April 20th, 2010 — 9:41am
Friday night Suzie and tried our hand at making macarons. We followed a recipe we found on Bakerella
90 grams of aged egg whites. (We used 4 eggs and had some left over)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
110 grams of ground almonds
200 grams powdered sugar
Whip the egg whites until foamy then gradually add the granulated sugar until it looks like a glossy meringue. Be careful not to over beat
Place the almonds and powdered sugar into a bowl. Add the whipped egg white mixture and gently fold. If you want to add colouring now is the time. All the recipes I’ve seen say powdered colouring but seeing as we didn’t have any we added a tiny splash of red liquid colouring.
The recipes say not to over fold and because we’d never made these before we were very cautious. We could probably have folding the colouring in a little better, but hey these were only a test run!
Pipe the mixture on to greaseproof paper and leave to harden. We left ours for about an hour whilst we had dinner. Most recipes say between half and hour to an hour.
The bake for 18 to 20 minutes at 140º or gas mark 1-2.
Then leave to cool
We filled ours with a white chocolate ganache.
We melted 100g of white chocolate and then stirred in 150ml of double cream. We left for a few minutes until the mixture became thick then spooned on to one half of the macaron then sandwiched another on top to complete the look.
Having never tried a macaron before we have NO idea whether they turned out right or not! They are weirdly addictive. When I asked Has to try one, he couldn’t decide whether he liked them or not, calling them weird. Our friends gave the same verdict. Weird but nice. They soon polished them off though!
They have a strange texture, almost like meringue. Ours were quite sweet but we think that had to do with the filling. I’m currently on the hunt for powdered food colouring to have another go, maybe this time with a different filling.
Comment » | Baking
April 19th, 2010 — 2:19pm
Wow, that’s come round fast!
1 comment » | Countdown
April 19th, 2010 — 9:53am
Good Morning! Good weekends?
I dragged my poor bridesmaids around shopping again on Saturday. We visited Bridal Gowns of Droitwich. They have a really good offer on at the moment which would mean we’d get a dress free.
We found one dress by Hillary Morgan that impressed everyone. It’s a little different to the styles the girls have tried on before and I have to be honest that I wasn’t particularly enamoured with it when I saw it on the hanger. Once the girls had it on it looked completely different.
The pictures I’ve found of it don’t really do it any justice. It’s so difficult trying to envisage how a dress will look when it fits or when it’s been made in the right colour.
The original picture of the dress can be found here. I’ve made very crude mock ups of the dresses in the similar colours we would have just to get you’re opinions.
Similar colours to what the older two bridesmaids would wear
Similar colours to what the younger two bridesmaids would wear.
They do offer a younger style dress with straps for my youngest cousin Sophie to wear. She did look very sweet, swooshing around in her dress.
So what do you think to these? Yay or Nay? Love it or hate it? Not sure? Either way I’d love to know!
3 comments » | Bridesmaids
April 16th, 2010 — 11:37am
Yay, Friday’s here! The week after a bank holiday always seems harder, I’ve been spoilt with only working for 4 day for 2 weeks and it just seems very unfair to ask me to go back to working 5 days! *Strop*
BUT the weekend is here! Doing anything nice? Mine will consist of baking, bridesmaid dress shopping (again), catching up with Lost, seeing friends and sleeping in. Perfect!
Happy Weekend xxx
Comment » | Some Things...
April 15th, 2010 — 11:20am
Suzie and I are going to attempt to make Macarons tomorrow evening.
Wish us luck! We’re going to be following this recipe from Bakerella. I hear they are difficult to get right so any handy tips and advice would be appreciated!
Comment » | Baking
April 14th, 2010 — 2:44pm
One of the first things I did after getting engaged (and continue to do so) is sign up to every wedding related newsletter I can find.
Gail’s List – White Wedding Pages is specifically for brides and grooms in West Midlands. She lets me know about any local fayres and today I received these offers and thought someone may find them useful.
If you then please quote Gail’s List Wedding Discount Vouchers when calling.
