The Nifty Foodie

It’s one of the hugest compliments when someone asks you to bring the same dish for a holiday, year after year. When it comes to my coworkers, they always just expect that I’m bringing a cheesecake again. Cheesecakes are easy, so I have no problem with making them for work potlucks.

However, with my family, I decided to take a leap last year and make eggnog macarons. Little did I know that these would be a hit. I was intimidated by these cookies, and there was a great reason. When you live in humid place like Louisiana, you can’t help but be intimidated by something that relies heavily on egg whites. So, fast forward to November. I asked my mom if my husband and I should bring something for Thanksgiving, and at first, she said that nothing was necessary. Then, three days before, she, along with my aunt, requested macarons. Guess they’re spoiled now!

I didn’t want to repeat eggnog macarons, since it’s Thanksgiving. So, I looked through a few sites until I decided on this idea: pecan pie macarons. Living in the South, pecan pies are a staple in the Thanksgiving feast, so this was going to be absolutely perfect!

So, the day I start to make the macarons, I go to look for my round piping tip. Uhhh…turns out it was another victim of the move since it’s gone.  So, I tried the star piping tip. I figured it would flatten out within the hour that the macarons had to sit out before baking, but they didn’t. I’m sort of happy they didn’t flatten out though…the star shaped macarons turned out pretty darn cute!

Instead of doing both the caramel sauce and pecan brittle for the filling, I ended up using the caramel sauce with chopped pecans in the filling. These were definitely a popular item on Thanksgiving Day, since by the time I was picking up leftovers, they were pretty much all gone. Yay!

I guess that means I should start thinking about what macarons to make for the next holiday get together with my family, eh?

Pecan Pie Macarons
Source: Tartelette

Ingredients:

Note: With macarons, it’s definitely important that your ingredients are weighed, so all measurements are in grams.

     For the macarons:

• 3 egg whites (about 90 grams)
• 40 grams granulated sugar
• 200 grams powdered sugar
• 55 grams almonds
• 55 grams pecans

     For the filling:

• chopped pecans
• one recipe of salted butter caramel sauce, well chilled in the fridge

Directions:

1. For the egg whites, 2-3 days before separate your eggs and store the whites in a covered container in the fridge.
2. In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites until they foam, gradually adding granulated sugar until you reach a glossy meringue. Be careful not to overbeat, since the meringue can easily dry out.
3. Place the almonds, pecans and powdered sugar in a food processor and pulse the mixture until the nuts are finely ground.
4. Add the mixture to the meringue, give it a quick couple of folds to break down some of the air and then, slow down and fold the mass gently until the batter flows like magma or thick ribbon. The whole folding process shouldn’t take more than 50 strokes.
5. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a round tip (or star one if you’re crazy like me) with the macaron batter and pipe small cookies (about 1.5 inches in diameter) onto a Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheet.
6. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes – 1 hour to allow the shells to harden a bit. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Once the shells have hardened, bake the macarons for 15-20 minutes.
7. Allow the macarons to cool a bit (until the pan is warm) before removing the macarons. If your macarons are stuck to the pan, pour a couple of drops of water under your Silpat or parchment. This should help the macarons lift off the pan more easily, due to the moisture. However, don’t let the macarons sit with the water for too long or you’ll risk the macarons becoming soggy.  
8. Once the macarons are fully cooled, spread some of the caramel sauce on the bottom of each of your macarons, add chopped pecans on top of the caramel on one of the macarons and sandwich the two macarons together. If you want to be super fun, brush some pearl dust on the top of the macarons.

Just a small side note….Did you win the Butterball giveaway? You have to email me to claim your prize and you have until tonight! Neither of the winners have emailed me. You want free turkeys, don’t you?

EDITED:

Since the original winners never emailed me, I had to re-draw for the Turkey gift cards!

cara….who said:

I try to get as much done as I can the night before and we rent an extra fridge!

AND

Kayla…who said:

My tip is to make your SIL host so you can just show up with your pecan pie and call it a day.  

For the two of you who won, to redeem your prize, please email me within 48 hours at niftyfoodie@gmail.com! Congratulations!

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I absolutely cannot believe that Thanksgiving is this week. It feels like a few weeks ago, I was sweating like crazy any time I stepped outside. Oh wait…that weather is still going on here.

