Toffee cake with toffee buttercream

It was my cousin's 16th Birthday and a good friend's birthday last week. One on Wednesday and another on a Saturday. 

Initial plan was to a cake for my cousin and cupcakes for my friend but since my cousin, Saras had plans made earlier I only gave three slices for ate the rest! Pretty greedy. And as for the cupcakes plan, my friend wasn't around so I cancelled my plans of making the cupcakes.

This beautiful cake has been on my wishlist to bake since I saw it. The recipe had crushed hazelnut candies on top but when I opened my packet of hazelnut and roasted it, it tasted rather bitter and didn't taste right. So I just followed my instinct and threw the whole batch of nuts away! :( I used Valhorna crunchy chocolate pearls as decoration and it tasted pretty good.

Another mishap I encountered while making my buttercream was I accidentally cut my finger with a very sharp knife and the finger was bleeding profusely. It was 12 midnight when I made the buttercream, no one was awake so I had to clean and dress the bloody wound by myself. Didn't make much difference cause the plaster kept coming off. Anyway, I manage to clean myself up and wear gloves to finish my cake. I couldn't just leave everything out at 12 midnight. But I enjoyed making the cake in the middle of the night. Pretty relaxing, quiet and cooling.

Anyway back to this wonderful cake.

Source : Rima from  Bisousatoi who got the recipe from Carrie of The Patterned Plate. Originally from The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns.

So here goes!

Toffee Cake:

280g unsalted butter, really soft

280g self raising flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

5 large eggs

160g golden caster sugar

120g light muscovado sugar, I couldn't find my carton of it so I substituted it with regular light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Note: 

I was lazy so I used two 8 inch round baking pans and sliced the into half horizontally with a serrated knife giving me a four layer cake.Baked for about 30-40 minutes.

1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Butter and line the bottoms of three 8inch round baking pans.
2. Sift flour and baking powder in a large bowl/stand mixer bowl and put all the other ingredients in. Beat for a couple of minutes until you have a smooth batter.
3. Divide batter equally into the three prepared pans and bake for 15- 20 minutes.
4. The cake is ready when it's well risen, golden and a skewer placed in the middle comes out clean. Turn out of the tin after a few minutes then leave on a cooling rack to cool completely

Toffee Buttercream:

Toffee sauce:

80g unsalted butter

60g light brown sugar

2 tablespoons glucose

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon cream

1. Put butter,sugar and glucose in a saucepan over low heat and cook until it turns a deep amber colour. 
2. Remove from heat and add cream and extract while stirring continously. 
3. Leave it aside to cool completely.

Swiss meringue buttercream:

150g egg whites

250g caster sugar

290g unsalted butter, slightly softened

1. In heatproof bowl, place egg whites and caster sugar over a pot of water over medium heat.( Double boiler) Whisk occasionally until sugar as completely dissolved.This may take a while.
2. Using hand held or stand mixer, whisk the mixture on medium-high speed until mixture becomes marshmallowy and cooled down.
3. Touch meringue to feel the temperature. 
4. Add butter cubes,one at a time,and mixing it well after each addition. 
5. If mixture looks runny, Place in the fridge for about 15-30minutes, depending on how warm the meringue is.Remove from fridge and continue to beat until you get a nice creamy mixture. 
6. If mixture looks good, just continue mixing until you get a creamy mixture, it may look curdled in the beginning but it will start looking better as you continue beating.
7. Add toffee sauce and give it a good quick whip.

Last but not least, Happy Sweet 16, Saras & Happy 26th, Jegan!!!!! <3

Based on my experience, troubleshooting macarons

This is my personal experience. My experience may differ to yours because I may not have to same oven as yours, weather at where I am living and where you do may be different and ingredients used may not be the same.

I hardly make macarons at home because it's too sweet for everyone at home. As much as I would love to make them and practice on my macaron skills, they are pretty expensive to make and no one eats them so they sit forever in the fridge. After making macarons for the fourth time,I can say 97% of my macarons have 'feet'. In humidity, I turned on my air conditioner and place the piped macarons under the air conditioner for half hour to help the drying process. It was not wet to touch after 20 minutes. Macarons have temperamental issues.LOL. I dont have the fan force function on my old oven so the first batch of macarons came out slightly coloured (baked macaron shells should have the same colour as pre baked ones). The oven temperature was 180C if baking in fan forced oven but using a 'normal' oven, I had to increase the temperature by 10-20 C (different people say different things on the internet), I ignored that rule because I felt it would be too hot, and also I placed my macarons in the middle shelves (Big mistake!!). And also I had left the oven door slightly ajar after 5 minutes into baking time; continue baking the shells for another 10 minutes.


Although, My macarons looked good besides the fact that it was slightly browned.I wasn't satisfied.


After the first batch, I realised I should reduce the temperature to 150-160 degrees and I placed the macarons on the lowest shelf. Baked it in a closed oven for 5 minutes and then open the oven door slightly ajar,continue baking it for another 10-15 minutes.It was almost perfect but still not to my satisfaction but hey,It was definitely better looking then all the 3 times I made before! :) The bottom was slightly wet but most of them didn't stick to the silicon sheets which was a good thing! Quite an achievement but still not there yet. I would try using the French or Swiss meringue technique the next time instead of the usual Italian meringue technique found in Pierre Herme's Macarons book.


