Made: Macaron Take 5

My 5th attempt on macarons...
If you consider my Chinese New Year stint as 2 batches, this would be my 6th.
They're still not perfect - with slightly sticky bottoms that I have to peel from the parchment paper.

Plain Macarons with chocolate ganache

My favourite part - pairing up the macarons

Look! I even managed to pair these egg-shaped macarons.

Made: Macarons for Chinese New Year

恭喜发财 万事如意！

This is my comparison of various recipes...
Settled for this one at Not so Humble Pie after three failures with a swiss macaron and the I Heart Macarons book.
I aged my egg whites in the refrigerator for 3-6 days and skipped the dehydrated egg whites this time as I forgot to buy them.
Added some lemon juice when whisking the egg whites at early stage and used the whisk attachment from my good old Braun Multiquick hand blender as I wanted a really slow speed.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream recipe from Tartelette

Made: The best Banana Cake ever!

Waiting patiently for his banana cake to cool down.

Recipe from Wen's Delight
I reduced sugar to 110g as I used "ang bak" bananas which were very ripe and sweet.
The best banana cake ever... although it almost killed my handmixer :)

Made: Cashew Nut Cookies

S helping me put "makeup" on the cookies so they will glow with radiance :)


Recipe from Wen's Delight
I substituted the icing sugar with 170g of castor sugar