When in doubt, try again!

Back when I don't know to make macarons yet, I practiced for 5 days, school hours until I finally made it. This post is to remind myself that I will be able to figure this recipe out. I'm on my 4th day of inverted puff pastry project and the results are unacceptable (from my preference)

Chef Francisco Migoya said, it's your call to give a recipe a chance for three times before to let it go.

Anyways.. Since I cant sleep. I thought of writing this. I will not let go of this one, up until I make it. The same goes to my most ambitious dreams.

Mango & Nutella Monte Carlo, Italian Buttercream and Shipmate's Homecoming!

Before the summer officially end, I would like to share you my non traditional Monte Carlo recipe. I learned about Monte Carlo during my European Cakes & Pastries class in baking school. Honestly, it's the least of my favorite so I wanted to re-create it as my own version and of my own liking. Well, Monte Carlo is not bad at all.

The traditional recipe is from the city of Monte Carlo located in the Principality of Monaco... just a few minutes east of Nice France. The Monte Carlo gateaux is composed of  soft, chewy almond dacquoise, layers of fresh peach slices, sweet peach compote, mask of chantilly cream or vanilla buttercream and generous sprinkles of toasted, almond slivers. And because I'm not a fan of peaches, I didn't really adore this cake. But hey! I still believe in Monte Carlo, I wanted to give it a chance, I once made a plated dessert experiment with Monte Carlo theme for one competition, and this beautiful cake inspired me to create another try, a Mango & Nutella Monte Carlo this time.

Another thought of the moment is to whip a buttercream recipe with egg whites instead of egg yolks. I just feel sad for egg whites that it had to be always set aside, I thought could egg whites feel a little discrimination here? Most of the left overs are egg whites because egg yolks are often used in buttercream, especially French Buttercream. and just to try! I made my Italian Buttercream instead for my Monte Carlo hybrid.

Mise en place for the Almond dacquoise

Almond Dacquoise

1 cup Egg whites

1 cup Sugar

1/2 cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 cup Almond meal, I preferred coarse meal

First step is to sift together flour and almond meal. Then in a bowl, whip egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks. Carefully fold the dry mixture into the meringue, avoid over mixing or the meringue will get too loose to shape. This recipe yields for 3 pieces 8 inch round meringue disks.

Pipe or pour the meringue on Silpat or good parchment paper. I wanted to make even sizes of 8 inch round meringue so I patterned it with 8 inch round ring mold.

You need 3 pieces of baked Almond dacquoise for this cake.

Preheat the oven at 160/160 C. I forgot to preheat ahead of time, my bad!

Mickey Meringue: Bake the meringue for about 1 hour until the disks are golden brown and crisp.

Love this set up, as if I'm looking on a cook book cover page

Stages of cooking syrup: Scalding (Upper left), Boiling (Upper right), Thread stage (Lower left), and Soft Boil stage (Lower right)

Vanilla Italian Buttercream

2 bars Butter, unsalted (about 225g per bar)

1/2 cup Egg whites

1 cup Sugar

1/2 cup Water

1 tsp Madagascar Vanilla

Make an Italian meringue by whipping egg whites in the mixer, then pour the hot, soft stage cooked syrup and continue whipping until stiff peaks. Once the meringue has cooled down slightly, change the attachment to paddle attachment and start dropping cubes of butter one at a time. Continue whipping until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Italian Vanilla Buttercream

Oh good bye Summer!

Philippine mangoes are one of the beautiful gems of this country

Baked Almond Dacquoise.

Layer the Almond dacquoise with Italian Vanilla buttercream, mango slices and generous swirls of Nutella. You may put more Nutella of course!

I know you want more Nutella, so go for it :)

After the top most layer of meringue, mask the cake with Italian Vanilla Buttercream

Looking good

If your cake is not even, because meringue tends to be rustic in shape especially the edges... level it with more buttercream.

Butter cake crumbs: I make my own by toasting left over butter cake or butter cake trimmings and crushing it in Food processor, I prefer mine to be coarse and not strained to have the bite and texture.

Mask of Butter cake crumbs gives this pretty gateaux  a sweet, rough, crunch.

