Plain Brazil nuts macarons

Nuts speak to me and it definitely can explain why I am totally crazy for nuts, specially Brazil nuts, pistachios, cashew nuts and peanuts. But I also adore almonds and hazelnuts. I can cook everything with them and eat them everyday. Actually, I always have grounded nuts around so I sprinkle some toasted almonds, peanuts or Brazil nuts over ice creams, mousses or puddings as an extra flavor. I love caramelized nuts to and I regularly make pralinés with both whole and grounded nuts and they are amazing.



I love nut-based biscuits such as amaretti, basler brünsli and macarons for example. There is something about the mixture of wiped egg whites and nuts which makes me totally amazed. This time I made macarons using grounded toasted Brazil nuts and the result is so incredibly good that I just couldn't stop eating them straight out of the oven. Once baked the macarons keep the dense and strong aroma of the Brazil nuts which reminds me of home and I feel more homesick than I actually am...



The macarons were made with the nuts a friend brought me from home some months ago and I saved them very tight because I just feel like saving some of the good things from home that I have until the day I can actually get some more, or buy some more, to replace my small stocks. Since I will be traveling soon and a good friend has already sent me some more nuts I could relax and enjoy my last box of nuts..



I love macarons without any filling, just plain as I find that most of the fillings can be pretty dominant, extremely sweet and disturb the light flavor of the macarons' shells. The shells are very sweet by nature as it is nothing but a nutty meringue, but I love the way they are. So, even if had planned to make an orange ganache to fill Brazil nut macarons, I just didn't make it and ate them like this.



I think it will fit wonderfully with some citrus filling, maybe next time I will go for it. Besides I find it really boring the process of macaron filling and I think they loose their texture once filled and become a little bit mushy after a couple of days. It resists a lot better if the shells are kept unfilled.


Brazil nuts Macarons

100 grams of egg whites (approximately 3 egg whites which must be aged for a couple of days at room temperature)
30 grams sugar
125 grams grounded Brazil nuts
200 grams confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

How:


First separate the egg whites and leave them covered on the counter at room temperature for two or even three days).

On the day you plan to make the macarons process the nuts and confectioners sugar in a food processor until well grounded, sift the mixture oncee, sift it again to remove all the big pieces of nuts. Line two or three large cookie pans with parchment paper and set aside.

In the bowl of a electric mixer beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the granulated sugar, one table spoon at a time and let the mixer continue beating until you have a glossy meringue.

Add the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture to the meringue in three or four parts folding until the dry ingredients were completely incorporated to the meringue and your don't have any more white parts in the batter. Make a test to check the batter. Put a teaspoon of batter on the corner of one of the prepared pans and if the batter flattens immediately you are ready if it form rustic peaks you still have to fold the batter couple of times more.

Once it is ready put the batter in a pastry bag, or a plastic bag, and pipe the batter to a diameter of three centimeters on the prepared pans. Let the piped macarons stand in room temperature for 15 to 30 minutes, while your oven is heating. You can sprinkle some nuts over the shells, before they dry completely. I sprinkled some of the bigger pieces of nuts which didn't pass through the sieve. You can also sprinkle some sugar or any other grounded spice or nut.

Bake the shells for 10 minutes at 150 C/275F in a preheated oven. It is important to turn the pans halfway through for a more equal baking.

Makes 60-70 shells (30-35 filled macarons)

Iced mate with pomegranate juice

Mate is my favorite cold drink and it reminds me of Brazil and those very hot days on the beach, in Rio de Janeiro, when happiness was easily confused with a glass of iced mate shaken with some lemon juice and served with manioc starch biscuits. As time went by I started to appreciate mate blended with passion fruit juice or cashew fruit pulp and lots of ice cubes.



For those of you used to drink green hot mate, I am sorry, I know iced mate might sound a little bit crazy, almost like a crime but it is so good, deliciously fresh and seductive with its smoky aroma and I just can't resist. If you don't know anything about mate it is an amazing and delicious South American herb which is drunk by native Americans since long before the arrival of the first European colonists. It is a delicious drink, hot or cold...



