Welcome to how to cook that. I'm Ann Reardon, and today we are making
Numbers. These have been very popular on Instagram lately, so I thought I'd show you how you can make them easily.
Firstly, you'll need about four macarons,
So you can either make your own, and I'll link you to my videos on how to do that below, or you could just buy
Some.
Now to make the cute little mini meringues, we're going to need egg whites, sugar, and that's it!
Normally, you'd just tip that sugar in with the egg whites and whip it up,
But we're doing it a bit differently today,
this recipe is from the Meringue Girls and I'll link to them below and they suggest tipping the sugar onto a tray,
And putting that in the oven at about 200 degrees centigrade for seven minutes.
While that's heating up, you want to whip your egg whites until you get stiff peaks.
Now if they're ready, you'll be able to tip the bowl upside down without it falling out.
Then with the beaters running, add
In the warm sugar and whip that on high speed until when you feel it between your fingers, it doesn't feel grainy anymore.
Place that into a piping bag and pipe little drops onto non-stick baking paper.
You can make these as small or as large as you like, depending on the size you want to make your numbers.
If you want color on your meringues, paint some gel food colour in stripes down the inside of a piping bag,
Then carefully, turn that bag back the right way out,
making sure you don't get that gel color all over your fingers, and
Then you can just drop a piping tip in if you want to use one,
You don't have to use one, and then put the meringue mixture into the bag.
Now when you pipe using that, you'll get those
stripes of color on your meringues. And you want to bake those at a hundred degrees centigrade for between
20 and 40 minutes depending on their size. So depending how big you piped them
Next for the Chantilly cream,
You'll need white chocolate, cream, sugar, a little bit of brandy; that's optional,
Vanilla and some more cream. So first of all in with the sugar add
Half of your cream, just tip that in,
And then add some vanilla. You can use a vanilla bean if you like, or you can use vanilla paste like I'm using,
And then heat in the microwave until the sugar is dissolved.
Once it's nice and hot, add in the white chocolate and leave that to sit for a few minutes,
And then just whisk it to whisk through that melted chocolate
So you get a nice, smooth,
consistency mixture. Add in the rest of your cream,
And the brandy, and mix that through and once it is mixed just cover it and chill it in the fridge until it is cool.
Now for the number part of it, I'm using store-bought puff pastry,
You can use anything that's really thin,
So that it's easy to cut through, because otherwise when you go to cut the number
You're just gonna squash the cream out of it, and you won't be able to get nice slices.
You could make a really thin biscuit like a shortbread; very very thin, or a macaroon, or a meringue,
But again, it has to be really thin. I like the crispness of the pastry and I also like that
It's not too sweet because we've got sweetness in the cream, and sweetness in the topping,
So it gives a bit of a contrast.
Just print out a number, or a letter, or a heart, whatever shape you want. Cut around it and then obviously,
Remove the paper, and you'll need two of these.
Put that on a baking tray, top it with more baking paper, and then, put another baking tray on top.
This is going to weigh it down, so that while it's baking it won't puff right up.
I do like to film things baking in the oven for you, but there's not much point with this one ;)
[laughter]
Wash some strawberries, and in every pile you'll find some that look just like what you imagine a perfect strawberry to look like.
Cut those ones in half, leaving the green bit on,
And then with the rest, just dice them up into cute little cubes of strawberry.
Take your chilled cream mixture and whip it up until you get stiff peaks.
Having the white chocolate in with our cream there just helps make it really stiff and it will hold its shape well.
Put that into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle,
And pipe dollops of the Chantilly cream in a border all the way
Around your number. And you can see there on the pastry how the tray has kept it from puffing right up,
But it hasn't made it completely compacted so you can still see all those flaky layers.
So it's crisp, but it's also delicate when you eat it.
Do the same with the other number and add a layer of pastry on top,
And then pipe more Chantilly cream on top of that.
Try and line the dots up when you're piping so that they're exactly where they were on the bottom layer, so it looks neat.
Time to decorate. Now there's no right or wrong way. Just use your imagination.
Some fresh flowers are nice, but make sure you only use ones that are either edible like pansies and violas, or
Non-toxic like Gerberas. So you wouldn't actually eat the Gerbera you'd just remove it before you serve it up.
Next take your diced strawberries and place them down the center, just to define the numbers.
So your eye just kind of follows that color through so it looks very clear. Then you can add in your macarons,
Just place some on each one, and then the meringue kisses.
I probably should have piped these even smaller than I did, so that I could add more sort of dotted around there,
But they're okay.
They'll be fine. And don't forget to add some of those perfect
Strawberries in place so that we can see those as well.
If you don't want to use the flowers, you can just use a couple of different shades of macarons instead.
Click here to see more of my videos,
Here for miniature baking, here for chocolate creations,
And here for how to make macarons. If you're still watching, hit the thumbs up and share the video with a friend,
Make it a great week, and I'll see you on Friday.
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