Misisippi...Missisippi... oh Mississippi!

Hey guys, I've missed you!

The last weekend and week has been such a busy time for me so therefore this post is a litte late. Hopefully you don't mind. :) I'd also mention that I started to work on Monday so I'll work really hard to get these posts here on time. I've made some sort of schedule for my bakings that I'd be on time with them. I'll try my best to post at least every weekend something. I also have a day off every Tuesday so there might be some extra every now and then. (;

Anyways, in last weekend I finally got to bake the mississippi mud pie. That was actually the first recipe which got me to start this blogging so I was very eager to finally make it! In the end, it was a basic mud pie with some fancy whipped cream and chocolate chips on top of it. Despite of its ordinary ingredients, the flavor knocked our socks off. The whole pie was gone in 2 days. Even though I had the right size dish for that, there was still some extra filling. Therefore I made some 1 portion size pies.This time there wasn't any problems with that filling like with chocolate meringue pie. Everything went nice and smooth .

I also tried my new macaron mat on the next day. Unfortunately it wasn't a success.. For some reason the macarons didn't cook as they're supposed to so I ended up to have 42 macaron halves stuck to the mat. I've had some problems earlier with other silicon products. They don't heat up in the same way than normal tins and pans so I've had lots of raw dough when I've used those. So that's the next problem I'm going to solve when I have some time. :)

In the end I want to say that when i baked all this, on Friday, it was all for my granny. She passed away exactly 3 years ago on that day. When I was little, we always baked together gingerbreads in Christmas, cinnamon rolls, and all kinds of pies. She basically got me into baking and I always had awesome time with her. I love you granny!

We are the champions!

Delicious evening from the Pchic residence!

I've finally made it my chicsters. Here I present you the first macarons ever made by me!

It was a dark and stormy night.. Maybe that's too dramatic, let me try again.. At 9 AM this morning I woke up full of excitement. I headed straight to kitchen and got everything ready for my ordeal. I had read the recipe numerous times beforehand so I would be capable to make those in half asleep. There isn't any fancy colors etc since I was just testing these. The filling are lemon curd (on the left) and chocolate.

Usually I'm not that precise with the measures but since they really matter in macarons, I followed those very strictly. I even filtered the flours in case so there wouldn't be any clods. When I got to the point where you whisk the egg whites, I got worried. The recipe warned about whisking those eggs too much since the dough has to stay perfect. Not too hard, not too liquid. I kept whisking it with the lowest possible speed and checking every once in a while. It might have been beginner's luck but I still made it. :)

Next thing I know, I'm putting those in the oven already. Now that was tricky! They said how the temperature and time depended on the oven. Luckily I had four oven shelves so I had plenty of material to test that on. The first shelf came out pretty brown, as you can see from that lemon curd one. After that I baked the rest of them on the lowest point in the oven so they got little less brown. I still have to test the temperature in the future a bit since I already lowered the given 150°C (300 F) to 120°C (248 F)

Overall I'm so proud of myself. On top of the macarons, I also made the chocolate ganache (the filling) for the first time. Therefore how things went today, I'm definitely going to master the art of macarons.

I'd say this was perfect way to end this week! :) See ya my chicsters!