Raspberry salad dressing

Oops! It's been a really long time since I wrote any posts, and for that I apologise! Things have been pretty busy recently and I haven't had time spare to invest in my hobbies and interests (booooo).

I managed to do a couple of things today that have delighted me in the kitchen department, and I thought I'd share one of them. I'd share the other but who really wants to see my online shopping order? No, didn't think so.

The item worth sharing is this; raspberry salad dressing. Oh my. Quite the unexpected delight.

It really is this simple:

1 tablespoon of raspberry jam (yes, you heard me)
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
Splash of water

I put the jam in an empty and clean old jam jar, then added the balsamic, screwed the lid on tight and shook it like a Polaroid picture (that's "vigorously", to young folk out there). Then I added a splash of water to loosen the whole thing, and hey presto, salad dressing enough for two meals. I'm keeping the second serving in the jam jar in the fridge for tomorrow lunch time.

I would recommend making homemade croutons to go on top of whatever salad you choose to dress with this, because you're going to want to soak up every last drop. It was delicious. It was sweet, but didn't taste like someone had put pudding on dinner.

French macarons

I made French macarons! Ooh fancy!

I was trawling through Pinterest a few evenings ago and stumbled across a recipe for French macarons that promised to be easy, so I thought "heck, why not give it a go", and did just that.

The recipe I used is this one, courtesy of Martha Stewart.

I halved the recipe in order to halve the risk of wasted ingredients, in case it all went pear-shaped, so I used:

Just over half a cup of ground almonds
Well over half a cup of icing sugar (some of which I made by grinding caster sugar, as I ran out of icing sugar)
A pinch of salt (which you'll note isn't actually added in the instructions Martha gives, though is in her ingredients list... hmmm)
2 egg whites
1/4 cup caster sugar
A drop of vanilla essence
Raspberry jam, stirred into a runnier consistency

I sieved the ground almonds and icing sugar into a bowl and put them to the side. In a large bowl I whisked the egg whites and salt until they were frothy, then slowly added the caster sugar while whisking until the mixture formed medium peaks. Slop in the vanilla essence somewhere along the way too.

Then I folded the sieved mixture into the eggs (it said to do it the other way, but I had to use the big bowl for the eggs so I just kept them in it and added the dry ingredients to it). The whole lot was mixed together thoroughly, keeping in lots of lovely air.

I then used a sandwich bag and a piping nozzle (I tore the proper piping bag doing some hardcore cupcake icing last year) to pipe what should have been inch wide blobs onto a lined baking sheet. Note for next time - if it looks like an inch when it lands it will spread to 2 inches (minimum!).

I then let them sit for 30 mins (should have let them sit for 1 hour, in retrospect) and then baked them at 170 degrees for 14 minutes, turning once. 

This gave me 16 halves. It should have given me quite a bit more than that, and if I'd done them small enough it would have done!

I let them cool, which took hardly any time at all, and then squashed them together with jam in between.

They tasted lovely and for a first attempt I'm pleased. Next time, however, I'll let them sit longer, make them smaller and use less jam. They were very very soft in texture and could really have done with being harder. But yay for trying.