Experimenting on Creme Brulee

Yesterday, I tried my hand on macaron and it turned out pretty good. The thing about it is I only used egg whites, so I now have several yolks sitting in the fridge. What to do? I couldn't just toss them out. So i decided I'll try to make creme brulee / leche flan. Unfortunately, the laziness in me hindered me from making leche flan. Its a more tedious process. You have to make the caramel then the custard and wait till the caramel sits before actually putting the custard then its oven time.

My ama used to make leche flan all the time way back when I was a kid. It was pretty normal at home to have leche flan stashed in the fridge. I found it weird that every one was making such a fuss about creme brulee. After all, the two are almost the same. I'd like to think of leche flan as an inverted version of creme brulee.

Anyway, don't you ever wonder why they started making leche flan in the Philippines? I've been trying to search the net to verify my historical account. After all, it is based on my ama's stories, but to no avail, I couldn't find one. They started making leche flan as an externality of the construction process of churches and other stone buildings back in the Spanish Era. The Filipinos were forced to work through polo y servicios and egg whites were used as an adhesive for the building's walls/foundation. Egg yolks would have no use in the process and would most likely be thrown out. But the Filipino trait of not wanting to waste anything, especially food, paved way to develop the leche flan making process in the country.

Going back to my creme brulee experiment, the process is to mix the yolk with some sugar and temper it with heated vanilla infused cream. Put the mixture into ramekins and bake them at 250F for an hour in a water bath. Once they are done, burn some sugar on top and voila! You have your creme brulee (unfortunately, i dont have a torch so i'm skipping the sugar topping).

Economics is really everywhere. Although i am not sure if making this dessert is a positive or negative externality for me. :|

The Macaron Project

Spring break is about to end and I am in a bit of a quandary. I was just too sluggish to drag my lazy butt out of the apartment, so I decided to bake. For a while, I've been thinking of making my favorite French pastry, macarons, but I felt that it would be too difficult. Its basically the same concern with everyone else in the blogosphere. Macarons are simply made of several ingredients, almond flour, powdered sugar, granulated sugar and egg whites. I already have the last three ingredients, but no almond flour. Almond flour is simply ground almonds. I also do not have almonds, but I have pecans. I read that you can substitute any nut in the absence of almonds, but I think almonds would still be the better option for this pastry. I ended up with a pool of pecan butter after drinking it too much. On my second attempt, I decided to put the powdered sugar in while grinding and it turned out perfect. Most of the blogs I read said that baking paper is a must, even if you are using a non-stick pan. But I was just too stubborn. Refer to the second sentence, I was too lazy to go out. So I simply used the non stick pan. Lets just say the outcome is not the best, but its not a flop either. 

Contrary to my other kitchen explorations, this project was not measured out exactly. I just mixed everything up. I even had a problem with choosing the baking time and temperature and settled for 300F and a longer time 20 minutes.

After baking the cookies, I made strawberry butter cream and chocolate ganache. I tend to hoard things. So I have all the other ingredients.

 Chocolate-dipped strawberry buttercream filled pecan macarons

They do not look like patiserrie-quality goodies but I loved the taste and texture. I think I need more practice to perfect this but I need to grab almonds first.