Hazelnut Macarons with Nutella Buttercream

Happy Saturday night blog friends!  What does one do on the weekends when drinking and going out is not an option (pregnancy week 29....getting there!) well, if you're me...you make cookies, so I decided to go for round two of the tricky yet delicious Macaron.  I wanted to see if I could remedy the cracky situation by switching up the rack positions in the oven....

I followed the same recipe, only using hazelnut extract in place of vanilla, and things were looking good when I piped the macarons onto the cookies sheet....but then, once again, partial disaster struck....

Curses!!!!!!  But I got about a half batch of pretty ones....

 

The house smelled delightful, and I quite liked the hazelnut version of these little guys.... I whipped up a quick buttercream frosting with nutella, recipe below:

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of butter, softened
1/4 cup of nutella
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons of milk

Blend together the nutella and butter, scraping down the size of the bowl, add in your powdered sugar and mix until evenly blended.  Finally, add in the milk, a little at a time, until the frosting is at your desired consistency.

I decided to pipe the frosting this time to keep things cleaner, which worked out well, then I sandwiched the cookies.  They really are best the day after baking (I know, I know, baked goods anomaly) so I stored the majority in the fridge for tomorrow :)

Yum! This version is very tasty!  And I think I will go ahead and officially make September macaron month since I need to attempt this at least one more time to try to alleviate the cracking issue.  I think I am going to lower the oven temp 10-15 degrees next time, and bake the cookies slightly longer.  It seems like the bottom rack of cookies is too hot, and the ones that come out perfectly are not quite done when the 18 minute baking time is up.

I also think the cracking could be caused by the way I'm piping the batter.  the cracks looks suspiciously like my swirl pipe pattern, don't they?  Maybe I'll try something different on that front as well....

Until next time, blog friends.... I hope you're all out having rockin' Saturday nights.  I'm gonna eat some Macarons, and go to sleep!

Vanilla Macarons with White Chocolate Buttercream

Ever since my dear friend Sarah and I had a moderately successful experience making the finicky yet delicious Macaron I've been meaning to give them another go.  The somewhat labor intensive process, coupled with the expense of buying almond meal (the key ingredient) continued to put off this project until at last I broke down at the supermarket and bought the needed supplies last week.

Couple that with a very stressful week at work, and a challenging "baking for fun" project was an absolute must. 

I've had my eye on this recipe, spotted on pinterest months ago, which comes along with some excellent direction and troubleshooting tips for these bad boys.  Here is my version:

Ingredients:
115 grams blanched almond flour
230 grams powdered sugar
144 grams egg whites
72 grams sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

White Chocolate butter cream frosting (recipe to follow) after the jump.

White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Ohhhhhh my goodness I suck at blogging lately!  Apologies! I haven't been baking much honestly, in hopes that it will prevent me from devouring all of the cookies and gaining way more weight during this pregnancy than necessary.  However, the other night Joe started to complain about the lack of homemade baked goods in the house, so I whipped up a quick batch of these tasty creations.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
dash salt
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cup oatmeal
1 cup white chocolate chips

I improvised this "half batch" recipe form my usual oatmeal raisin cookies, and although quite tasty, I would do a few things differently.  1) I'd definitely use barely softened butter, mine was too soft and combined with a hot day I ended up with a monster cookie instead of a dozen small cookies (pictures to come) and 2) for the same reason, I would likely bump up the flour a bit in this have recipe to 3/4 cups.

Following the usual process, mix up your wet ingredients, following that with mixing in the dry ingredients....

Roll into balls, and space out on your parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake at 375F for 10-11 minutes. 

I let them go for 10 minutes and I think I pulled them prematurely.  I was concerned for them, however, as you will see in a moment.  They could have used a bit more personal space.....

Wooooooopsies.  Just a couple of quick slices with the edge of my cookie cutter and they were relatively cookie-shaped once more....

Slightly square....but they still tasted good.  These were way too soft due to the excessive spreading, so a few of them ended up looking like this....

Could make a good ice cream topping no?

All in all, these were tasty and definitely appeased my cookie-craving husband.  Not the most well executed cookie of my repertoire, but not all cookies have to be pretty, I don't discriminate.

Happy baking!