Mango & Nutella Monte Carlo; layers of almond dacqouise, vanilla Italian buttercream, Philippine mango slices, Nutella swirls, mango compote dots, chocolate decors and mask of butter cake crumbs.

Closer.

Closer look

Mango & Nutella Monte Carlo

Belle <3

Fzam's homecoming was out of his emergency leave, we took this time to also see each other after 6 years or so since he moved to Virginia. Fzam is the guy in high school that was always picked on by the "cool" dudes, and as a boy he was vulnerable to the wrong company, wrong decisions and wrong vices.

For that friend who saw me through thick and thin, saw me through my awkward years in high school, the one who saw the beauty in my ugliness, the one who adores my baking and stupidity HAHA and always give me happy thoughts, Fzam, I want you to know that I'm really proud of where you are now. You are a good friend, good son and good brother. The times when you are lost are gone already, you passed through your tests and now look at you! I'm so happy and proud of you!

One of the best thing that happened in Fzam's homecoming is gaining another friend, Vincent. Well Vincent was my classmate in Junior high school but (I know you are reading this, please don't kill me)... we never really had good laughs together nor talked about anything cool before. It was a eureka of friendship! haha. Hey please let me read your novel, I would lalalala-love to!

Vincent, Me and Fzam at early dinner

 And my another favorite is to be able to get together with my favorite people in high school. Though incomplete, these boys are my brothers from different wombs. I just miss them sooo! every jokes, every picking on each other, everything! Friendships that has no drama yet stands the test of time. I love you Genaro, JC, Mark, Fzam, Vincent and Rowelyn.

At the Fernandez's, few hours before Fzam's flight back to the US.

Fzam reminded me of my overdue promise to bake him a birth day cake;so now let me catch up with my promise at the same time, remind him of our friendship trinkets HAHA

#Groupie #Groufie #GroupSelfie #Whatever #Fzam #SendOff #Hourssary #Shipmate #Slang #AmBoy #TakeCare #Like #CareBears #Smartphone #Kobe8 #Monopod #LouisVuitton #9yearsOfFriendship

Advance Happy Fathers' Day! Enjoy your Fathers' Day weekend. And to my first love...I love you Papa, you are my superman. You are my epitome of someone to marry.  I miss you and I wish I can hug you tight. Thank you for loving me beyond the further which where you are right now. 

And to my three handsome brothers, for always looking after me, especially Michael who stood up like a dad to me. You guys are not perfect, you got your own failures and mistakes. Whenever I'm not okay I never needed to spill a word, you just knew it when I'm not okay and give me doughnuts or other sweet stuff, as if I'm still a kid. I will be very careful when it comes to love, I know its perils. I know that I have three brothers who will get hurt If get hurt. I love you three.

Love and even better,

Constructing My Own Macaron Tower

Hi All! First, I would like to say thank you for everyone who has been following my blog. I'm getting  a lot of visits everyday and even if it takes  me quite some time to update, I just want to say thank you for keeping up with me and my blog. I know some of you could be checking from time to time for new entries, I will really keep my weekends reserved for updating my blog. Pinky Promise!

 

In my last entry, I promised to make a macaron tower. It's not my first time to make one, although it's always challenging each time. Click here to see my previous Mac-en-bouche.

On constructing my own tower, it reminds me of what my chef-mentor always tell me and my classmates "Being a pastry chef requires extra assertiveness and resourcefulness; sometimes you are a designer, sometimes a carpenter, sometimes a sculptor, sometimes a painter, sometimes an art teacher"-Chef Carol Lavin

It also reminds me of  Disney Channel's Art Attack with Niel Buchanan. I always watch that when I was younger, I could say Niel Buchanan influenced me so much by being resourceful. If you are a baking student or baking enthusiast you know by now how expensive baking tools are. Even just a quality paint brush is expensive. 

