Kirbie's Cravings

Nutella ice cream sandwiches

You know what has been my most popular post the last few months? My post on nutella chocolate chip cookies. I am surprised at how popular this post is; it's up there as one of my most popular of all time. These cookies have been a big hit with my family as well. We all love how the cookies stay fudgey and chewy rather than turning hard/stale/cakey the next day.

So I know the days are getting shorter and Fall is pretty much here, but I'm still trying to hold onto summer. We had a nice, sunny weekend, so I decided to make ice cream sandwiches.

I made my nutella chocolate chip cookies and I made my nutella ice cream. I froze the nutella ice cream in a cylindrical shaped container that was approximately the diameter of my cookies the night before. The next day, I used a knife around the edges until the ice cream came out, and then sliced my block of ice cream and put them on the cookies.

The result was a sweet delicious messy treat. Because the ice cream is homemade and meant to stay soft and creamy, it melted pretty fast. I wanted to take more pictures of these, but I honestly didn't have time because the ice cream kept dripping.

You can find the nutella cookie recipe here. I'd recommend reducing the white sugar by about 1/4 cup. I found the cookies a bit too sweet this time, and the nutella flavor not as noticeable.

You can find the nutella ice cream recipe here.

Chocolate Macarons

As I alluded to in my macaron ice cream sandwich post, after my first attempt at macarons, I was eager to try again. Of course, I needed to have aged egg whites first, so I had to wait a little.

I debated whether to stick to the same recipe or check out another one. Annie's Eats had blogged about chocolate macarons as being her first successful attempt. This seemed like a sign. Of course, like Annie, I was slightly concerned. I had read an article by David Lebovitz that chocolate macarons are the hardest to master.

However, Annie's recipe seemed simple enough and she had success with it. So I gave it a shot. Learning from my mistakes on my first attempt, this time the process of making macarons went pretty smoothly. And rather than having some misshapen shells, almost all my macarons puffed up completely and had perfectly round circles. Horray!

The wait time between piping and putting these in the oven is a lot longer than my previous matcha macaron recipe. However, I think this may have helped the shells to developer a nice, firm exterior prior to being baked.

While I'm definitely no master yet at making these, I did feel like this bunch was a lot easier to make than my first one. I can't wait to try lots of other flavors now that I know how to make these.

I talked about my main tips on my last post, but here they are again:

1. Make sure you use a scale to measure out your ingredients. This is something I kept reading about over and over again. You want precise measurements.

2. Age your egg whites. I aged mine for 48 hours at room temperature. When I first read about having to age egg whites, I was a bit taken aback about this, but I was reassured by reading this on other blogs.

3. Here is a great video showing you the different steps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDo0SgDKLVw&feature=player_embedded

Chocolate Macarons (adapted from Annie's Eats)

Ingredients:
For the macarons:
110 gm blanched almond flour (I used JK Gourmet Almond Flour)
200 gm minus 2 tbsp. confectioners’ sugar
2 tbsp. cocoa powder (Dutch-process preferred)
100 gm egg whites (from about 3 eggs), aged at room temperature for 24-48 hours
50 gm granulated sugar

For the espresso ganache:
½ cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
4 tbsp. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1½ tsp. espresso powder

Directions

1. Add the confectioners' sugar, almond flour and cocoa powder to the bowl and process until blended.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites on medium-high speed until foamy.  Gradually add the granulated sugar and continue beating until a smooth, shiny meringue with stiff peaks forms.  Add the ground almond mixture to the bowl with the meringue and quickly but gently fold together using a wide rubber spatula until no streaks remain.  You want to achieve a thick batter that ribbons or flows from the spatula when lifted.  

2. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.  Transfer the batter to a piping bag fitted with a plain wide round tip.  Pipe into small rounds on the prepared baking sheets (each round should be about 1-1½ inches in diameter), spaced about 2 inches apart.  Let sit at room temperature for about an hour to develop a hard shell.  

3. Preheat the oven to 300˚F.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on size.  Transfer the pans to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely before moving the cookies.  