P/s: Make sure you sift the almond meal/almond powder. If you not, you will have a grainy top not shiny one!


Another issue I had was with the buttercream. Original plan was an all ribena macaron thing but when I wanted to flavour my buttercream, I realised that ribena sold now is so diluted!! I thought Malaysia had the pre mixed ribena bottles and I bought the wrong one!That was a huge bummer to me. So since I had raspberry jam in the fridge I used a tablespoon of it to give it a better flavour. 

I used my mastrad macaron sheet.

For the macaron recipe, I used the same recipe found the link below but I halved the original recipe (thank god!). And for the buttercream, I used the recipe given below!


Lemon macarons with boysenberry swiss meringue buttercream


Swiss meringue buttercream :
55g egg whites
100g caster sugar
170g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 tablespoon raspberry jam
3 tablespoon ribena cordial

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. 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. 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. Add raspberry jam and ribena and continue to mix until combined.

Lemon macarons with boysenberries compote buttercream

This is one of the few recipes I baked the other day over at my aunt's place. I would not have been able to do this alone cause it's quite tedious and aunty has been asking me to make macarons with her since we did our macaron masterclass last year June! I made another macaron recipe as well but there were not many good pictures of it. Because macarons can be tooth-aching sweet, I made my own mix and match of filling to suit the palates of everyone around me.

I honestly couldn't eat my macarons after baking it and filling it with the buttercream cause I have been popping a few macaron shells in my mouth,obviously the distorted ones,so you can imagine how many distorted one were there!LOL. The balance of sour and sweet of the macarons and buttercream/filling made it less sweet sickening.

I have been purchasing a lot of kitchenware over the internet for my new kitchen back in Malaysia. I can't wait! I really can't wait to get my things organised and less headache with my maid keeping things everything everywhere.At the moment my kitchenware are all over the place-in the store room,in the wet kitchen and also my bedroom!I have a whole suitcase of kitchenware brought from Australia,Italy and Sri Lanka yet be to unpacked.

Macaron shells:

T-P-T mixture (almond mixture)

300g sifted almond meal

300g sifted icing sugar

110 aged egg whites

A pinch of salt

Lemon zest

Lemon yellow food colouring

Meringue                    

110 aged egg whites

½  teaspoon cream of tartar

300g sugar

75g water

1.       Mix sifted almond meal and icing sugar together until combined with a whisk.

2.      Then add the egg whites, salt, lemon zest and food colouring. Leave it aside.

3.      Using a candy thermometer, cook sugar syrup (sugar + water) until it reaches 118 C.

4.      When the syrup reaches 110 C, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft-medium peaks (in medium speed).

5.       When the syrup reaches 118 C ,with the mixer still whisking the egg whites (in medium speed), gradually add pour the sugar syrup. Then turn up the speed of the mixer for about 2 minutes until it turns glossy and slightly stiff and temperature of meringue has slightly cooled.

6.      Now, add in about ¼ of the meringue into the almond mixture to lighten the TPT mixture and well combined.

7.       Then FOLD IN the balance of meringue mixture in batches slowly until all is well combined. Mixture should be shiny.Do not overbeat your mixture.

8.      Scoop batter into a pastry/piping bag fitted with 10mm plain nozzle. Pipe onto your prepared trays. (Trays with a macaron shell template underneath parchment paper or silpat.) Let it rest until a ‘skin’ forms on top or when you touch the top of the macaron shell,it’s dry and does not stick to your fingers.In humid weather under an air conditioner around 15-30 minutes, if not 10minutes would be sufficient but it really depends on the weather. Decorate as desired before baking in a preheated oven of 170 C conventional or 150 C for fan forced ovens for 15 minutes. Open & close the oven door twice during baking time.

9.      When it’s baked, remove from the oven and let it cool on a rack. Once it’s completely cool. It should be able to peel off easily, pair them with similar sizes.

NOTE:

Some ovens has an auto switch off when the door opens so opening and closing the oven door twice is recommended but if your oven is an old oven which does not have an auto switch when you open the door, leave the oven door slightly ajar (not too much) when baking to allow the steam to escape. You really need to know your oven for macarons. Do a trial and error sheet of macarons before baking all the macarons shells if unsure.

Boysenberry buttercream

Boysenberries compote

100g frozen boysenberries, defrosted whole

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1.       Pat dry the defrosted boysenberries with a paper towel.

2.      Cook the boysenberries with sugar until juice oozes out but not mushy.

3.      Turn off the heat and pour the lemon juice in and mix until combined.

4.     Let it cool completely before mixing it with the buttercream.

Swiss meringue buttercream

1/2 cup (100gr) sugar

2 large egg whites

1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

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. 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. 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.

To make the boysenberries compote buttercream:

Mix the completely cooled boysenberries compote into swiss meringue buttercream  until well combined.

To assemble:

Pair them with similar sizes. Pipe or spoon the filling in the size of a 20cent coin or about a big tablespoon into the centre of  one macaron shell then top and twist slightly with another macaron shell. Place them in the refrigerator overnight before eating

Adapted from Pierre Hermes:Macarons and also here