLLOWING:

• Make sure the bottom of pastry is dry before you take away the baking beans, or it will rise once you take them away 
• Once you have baked the filling for 25 minutes, start to observe the filling as if it over bakes, the filling will start to shrink away from the pastry on the side
• Orange does go very well with chocolate as many of you would know, so, if you do use orange, use orange juice from 1 orange only, but use the orange zest from 2 whole oranges instead, if you use more orange juice than this, the filling will get very very wet, use the zest to bring out the flavour

Montblanc financier

Montblanc or Mont-blauc aux marrons was originally a desert made in Italy and has gained its popularity throughout Italy, France and even as far as Japan. It is typically made with a meringue base and served with puréed chestnut topped with cream, giving it a snowy mountain top appearance, very much resembles Monte-Bianco, where it got its name from. Today, many cakes use chestnut puree and are no longer restricted to the use of a meringue base.

The montblancs in this recipe uses the financier base, a light french sponge that contains grounded almond and brown butter. The brown butter gives the sponge a caramelised fragrance and the almond just gives the montblanc an extra nuttiness I think.

I will divide the recipe into 3 main parts, the chocolate ganache, the financier base, and finally, the cream and chestnut topping. The ingredients in this recipe should be enough for 12 montblancs. Please made the cake in the following order, as it will make your life a lot simpler.

Financier base (makes 12):

• 220g butter
• 6 egg whites
• 60g plain flour
• 110g ground almond
• 140g caster sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C
2. Melt and heat butter over medium heat and contain heating until butter turns slightly golden to brown colour
3. Remove butter from heat and sift off lumpy bits and leave it in a bowl to cool down to room temperature
4. Mix the dry ingredients together
5. Whisk to break up the egg white, no need to form any peaks
6. Mix in egg white and butter to dry ingredients and mix until smooth
7. Add equal amount of mixture to each case of a 12 well muffin tins
8. Bake for 25-30 minutes (the edge should start to turn golden brown and middle remain a lighter colour than edges)
9. Take it out of oven to cool down in the tin. Due to the high butter content in the financier, it doesn't require greasing

 Creme aux marrons (chestnut cream)

• 200ml double cream
• 180g cooked and peeled chestnut 
• 25g caster sugar 

1. Put all the ingredients together and put it on medium heat, stir occasionally
2. Once chestnut has softened, roughly break up the chestnut with a wooden spoon
3. Puree the chestnut and sift out the lumps
4. Leave it to cool to room temperature

To assemble  

1. Whisk double cream until stiff peaks
2. Pipe a dome of cream on the financiers
3. Pipe chestnut cream in a swirling pattern on the cream dome
4. Lightly dust with icing sugar 

Voila! Here is your lovely montblanc!

Lemon and honey souffle (version 2.0)

Ok, this could look nicer. But I promise it tastes very nice! But this is not something that can keep though. As soon as it comes out of the oven, it really should be served and eaten pretty much straightaway!

Ingredients (4 medium souffles):

• 150ml milk
• 20g butter
• 35g plain flour
• 2 large eggs
• 30g caster sugar
• 1 and a half lemon
• 2 tbsp honey 

1. Grease 4 medium sized ramekins with unsalted butter and use a sift and dust the inside of ramekins with plain flour and 
2. Tip ramekins upside down and tap from the outside to remove excess flour
3. Put butter and milk together and put it over low-medium heat until butter has melted 
4. Add honey to the milk and heat until it simmers again
5. Add 1 tbsp of hot milk to flour and mix with spoon, add another and mix etc until you've added half of milk to flour, or until the flour resembles a thin and runny paste (If you added all the flour to milk or vice versa in one go, then it's VERY difficult to get the flour incorporated into the liquid)
6. Pour the flour and milk mix into the other half of milk and stir 
7. Add lemon juice from a whole lemon to the hot milk mixture and heat until the mixture starts to simmer and thicken
8. When it gets to a runny puree/paste like consistency, add finely grated zest from a whole lemon at this stage
9. Take it off the heat and let it cool down. This can take 30-40 minutes
10. When the batter feels warm, but not hot (should be ok, if you can keep your finger on it and feels comfortable with the heat), pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C 
11. Separate the yolks and whites of 2 large eggs and add one yolk at a time to the batter and mix until smooth and combined
12. Whisk egg white with electric whisk until foamy and then add 1 tbsp of sugar to it at a time, keep whisking until it forms soft peaks
13. Add batter to the egg white and gently fold it in, avoid beating out the air trapped in the egg whites
14. Pour the batter into 4 ramekins, fill them 3/4 of the way as it will rise A LOT 
15. Bake for 20-25 minutes, and you should see a "hat" like structure over the top, serve asap, as it is most delicious and light when it comes out of the oven. It has the tendency to collapse quite quickly. So, you can prepare the batter, but don't bake it until you are ready to serve it!

Tips

It seems that higher temperature you heat it and the faster it rises, the quicker it will collapse. So some would suggest bake at 180 degrees instead for longer as that will delay the collapse. Not sure how true this is, but I baked mine at 200 and it collapsed but still looks ok after 15 minutes. So, the general rule is, serve it quick!