I'm often commended for being resourceful by my work mates and mentors, say instead of purchasing silicone molds and cocoa butter sprays I will improvise whatever is available in National Bookstore and TrueValue. I sometimes even go as far as Wilcon Depot. Yep, I could be that resourceful :)

And so, while creating my first macaron tower for a rush order, I had to think deep "How am I supposed to construct this one? I cannot order a cone-shaped styro foam because ordering takes at least 2 days to be placed and worst of all, the supplier is located 2 hours away". My first Art Attack/macaron tower started by surveying Wilcon Depot for whatever I can use.

You will need chicken wire (depends on how tall your tower is), wire cutter, scissors, old news papers, straw or thread, 2 pieces 1 whole size card board paper or cartolina, scotch tape, and parchment paper.  

1. Shape the chicken wire into a cone and cut the excess with well, scissors and let your most handsome barista do the work for you, this could be a little dangerous because the wire can scratch nails and fingers. If you have a wire cutter, you know already by now.

2. Lock the edges with knotted straw or thread.

3. Fill the cone with crumpled news papers, it has to be well compressed as the old news papers will give weight to your tower.

4. Wrap the cone with a plain card board paper, you may get 1 whole size as big as cartolinas in National Bookstore.

5. Then, cover with parchment to make your tower Food-grade.

The usual woe in macaron tower making is when the pieces are falling off. I suggest that you use hard ganache as fillings instead of buttercream. On pasting the macaron sandwiches on the tower use melted and tempered chocolate.

My macaron project now however is only for display , thus it has to stand for a long time. I used royal icing with thick consistency to fill the macaron sandwiches and for pasting on the tower.

Royal icings are so easy to make, you will just need an egg white and powdered sugar. The ratio is about 1 part egg whites to 3 parts powdered sugar to achieve a thick consistency.

This shade of green reminds me a summer afternoon in the garden with flowery teas and English scones.

As part of your Mise En Place, partner each pieces and fill them with royal icing. We want them to dry well before pasting on the parchment covered tower or else it will just slide off.

Fill with ample amount of royal icing

Let the macaron sandwiches dry well before pasting them on the tower.

Like any other Food presentation reminders, it has to start with a good Macaronage.  Macaron shells must be evenly colored (if you are baking on batches), piped into same sizes and baked on standardized time to create perfect pieces.

Start with the bottom, this could take some time because we want the royal icing to dry well first before stacking another layer or it will just fall off. It will just fall off. It will just fall off.

Even sizes is essential on this aspect. If the shells are not relative on size it will look ugly or well, really ugly.  It will also be difficult to space the macaron sandwiches.

Pipe royal icing on one side of the macaron and paste it on the tower. Finesse is an advocacy, as well as Patience is a virtue. Some people prefer smearing macarons with an offset spatula, well just do it neatly.

So close!

A bucket of  left over flower gumpaste from the Mothers' day rush to accentuate my project. I was inspired by a garden tea party but also want to make it easy and practical because I was also teaching my baker, Michelle how to create a macaron tower by herself.

Finished with Twigs and Swirls.

We're done yay!

I'm so proud of this little lady. Michelle is an orphan too and like me, she is very quiet. She is so tiny and eat so little like a girl but she is a fast learner and her hands are already skilled considering she just started working last January. This is her first job and I'm her first teacher. Little girl, as we always call her...I know you will get far because you are a smart cookie, just believe in yourself and set goals. Always remember that I will always be happy to teach you some more. You want to become a pastry chef? Then I'm telling you, you will be!

Let's just call this one, Flora. Because I can't think of something else!

Flora is one of my final projects in Le Petit Cheri, please expect a really cheesy and long entry after this one that I'd like to dedicate to every beautiful soul I met in my 1 year and half in South. To end this entry, I would like to share my favorite quote from my writing goddess and hero, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Lovely Macaron ruins, in order to make this project I had to deconstruct an old macaron tower.

And in order to become the better version of myself, I learned to understand that I also had to go through certain changes, changes that sometimes ruins our soul and ruins our heart. It tears us to pieces, but one day you will realize the gift of this ruin. I humbly pray that whoever is reading this, may God bless you the heart to discover your gift of ruin. I received mine, I am a changed person, I learned my lessons and I found the gift of my ruins.

 

"Ruin is a gift.  Ruin leads you on the path to transformation." - Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

love always,