As mentioned last week, I had a graduation celebration to attend on Sunday. We had five graduates to applaud—one college, three high school, and one pre-school. All of them got their picture under the grad balloons, but the party was officially for the high school graduates. We’ll give the college graduate their own party later this summer.
Since I’m wanting to perfect my macaron making, I decided to make a batch of them for the party. A different recipe was used this time from my award winning recipe. Let’s just say they were good this time, but the last one’s were better looking in shape. The taste was still there, but the dome wasn’t as high.
These macarons were filled with either a buttercream icing (colored blue or green), some leftover caramel buttercream icing, or plain peanut butter and some homemade strawberry jam. Many of my family had never had a macaron and kept wanting to call them macaroons. I finally explained the difference. One of the family members commented on how good they tasted, “like a small peanut butter and jelly sandwich!” They ate several, which is always a compliment, and in the end, they were all gone.
Never one to make just one thing, I also made a two-layer round chocolate cake. It had a crumb coat of vanilla buttercream and an outer coat of chocolate buttercream. My hope had been to use one of my cake scrapers to make stripes through the chocolate icing and see the white below. I debated with myself for a couple of hours on which color to spread on top and which to go on the bottom. Since the stripping didn’t work this time, I’ll try the opposite the next time.
The new icing scraper was great though. It did leave pretty grooves through the icing. Using it also made icing the cake so much faster. After piping on the buttercream, I just used the scraper to spread it flat on the top. Using my Pampered Chef turn table (thanks Jen), I was able to scrape and smooth out the sides after piping in no time flat. Made me wonder why I hadn’t been doing it this way all along!
Even though the stripping didn’t work, the cake still came out looking okay. It had ridges around the sides and a little diagonal on the top. What mattered most was the taste. The cake was very chocolaty and very most. I will say if the pieces had been larger, it might have put us into a sugar coma!
I know a peach cake and something raspberry is on tap for this week. I’ll make something for the hubby’s new staff this weekend. They have a big meeting on Sunday. It will either be something sweet, or something breakfast related. Not sure which yet.
Happy baking everyone!!!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 