4. While the cookies are cooling, make the ganache.  Combine the cream, butter and sugar in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.  Place the chopped chocolate in a small heatproof bowl.  Bring the cream mixture to a simmer, remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate.  Let stand 2 minutes, then whisk gently in small circular motions until the ganache forms.  Blend in the espresso powder.  Let the mixture cool until it is thick enough to pipe. 

5. Once the cookies are totally cooled, match them up by size.  Pipe a layer of ganache onto the flat side of one cookie of each pair.  Sandwich together with the remaining cookie, pushing the filling to the edges.  Store in an airtight container.

Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches (Matcha macarons with pistachio ice cream)

I got the idea to make macaron ice cream sandwiches when I ate one on my visit to Milk in Los Angeles. These are oh so perfect for this hot weather and combine two of my favorite desserts. Of course, first I had to make French macarons, which I had no yet attempted.

French macarons has been on my to-do list for quite a while, but I've been really intimidated. I've read about how difficult how they are to make, how precise everything must be, disaster stories, etc. I tried to read as much as possible about macarons before my first attempt, but the more I read, the more daunting it appeared as my head was full of so many different tips.

My first attempt turned out better than I expected, though obviously I still needed some work. My biggest problem was piping. I don't have good piping skills to begin with, so this made trying to pipe perfect circles even more difficult. I ended up making quite a mess and having to redo most of my circles. Also, my cookie sheet is a bit smaller than my silpat mat. This is normally not a problem with my cookie dough batter. But with these circles, the fact that the sheets were not perfectly flat caused problems with my piped circles, making them weird shapes. The same problem occurred with parchment paper. I buy the rolls, and so it doesn't lay perfectly flat.

Well my first attempt wasn't perfect, at least they came out resembling macaron shells. And since I was planning on making ice cream sandwiches with them, they still worked. I've since made macarons again and was much more successful in my second attempt, which I'll blog about later.

I haven't really made ice cream sandwiches before. I took a container of pistachio ice cream and let it melt enough so that I could easily scoop it out and spread it to a thin layer on some parchment paper. Then I used a circle cookie cutter and made cuts into the ice cream. I immediately put the circle ice cream cuts in between two macarons and put them in the freezer. If you are stacking the macaron sandwiches, make sure you put parchment paper in between, or else the macaron shells may stick together.

I don't know if there is an easier way to make ice cream sandwiches. I'll have to do some research because this process took me a while and it was really messy. A lot of melted ice cream. At one point, BF asked me what I was doing. "Making a mess," I informed him honestly.

These came out pretty tasty. They did take a while to make. It helps that these freeze well, so you can make a lot at a time and keep them in the freezer.

After two macaron attempts, here are some tips I think are important:

1. Make sure you use a scale to measure out your ingredients. This is something I kept reading about over and over again. You want precise measurements.

2. Age your egg whites. I aged mine for 48 hours at room temperature. When I first read about having to age egg whites, I was a bit taken aback about this, but I was reassured by reading this on other blogs.

3. Here is a great video showing you the different steps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDo0SgDKLVw&feature=player_embedded

Matcha Green Tea Macarons (adapted from Food, Je T'aime)

Ingredients

200 g powdered sugar
110 g almond flour (I used JK Gourmet Almond Flour,), which I thought was great. It was ground extremely fine)
1 tbsp high-quality matcha powder
90 g aged egg whites (about three eggs)
30 g fine granulated sugar

Directions

1.Put almond flour, matcha powder and powdered sugar into a food processor and grind together.

2. Place egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and begin whisking on high, gradually adding the granulated sugar little by little until you form a stiff meringue

3. Fold the dry ingredients into the meringue in two installments. Fold until the ingredients are just mixed in, and you can no longer distinguish meringue from dry ingredients--until there are no noticeable streaks of white or green

4. Place batter into a piping bag and cut half inch tip at the bottom

5. Pipe batter onto silicon or parchment paper lined baking sheets  in 1 1/2 inch rounds, about 2 inches apart, giving them room to spread

6. Let macarons shells sit for 30 minutes.

7. Bake in 300F convection oven for about 15 minutes depending on your oven

8. Let cool on baking sheets and once cooled, place ice cream inside.

9. Freeze after putting in ice cream. Place parchment paper in between each sandwich so the shells won't stick together.