Iced mate with pomegranate juice

1 liter of water
2 tablespoons of roasted mate or black tea
one big and ripe pomegranate
1 tbsp of sugar (use more or less if you prefer)
Ice, lots of ice cubes


How:

In a pan boil one liter of water and once it is boiled add the mate and let it in infusion until it cools completely. After the infusion has cooled put in a jug and transfer it to the fridge. When you are prepared to serve transfer the chilled infusion to a blender, add the pomegranate pulp, the sugar, ice and blend it for 30 seconds as you don't want to smash the pomegranate seeds too much. Pass the mixture through a sieve, discard the solids and serve the drink with lots of ice cubes.

Serves 4

Autumn colors and pistachio raspberry financiers

Well, I will make things clear, I detest autumn and its changes but at the same time I can show appreciation for the different shades of yellow, red and brown of the leaves, while hanging the trees before they sadly fall on the ground. Naked trees are terribly sad, almost depressing, half dead, a waste of productive time. Ok, hate me, I just can't get over my tropical senses and appreciate the beauty of season changes. Hate me, no I can't. On a sunny day it all looks reasonable and the shades of yellow so totally won me over. It is deep blue and deep yellow that I am talking about.



Meanwhile, I have a question for you. Among all the nuts you love which on you hate the most? I hate pistachios because I always cut my skin trying to break their shell, how dangerous pistachios shells are? I just can't find reasonably priced peeled pistachios, without salt of course. Around here they just cost too much and come in very small portions, not for cooking, it is designed as a snack. If you want a lot of pistachios because you are going to ground them and bake cakes with them, you have to peel them yourself, that's what they think around here...



We are planning a party around here, I can't give much details as someone might sneak around here to learn all the details of our surprise plans. However, trying to prepare myself to all the work involved I started preparing some tart doughs and baked some batches of pistachio and raspberries financiers. After the little cakes cooled down they went straight to the freezer where they will stay until party day, some 10 days away. Financiers are just the perfect cake to be frozen, they keep the texture and the flavor pretty much the same.



Pistachio and Raspberry Financiers

100 grams unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely grounded pistachios
3/4 cup flour
1 cup confectioners sugar
4 egg whites
Scraps of half vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1/2 cup of fresh or frozen raspberries





How:

Butter twelve muffin cups or small financier molds and set aside. In a small pan melt butter with vanilla scraps and let them cook until golden brown (beurre-noisette), keep you eye on the butter until it is cooked as it can burn very easily and you will have to start again. Once it smell nutty and delicious remove it from heat and set aside.

In a food processor ground the pistachios with, flour and sugar. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. In a large bowl whisk egg whites with pinch of salt using a whisk (fouet) until foamy. Add the flour mixture, in batches, until well incorporated. If using vanilla extract add the vanilla extract and mix. Finally add the butter while it is still warm and mix to incorporate it into the batter completely. Divide the batter in the prepared pans and add two raspberries to each one of them. Bake the cake in a hot oven, at 180C/300F, for 15 minutes or until golden on the edge of the financiers. Sprinkle some confectioners sugar on top of cakes before serving.

Makes 12 cakes.

Homemade Dried Plums

In our garden we have two big plum trees, a small tree growing besides and some new trees are expected to join these group soon as many seeds were thrown around the area these last couple of years. The two producing trees have provided us with buckets and more buckets of plums and I almost freaked out trying to find different and interesting uses for all the plums we picked this year. Besides the obligatory distribution of fruits to family members and friends I made some fantastic dishes with our little cherry plums. We also picked some delicious yellow plums in our neighbors garden which were also included in the recipes.



In case some of you can read Portuguese, I have links to all the recipes of my plum adventure.

Oat and plum crumble pie
Two colors plums jam
Plum yogurt cake
Sweet sour plum sauce
Plum Liquor
Plum yogurt ice cream




It was a great fun to learn how to dry plums at home since I don't own a dehydrator and I used my conventional oven to do the job. All the instructions I found referred to the use of dehydrators so I had to invent and experiment with the oven. I learned that with a proper machine it would take 12 hours to dry big plums and it took more than 24 hours to dry my little plums. Besides the energy costs, which were seriously considered, there weren't any other inconvenient in the job, on the contrary, it was amazing to eat my homemade plums which looked a lot more like big sized raisins than prunes.