Maybe that’s why I can’t believe it. Ah, life in the South. Turkey Day in 80 degrees is the norm around here. To get myself in the mood, I usually start baking up a storm.

I made these little guys two years ago to get myself in the mood for Thanksgiving. I’d love to make them again, but only two were eaten. Why? Well, because they were “too pretty to eat”. ::sigh::

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy 4 days until Halloween!!

While Halloween isn’t my favorite holiday (I’m sure most of you can guess what my favorite holiday is. ), I feel like it’s fun to get in the spirit of it all. We decorated our house for Halloween, and I was thrilled to notice that in our new neighborhood, we aren’t the only ones who like to decorate. I also noticed that our new neighborhood has LOTS of kids, so potential for Trick or Treaters? Wahoo! In the old neighborhood, we usually got a handful of kids, but some of them were way too old to Trick or Treat, in my opinion.

While we’re not dressing up for Halloween, I do have to admit that Millie has a costume haha! A yellow submarine. I was going to scour Goodwill for Ken dolls and paste them on the costume to have The Beatles and their Yellow Submarine, but alas, this whole moving thing has my energy devoted to unpacking and settling in the new house. So, Millie will just be a submarine, and a very cute one at that.

Of course with Halloween being a few short days away, I had to take out my KA mixer for the first time since moving in the new house and whip up something festive. I found this idea on Kathie Cooks (via Pinterest) and it couldn’t be easier. It’s one of those ideas where you sit there and ask yourself, “Why didn’t I think of this?”

Since I used a recipe that I’ve already blogged (linked below), I’m just going to share how these are made.

1. Whip up your favorite sugar cookie dough recipe (I used this one for rolled cookies so they hold their candy corn shape without spreading.), divide the dough in 3 equal portions, dye one portion yellow, one portion orange and leave the last one undyed.
2. Take out a bread pan and line it with saran wrap. Roll out the undyed portion and place it in the bread pan, spreading the dough evenly throughout the whole pan. Then, roll out the orange portion, press it in the bread pan on top of the undyed dough, making sure to spread that evenly as well and then lastly, the yellow.
3. Cover and chill the dough in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Then invert the pan on a cutting board (releasing the dough), and slice across the block in 1/4″ pieces. Cut the dough into triangles and bake according to your recipe’s instructions.

As of January 6th, it’s now the Carnival season! Of course, this means king cakes are back in stores. I absolutely love king cake. It’s a sweet, yeast bread with cinnamon and topped with icing and colored sugars (I made mine in black/gold for the Saints game on Saturday.). They make king cakes with so many fillings too, from cream cheese to apple to bavarian cream! This time, I made a plain king cake, since people are pretty particular about what fillings they like with king cake.

I’ve made king cake before, and it turned out tasting like bread. It was NOT king cake. This recipe, however, is MUCH better. This recipe actually comes from Haydel’s Bakery, which is where we had our wedding cake and groom’s cake (which was a tiered king cake) made. I found it fairly easy to make too, however, I think their recipe would be much better if you ice and sugar after baking, which is different than what their recipe suggested. When I made it their way (bake with sugar already sprinkled on), most of us just pulled the chunks of sugar off of the king cake while eating it.

King Cake
Source: adapted from WWLTV via Haydel’s Bakery

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup all purpose shortening
• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 lg. eggs
• 1 cup milk (room temperature)
• 2 sm. packs active dry yeast
• 1/4 tsp lemon zest
• 1/4 tsp orange zest
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp butter extract
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

For the icing:

• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp. water

For the colored sugars:

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar for each color that you want to make
• assorted food coloring

Directions:

