candy apple grey

here is the latest macaron...green apple and celery leaf.

instantly one of my favorites.

infused cream with celery leaves, blend.  make ganache with white chocolate and celery leaf cream, add freeze dried apple.

freeze dried apple is also in the meringue base, along with some malic acid to give some acidity.

hopefully i'll make some again another time.

i wanted to thank Chef Santos for coming in to stage last week.  she was a lot of help and a very good sport about hearing be babble on every day.  hopefully she learned some things and i can't wait to go up to visit her at her restaurant.
during the week we made some macarons so i had her choose the flavor:  green cardamom...they came out much better than my pistachio.  if you want the recipe you will have to call her at Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsberg.  ask for Yulanda.

tried/failed

loveage macaron

i have been wanting to try to make macarons with a flavored meringue for a long time now.  using egg white powder and juice of some sort.  finally i mustered up an attempt.  rummaging through items on hand, i found in the freezer some loveage puree sealed away.  thinned with a little water and blended with egg white powder (using the ratio on the manufactures label) i left the vibrant green meringue to rehydrate overnight.

the next day i began whipping while doing the rest of the mise en place for my future macarons.  unfortunately this meringue just didn't have enough stability (even with the cooked syrup method) to hold stiff enough peaks to complete the recipe. 

the hopeful loveage meringue just didn't hold up.  maybe the ratio was off, maybe it wasn't thought out enough. 

actually, the remainder of the day didn't fare much better, with many failed recipes and even a broken glass.  not the best day in the kitchen.

still thinking about how to get the most flavor out of a simple macaron, i will come back to this fight another day...here are some other macarons to view

rose-raspberry, lemon basil, blackberry-cassis, peppermint, earl grey tea, foie with pink peppercorn, shiso, citrus, raspberry-meyer lemon

purple rain

 blackberry with creme de cassis.  had some blackberry puree that i made sitting around.  so i made a ganache with white chocolate and creme de cassis.  the color is an incredible purple.

i forget sometimes how much blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries "stain" other foods and transfer their color.  need to remember that.