This recipe is entered to classic french challenge at http://bluekitchenbakes.blogspot.co.uk

Chocolate génoise (with raspberries and mini macaroons)

It's my FIRST ever attempt at making the genoise cake. In my opinion, an extremely difficult sponge to bake. The genoise is an italian sponge cake that does not use any chemical raising agents. So its rise is purely dependent on the air that is mixed and trapped into the batter during preparation.

Ingredients (for the sponge):

• 4 large eggs (or 6 medium)
• 100g plain flour
• 50g coco powder
• 110g caster sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Line a 9 inch baking tin with parchment paper
3. Beat the eggs and sugar together over simmering water with an electric whisk until the mixture is slightly warm and continue beating until it leaves a trail behind when you lift the mixer out. The mixture should have more than doubled in volume
4. Sift in the flour and coco powder
5. Fold in the dry ingredients VERY gently and avoid losing any air until it is well mixed 
6. Put mixture into baking tin and bake for 25-30 minutes

For the filling I used chocolate mousse (yes I do love chocolate mousse)

1. 1 large egg white
2. 90g milk chocolate
3. 150ml double cream

• Melt chocolate over simmering water and leave it to cool at room temperature for 15-20 minutes
• Whisk egg white until very firm peaks and glossy
• Whisk double cream until firm peaks
• Mix chocolate with egg white and cream until completely mixed
• Cool in the fridge for at least 2 hours at least

I also used some macaroons I had left over from yesterday and used that as part of the decoration. So check out the macaroon recipe if you are interested. 

Chocolate ganache (for the shiny surface)

1. 90g dark chocolate
2. 30g muscovado sugar
3. 100ml double cream

• Chop chocolate into small pieces and put in a heatproof bowl
• Heat double cream and sugar in saucepan until sugar has dissolved and it JUST boils
• Cool cream for 2 minutes
• Pour hot cream into chocolate and make sure the chocolate is completely submerged
• Mix with spoon until all the chocolate has melted and you get a shiny chocolate sauce
• You now have a bowl of shiny and runny melted chocolate ganache
• Pour over your cake and the ganache should spread out across the surface, giving you a smooth AND shiny surface to the cake

Macaroons (attempt god I lost count)

After my first incredible failure at making macaroons, I have tried again and again and again, once a day after work to make macaroons. At last after about a week, my mixtures began to rise in the oven, though still not as much as I had hoped for and I just can't get the shine and smooth surface on the macaroons no matter what recipe I followed! 

This is the ingredients and recipe I used for my most recent and successful (and stressful) batch. I hope this helps some of the people out there struggling with making macaroons by learning my mistakes. Apparently better results can be achieved using the italian meringue instead of the french one, maybe I'll give that a go next.

Ingredients (makes about 40 shells, so about 20 macaroon sandwiches):

1. 2 large eggs separated
2. 110g ground almonds
3. 100g icing sugar
4. 1 tsp vanilla extract
5. 4 tbsps caster sugar
6. Colouring (I used pink because it just somehow looks more pleasant when I had chocolate fillings)

• Whisk egg whites until soft peaks and mixed in vanilla extract, colouring and caster sugar, 1 tbsp at a time
• Continue whisking until firm peaks have formed and the meringue is very thick and stays on whisk when it is lifted off the bowl
• Mix ground almonds and icing sugar in a separate bowl and sift the mixture. 
• Add half of almond/icing sugar to meringue and gently fold in the dry ingredients until mixture is smooth
• Fold in the other half of the dry ingredients, again until mixture is smooth and avoid knocking the air out of the meringue
• Pipe the mixture onto baking tray lined with baking parchment and tap out the air trapped under mixture by knocking the baking tray against the table 3-4 times
• Leave the mixture to stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes
• Now switch on oven and pre-heat it to 150 degrees C
• Put in mixture and bake for 20-30 minutes
• When the macaroons are done, the surface should be crisp and should gently lift off from the baking parchment. 

For the filling

1. 40g dark chocolate
2. 60g icing sugar
3. 60g unsalted butter
4. 10ml double cream

• Melt the chocolate over simmering water, I hate doing this in the microwave, I always burn it. Leave it at room temperature to cool down
• Whisk butter, cream and icing sugar together until mixture goes very smooth and light
• Mix in the chocolate and put it in the fridge for an hour
• Put the fillings into the macaroon shells

If anyone can offer any help on how to make macaroon tops smooth and shiny, please please PLEASE share your techniques here. Thank you!

What not to do: 

• Whisk egg whites until firm peaks, add caster 1 tbsp at a time to the egg white, until it is VERY firm, some recipes will say soft peaks, but I have never achieved the same rise using soft peaks
• It's easier to make the filling in advance, either before or during the bake, this just makes sure that your filling is ready for piping and not too soft when you put it on your macaroons
• This actually applies to all the recipes, if you are using sifted flour or sugar, make sure you weigh the sifted product, not beforehand, otherwise this will affect your weighing, surprise surprise!