Best cocoa brownie.....in my kitchen.

Valentines day is just around the corner, so my chocolate mode is automatically turned on.

I'm sure that chocolate lovers have at least one brownie and one chocolate cake recipe in their minds. Brownie was the first chocolate dessert I learned how to make when I was in college. Most people love brownie, I think.

Maybe it was the simplicity of making brownie that makes it so popular. No need an electric mixer, just a whisk and spoon could make a good brownie.

When it comes to chewy brownie, I prefer using cocoa powder rather than chocolate bars. It's quick and easy. I made this brownie last night, so I can cut it nicer than every other times. However, it's not easy to resist tasting it when it just came out from the oven.

Eat it plain like this.

Or serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy it your way.

Vanilla macarons...

Time to get back to my comfort zone after a long hectic day. I'm always happy spending time in the kitchen.

Let's get back to the basic flavour...vanilla and chocolate, my comfort food.

The happiest moment is the moment when I licked the spoon of the melted chocolate. If you don't beleive me, try it yourself.

Today I added meringue powder into macaron batter. Now I like the idea of adding mernigue, I think the feet of macarons with meringue powder added look nicer than the one without. I maybe wrong, but that what I notice.

For the pattern on macaron shells, I just brushed it with leftover melted chocolate filling.

I feel much better now....that's the power of chocolate.

Enjoy.

Chocolate macarons.

The first week of year 2011 is almost gone.....pretty fast, right?
It had been a while that I let my Pinky and my oven stay calm in the kitchen. Time to get back to work!

I had some egg white,cocoa powder and some almonds left from last year. What else could I do besides making macarons.....angel food cake, meringue or pavlova. After thought back and forth, I ended up with macarons (again). I have tried making macarons in many flavours, but the chocolate flavour is still on the top list. Leaving macarons overnight makes it tastes even better.....don't you think so?

I love to tweak the recipe to experiment with this and that , but I seldom do it with macarons. Unfortuantely, I didn't have enough almonds to complete the recipe........no choice, I decided to go ahead with what I had on hand. In the worst case, I would get some sort of chocolate cookies, I guessed!

It seemed like baking luck was with me, I saw the feet came up after 5 minutes of baking. I would love to give my oven a big hug, if I could...ha ha. That's the joy of baking macarons. Why that feet are so important to us !!!!!!!

I just made my life simple today, filled it with salted caramel.

Now I have the reason to go shopping again since there is no more ingredients left for the next batch of my macarons.

Just snapped a few shots to record another flavor combinations of macarons that I did.

Enjoy your beautiful day.

2010 in review.

Another year passed by. There were many things that I was supposed to do, but I didn't . However, there were so many things that I did without planning. How's about you?

Today is a nice day...cool and breezy. I took my time looking back at my baking records.

My expereiments with macarons....I enjoyed ever single minute making each combination.

Brownie...or something made of chocolate will never fade away from my blog, it's my family favorite.

I'm glad I tried making homemade puff pastry but nothing can beat any dessert made of fresh fruits.

Not much into cakes decorating......need a lot of improvements.

It's all the joy of baking. Thanks for visiting and all your comments.

Have a wonderful year, everyone.