Magician - 2 hours of close-up magic – normally £350 now just £295.
Russ Stokes 07773 803933
Transport - 25% discount, free bottle of bubbly and the quote inc all mileage. Beetlebugs 07565 426381
Photography - £125 off my photography package price until July 2010. Jon Thorne 07734 459 708
Videoography - £100 off any package – call by 31/03/10 to get this offer. Lucid Moments 01384 821381
Bridesmaids Dress – £100 off, when having your bridal gown made. Greensleeves 01386 446242
Please note I am not affiliated with Gail’s List or any of the companies offering discounts. I’m just being nice and passing along the offers!
Comment » | Misc
April 14th, 2010 — 8:12am
The other evening when Suzie and Hayley came round to help make up our wedding invitations we made a little video.
I love the cameo from my dad!
Thank you Suzie, Hayley and Mom for all your help. Big kisses to Has who helped me edit the video (disclaimer: It was my shaky and inexperienced hand holding the camera for the close ups not the boy with the degree in video production!)
Music is the Banana Splits by the Dickies.
2 comments » | DIY, Stationery
April 13th, 2010 — 12:06pm
One of my jobs for April was to research honeymoon hotels. So, what do you think of this one?
The
Moana Surfrider in
Honolulu. Also known as “The First Lady of Waikiki” the first beach front resort opened in 1901, the re-opened in 2007 as a
Westin hotel.
The
location is perfect for us, it’s central without being too busy. We won’t be renting a car for our stay as I’ve heard parking in Waikiki is a nightmare and expensive. The buses will suit us just fine.
I love the colonial style furnishings, it all looks so grand and elegant.
Another plus point is that this hotel is a
Westin, which means it comes with
Heavenly Beds!! We stayed in a
Westin when we went to
Orlando a few years ago, and I seriously can’t tell you how amazingly comfortable they are. They really do live up to their name! When I win the lottery I’m getting one of these bad boys!
Although we won’t be slumming it on our honeymoon, we have a budget to keep to. However Honolulu is somewhere we’ve both decided we’d like to really treat ourselves.
Ideally we want an ocean view room with a balcony. I can envisage us ordering room service for breakfast (french toast for me please!) and sitting in the morning sun on our balcony planning out the rest of the day. Bliss.
We’re pretty sure this will be our Honolulu honeymoon hotel, we should be able to book the majority of our hotels by the end of the month. Once that’s done there’ll be no stopping us! How real will it all feel then!
1 comment » | Honeymoon
April 13th, 2010 — 9:58am
Even though our day invitations are not yet finished, I’ve made a start on our evening invites. I wanted to keep them as simple as possible.
I’ve carried over the purple swirls and created a document just shy of A5. I shall print them out on the same ivory pearl paper as the day invitations and back them with a lilac pearl card.
What do you think? Also my next question is… Should I include a map and directions in with the evening invites?
Comment » | DIY, Stationery
April 12th, 2010 — 10:14am
We’re terrible with spare change. Has hates carrying any thing lower than a 50 pence piece as it bulks out his wallet and I always put my “twos and ones” in a pot by my desk for the same reason.
I bought us a small wooden bowl to keep our spare change in but that didn’t seem to contain it. We would still end up with a sock drawer full of “coppers.” We also started to keep it in large pint glasses in a cupboard, until they started to over flow. It was around this time last year that we took 3 pint glasses full of small change to Tesco to use their coin machines. It takes a small fee but we found that depositing nothing larger than a 20 pence piece we had over £60 in change.
At Christmas, Has’ Mom Sue bought us a large jar with an electronic coin counter on the top. So now when ever we see a rouge 5p lying around it goes straight in the jar. Our aim is to fill it and change it into dollars for a treat on our honeymoon.
Since Christmas we’ve managed to save over £50 in small change. We never put anything above 20p in the jar (we have a separate pot for 50p’s, £1 and £2 coins) it feels good to see our change grow, and to know it has a purpose instead of just sitting around with our socks!
2 comments » | Misc
