Friday Food Post

This week I tried 3 new recipes and 1 of those was a total fail, but worth a second try!

First, I made dinner Monday night with bacon guacamole grilled cheese and sweet potato fries.
The grilled cheese was super easy. I just never thought of putting guacamole on it before. First you cook your bacon and make the guacamole. Then butter the outside part of 2 slices of sourdough bread. Sprinkle with cheddar and Monterrey jack cheese. Top with bacon, guacamole, and finally the top slice of bread. Grill to your satisfaction! It was super yummy!

Next, I tried the sweet potato fries. I've been trying to find the recipe that Smashburger uses for their fries. I found a recipe on pinterest that looked very similar. First, I soaked the julienned fries in water for 2 hours. Then I lightly coated them with cornstarch followed by a little olive oil. I sprinkled on a pinch of salt and herbs de provonce.   Next, you can see where my fail happened. In a rush, I wanted to cook them all at once, well that just ended up in a big gooey mess! I overcrowded them. I will try this recipe again, but only use a single layer next time! That being said, I did try one and I think the taste is there. It is really close to the Smashburger fries, so I will definitely be trying them again. Here is a link to the sweet potato recipe.

 Well, I've been trying to master a buttercream icing to use on my cakes. I want the perfect balance between spreadability (silky texture) and still tastes great. I tried a new Swiss Meringue buttercream recipe from a new blog I've been reading, Sweetapolita. It was the perfect texture I've been looking for and also tasted superb!

I got the recipe from a blog she was doing about a lemon blueberry cake. It looked wonderful! I didn't make the cake, but I did want to try the macaron cookies. I've never made them before and although they were very technical, they tasted great! The recipe called for almond flour, which I did not have, so I improvised per Sweetapolita's suggestion and ground up some sliced almonds.

 

The recipe says the cookies develop a "foot" while baking. I was unsure what she meant by this, but I figured it out after the first batch. See in the picture below the smooth rounded top and then a bubbly rough texture underneath, that is the 'foot'. I still think the next time I try these I need to bake them a tad longer and make a bigger foot. 

 Here is the final batch. I wanted to play around with the different colors. The blue ones were my first batch and I didn't whip them enough to make them a smoother texture like the pink and yellow ones. There is a technique to perfecting these. I used the Meringue buttercream as a filler for the macarons to make them a sandwich cookie. These maybe my new favorite cookie...at least for the time being!