My prunes were small, because my plums were small pink ones, but they taste like the best prunes I have ever tried. They are sweet, tasty, soft and juicy ans I selected the best plums to be dried. It is fundamental that the plums to be dried are ripe but not over riped, washed and dried so the natural wax of the fruits is slightly removed. Our trees are totally organic, never received any chemical additive or fertilizers and we happily share our yearly harvest with birds, snails and insets in general who mostly prefer our strawberries and for that reason we had a huge production this year. The dried prunes can be caned in sterilized jars and they can last, unfortunately not as long as jam but they can resist pretty well protected from humidity and heat.



Drying plums

3 to 4 cups of perfectly ripe plums
1 dry and clean big sheet pan

How:

Transfer plums to pan let them dry in a previously heated oven at 80C for 12 hours. Check the fruits and if they are inflated with air make some holes on theirs skins with a tooth pick or a fork. Let them dry for another 12 hours and they will be dry but juicy and soft. If your plums are bigger and still didn't reach the perfect staged after 24 hours let them cook another 6 hours checking every two hours to certify that they did not over dry. Transfer to sterilized jars and keep the jars in cool dry places.

Drying plums at home is an act of love and patience but you will be reward with the most sweet and tasty prunes you ever tried. Good prunes require extremely good, sweet and ripe plums. Try eating your home made prunes with natural yogurt and a drizzly of honey, it is my favorite way to enjoy prunes.

Passion fruit mousse with milk caramel in a bath of milk chocolate

Last week I was totally seduced by the image of a passion fruit semifrio (semifreddo) I saw on blog Mesa para 4. The picture of the semifreddo was really attractive and I had to try it myself. I changed a couple of things in the recipe, for example, I substituted the 400ml of sweet condensed milk for 200 grams of milk caramel and I used passion fruit flavored gelatin instead of pineapple flavored gelatin.




This recipe was recently published on Mesa para 4 inspired in a recipe published on Portuguese food site Sabor Intenso which I had never heard before and I was quite pleased to find. This mousse is a very simple type of "juice-cream-and-gelatin-mousse" which is very popular in Brazil. Passion fruit mousse and passion fruit mousse tarts are, or better, remain among the most popular desserts in Brazil of the last 20 years and I just can't resist to try it again. Passion fruit and chocolate is just irresistible...





Passion fruit mousse with milk caramel in a bath of milk chocolate

400 ml pure passion fruit juice
500 ml heavy cream
200 grams milk caramel (doce de leite)
250 ml boiling water
2 sachets of passion fruit flavor gelatin (each sachet for 500ml liquid)

How:

In a saucepan dissolve the gelatin with the boiling water and let it cool. Meanwhile in a large bowl whisk milk caramel with passion fruit juice until totally incorporated. Add the cooled gelatin to juice-caramel mixture. Whip the cream until soft peaks. Add the cream to the caramel-gelatin mixture, in batches and with a spatula fold to incorporate cream completely. Divide into ramekins, glasses or pudding pans. Refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours. Serve with milk chocolate sauce.

Serves 10




Milk chocolate sauce

200 grams milk chocolate (I used with 40% cocoa)
200 ml low fat milk
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

How:

Cut chocolate into small bits and set aside. In a heavy bottom saucepan over medium heat bring milk and cocoa powder to a boil whisking to incorporate. Once mixture boils reduce heat to low and start adding the chocolate bits whisking to melt the chocolate completely. Remove from heat and whisk vigorously until chocolate is totally melted. Let it cool slightly and serve with the passion fruit mousse.

Strawberry and amburana macarons

Recently I have been thinking a lot about amburana as I see the recipes the girls have made after they received their packages of amburana seeds. I love these seeds so much not only for their amazing flavor and perfume but for their amazing healing powers. Amburana can really help troubled stomachs and I have been using them on my milk every night and it feels so good. I used to boil some vanilla seeds in my milk but have totally substituted vanilla for amburana seeds for their fantastic medicinal effects, amazing flavor and cost much cheaper.



