Patisserie Intermission: Baking Abroad

 It's kind of odd that, despite a monthlong trip in Europe while unemployed sounds like a relaxing time, it was actually one of the least relaxing trips I've taken here. Herein lies the trap of letting your hobbies become your responsibilities: it will follow you home through the goodness of your heart wanting to help you improve. I got the itch to bake and write, and so, funded by my parents' desire to stop hearing me threaten to go home because I couldn't cook in their kitchen, I purchased a few bare bones pieces of equipment and was able to make some decent pastry explorations while there. 

In total, I bought: 

• A kitchen scale
• A rubber spatula
• A pastry brush
• A single silicone mold
• Food coloring
• A set of circle cutters
• A piping bag (13")
  
• A piping tip (round, 10mm)
• An offset spatula
  

And with those, I was able to make...

Patisserie 15: Orange marmalade and pastry cream macarons

 I had an abundance of oranges from my produce box that I wanted to use up before heading out for a month of travel coming up, so I decided to make marmalade, and what better use for a tiny batch of marmalade than as filling for another batch of macarons? 

I was also excited to try making macarons in my kitchen this time, without my friend's helpful guidance, to see if I had learned anything from our previous collaboration. 

I don't have a whole lot of photos from the marmalade process, because my focus on this journey is on the patisserie, but the basic gist is that I riffed on this recipe from David Lebovitz using five oranges and a lemon. Because I was going to be using the filling in macarons, I used a zester instead of cutting up the peel, so the resulting bits of marmalade would be smaller.