Macarons, are supersweet meringue based almond cookies that doesn't conatain any flour. For years I have carried the thought about preparing those, but as I am not a huge fan myself, then I postponed it all the time. Until some weeks ago, when I started to read all the different recipes and preparation explanations.

Well, what can I say. I can tell you that first patch were not macarons. They were nice crispy chocolate cookies that were eaten so fast, that I had no chance to take a picture. Despite of the failure, I wanted to try again. This time I prepared them totally differently. The texture and the taste were as they should be, maybe not as sweet as original. Only the shape needed improvements. I considered it well, as I had no equipment what so ever to prepare them. Out of all my pipingbags they had wrong sizes or wrong ending and so they came all different shapes and different sizes. Maybe I exaggerate a little, but they also were not so perfect round cookies as they should have.

So, last week I tried third time and I can say that they get better and better. Of course I invested a little for the right equipment and was more familiar with the preparation process.

Macaron:

• 3 egg whites (room temperature)
• 110 g almond flour (sifted)
• 170 g powder sugar (sifted)
• 40 g granulated sugar

(for chocolate ones I added 30g of cocoa powder to the mixture)

For preparations first thing you have to do is to sift almond flour, powder sugar and if wanted cocoa powder to a bowl and mix it gently. It is wery important that you weight all the products and that they are in room temperature. Also sifting is very important. Beat the egg whites strong and add slowly granulated sugar while mixing/whisking. Egg whites should be strong and if you turn the bowl around, then they should stay in the bowl. When this happens, you've done it right.

Next you have to start mixing the egg whites to the almond flour/sugar mix. I suggest to do it slow by slow. Adding first half of the egg whites and mixing it in, then 1/4 and slowly turning it in, from down to up and then the last part. I suggest to mix it as less as possible. If you mix it too much, then the air is out and the cookies won't rise in the oven. Of course too much air inside is also not good. Try to get the mixture into a lava consistency. The mixture should sink flat in about 5-7 seconds. If it does that, then your mixture is right.

What to do next. Put the mixture into a pipingbag or use a small spoon and put little cookies into a baking tray. Be careful not to put them to close to each other. When done that then trop the baking tray from about 10 cm high several times to the table. This is important, because then all the airbubbles go out and the mixture evens up in the baking tray. Leave them to rest for about 45-60 mins then cook in the 150 degrees in about 12-15 min. Cool down and fill them with lemon curd, flavorised butter cream or with chocolate ganache. And there you have approx. 24 nice and tasty macarons.

I will start my first cakethemed blogpost with this Tiramisu Cake. I chose this to be first, because this is also the first ever ordered cake. Outside my family of course - they get the cakes and everything else whenever they want. But this is the very first cake I sold. I consider it a very important milestone for me.

But well, as already said, then this is one of many many tiramisu variations and comes on a shape of cake. I am also pretty happy with the decorations, considering the lack of artistic side on me. For basis I baked a regular biscuit and added a little lemon peel to give it a little bittery taste. What is very important baking a biscuit, is that the oven is always preheated and that you do not open the oven door while baking it. For many people the biscuit tends to fall down after baking. You can awoid that for mixing the eggs to very thick foam and mixing flour in only one way, from down to up and not mixing the pastry too long. If this doesn't help, then mix 2 tablespoons of starch with flour. That should do the magic.

The cake has 3 layers and all of them are soaked with strong coffee. Filling contains mascarpone, whipped cream and a little Amaretto. I didn't want to use raw eggs on this one, while the cream tends to be more liquid then. Top layer is covered with thick Cacao layer and decorated with dark chocolate and physalis.