The strawberry macaron is the result of a strawberry confectioners sugar I found on the other day. The first time I saw the box in the supermarket I was suspicious but after that I just could not ignore their boxes anymore and just had to buy it even if I don't like artificially colored macarons.

There is a complication in using the strawberry confectioners sugar because it is not pure sugar and it contains some parts of potato starch. However, since the regular confectioners sugar is not pure either and also contains potato starch in it, I didn't find it a real threat to the macarons as I have been using non pure sugar all this time since I neither have proper equipment to produce extra fine sugar nor the intention to produce it.



The kids loved the strawberry flavored macarons and were really interested to tell me that they had enjoyed them very much. I filled the shell with a thick amburana pastry cream, (Crème Pâtissière) worked just perfect for the filling. I was a little concerned about the results but it was very pretty satisfying. The hard part is to form the pairs. I normally form the pairs but I don't fill them all immediately, I usually fill half a dozen or eight of them ( one or two for each of us) and I fill the others as we wish some more. I don't like filled macarons to stand more than 24 hours outside the refrigerator, they don't taste the same in my opinion...



Strawberry and amburana macarons

Inspired by all those recipes available at Pure Gourmandise which offers around 79 different flavors of macarons to tempt my life...


100 grams of egg whites (around 3 egg whites)
30 grams sugar
125 grams almond flour (grounded almonds)
200 grams confectioners sugar ( I used 100 grams of strawberry confectioners sugar and 100 grams of regular confectioners sugar)

How:

There are many blogs and sites which explain how to make the right macaron but I will describe here the simple way I use to make them which is pretty much inspired by this post as I don't make with Italian meringue, I prefer the simple light French meringue. You can also check this this post and these ones.

First separate the egg whites and leave them covered (well there are mosquitos even here, in Norway) on the counter at room temperature for one, two or even three days).

On the day you plan to make the macarons process the almonds and confectioners sugar in a food processor until well grounded, sift the mixture one, sift it again to remove all the big pieces of almond from the flour and set aside. Line two large cookie pans with parchment paper and set aside.

In the bowl of a electric mixer beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the granulated sugar, one table spoon at a time and let the mixer continue beating until you have a glossy meringue.

Add the flour mixture to the meringue in three or four parts folding until the dry ingredients were completely incorporated and you have no more white parts of meringue apparents. Make a test to check the batter. Put a teaspoon of batter on the pan and if the batter flattens immediately you are ready if it form peaks you still have to fold the batter couple of times more.

Put the batter in a pastry bag and pipe the batter to a diameter of two centimeters on the prepared pans. Let the piped macarons stand in room temperature for 15 to 30 minutes, while your oven is heating.

Bake for about 10 at 140-160 C oven in preheated oven. It is important to turn the pans halfway through for a more equal baking.

Makes 60 shells (30 filled macarons)



Amburana pastry cream

500 ml milk
6 amburana seeds
4 egg yolks
6 tablespoons of sugar
4 tablespoons of corn starch

How:

In a heavy bottom saucepan over low heat cook milk and amburana seeds until the infusion boils. Set aside and let it stand for 15 minutes. In another heavy bottomed saucepan whisk yolks with sugar until you have a double size mixture very light color. Add corn starch and whisk some more to incorporate. Remove and discard the amburana seeds from milk infusion. Warm the infused milk again and before it starts to boils add one part of milk to yolk mixture whisking vigorously to incorporate. Add the rest of the milk to the yolk mixture whisky vigorously. Transfer pan to stove and cook the mixture for a couple of minutes over medium heat or until it starts to thicken. Once it boils remove it from heat, transfer to a glass bowl, cover with plastic film and let it cool completely before using. It can be kept refrigerated for up 5 days.

Images of a summer...

Before I can allow myself to move into chocolates and the density of the cold seasons I revisited my photo archive to check my spring-summer production. Strong colors, fruits, flowers and flavors which will not be forgotten...