1. In a mixer at first speed combine 1/3 cup granulated sugar, salt, and shortening until well creamed. Add eggs and continue to cream.
2. Dissolve the yeast in the milk and add the flavors. Once dissolved add to creamed mixture and continue to mix.
3. Add flour a cup at a time and mix until dough tightens.
4. Remove from mixer and knead into a ball. At this point sprinkle some flour on top and cover with a clean kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest for 1½ hours.
5. While the dough is resting mix your colored sugars and icing. Mix the 1/2 cup of sugar with a few drops of food coloring until the color you reach is desired.
6. For the icing, whisk the confectioners sugar with the water and vanilla.
7. When dough has rested roll out into an oblong piece. Brush on canola oil covering the entire piece. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar liberally over the whole piece.
8. Once the dough is covered with the cinnamon sugar and oil, fold it in half lengthwise. Cut into 3 strips and braid the dough. Gently roll the dough by starting at one end and working all the way down to the other end. This will make the dough a nice long piece that can then be shaped into a circle. Once shaped place on a baking pan covered with piece of parchment.
9. Allow the dough to rest again until it doubles in size. Bake at 370 degrees F for 12-15 minutes until dough is golden brown.
10. Let the cake cool and spread the icing on top. Then, sprinkle with your colored sugars. Enjoy!

The macaron. These are probably one of the most intimidating cookies out there. I’ve made them before, but it was in the summer, and humidity was raging. I guess the extra moisture in the air attributed to my macarons ending up with no feet. They tasted wonderful, but they were pitiful flat little cookies.

I sort of forgot about these little treats until my sisters and I visited Sucre in New Orleans. It was love at first bite. Pistachio was my absolute favorite out of all the flavors we tried.

That evening, I was asked to bring all desserts for Christmas. I knew that I had to give these macarons another attempt. I mean, dew point was in the 30s and that’s SUPER rare in Louisiana. So, bye bye to the humidity for this attempt!

That first picture….yep, those were the macarons that I made! I was yelling in excitement to the hubs as I stared into the oven, watching those little feet happen. I totally had my first macaron success!! Best of all? My family thought they tasted just like the ones from Sucre! Win!

This was also my first time making some form of a meringue buttercream. Seriously y’all, I thought this was a massive fail, but I remember reading on blogs that it does take a while to come together. After several minutes, just like that, it went from a separated mixture to a gorgeous frosting! I’m in shock that a frosting with so little sugar tastes so much better, too! Definitely making a meringue-type frosting again soon! I ended up filling a few with plain buttercream to see how it would taste (as you can see in the bottom row), but after tasting both, I felt that the spiced eggnog frosting was the way to go here.

Eggnog Macarons
Source: Tartelette

For the macarons:

Ingredients:

• 90 gr egg whites (use eggs whites that have been preferably left 3-5 days in the fridge)
• 25 gr granulated sugar
• 200 gr powdered sugar
• 110 gr almonds (slivered, blanched, sliced, whatever you like)

Directions:

1. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites to a foam, (think bubble bath foam) gradually add the sugar until you obtain a glossy meringue (think shaving cream). Do not overbeat your meringue or it will be too dry.
2. Place the powdered sugar and almonds in a food processor and give them a good pulse until the nuts are finely ground.
3. Add them to the meringue, give it a quick fold to break some of the air and then fold the mass carefully until you obtain a batter that falls back on itself after counting to 10. Give quick strokes at first to break the mass and slow down. The whole process should not take more than 50 strokes. Test a small amount on a plate: if the tops flattens on its own you are good to go. If there is a small beak, give the batter a couple of turns.
4. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) with the batter and pipe small rounds (1.5 inches in diameter) onto parchment paper or silicone mats lined baking sheets. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to harden their shells a bit. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 280F.
5. When ready, bake for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on their size. Let cool. If you have trouble removing the shells, pour a couple of drops of water under the parchment paper while the sheet is still a bit warm and the macarons will lift up more easily do to the moisture. Don’t let them sit there in it too long or they will become soggy.
6. Once baked and if you are not using them right away, store them in an airtight container out of the fridge for a couple of days or in the freezer.

For the eggnog filling:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 1/2 sticks (180gr)(6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Directions:

1. Put the sugar and egg whites in a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly, keeping the mixture over the heat, until it feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. The sugar should be dissolved, and the mixture will look like marshmallow cream.
2. Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat the meringue on medium speed until it cools and forms a thick shiny meringue, about 5 minutes.
3. Switch to the paddle attachment and add the butter, one tablespoon at a time, beating until smooth. Once all the butter is in, beat in the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 6-10 minutes.
4. Add the cinnamon and nutmeg to the buttercream.. Fill he shells with the buttercream and enjoy!