Oh Bellini Bellini Bellini...

Bellini. A mix of champagne, peach juice, and raspberry. Sounds delicious, no? Once I found the recipe of this cocktail online, I immediately thought of making macarons with this flavor combo. I could not contain my excitement, so I grabbed my keys and rushed to the nearest grocery store to buy the ingredients. After I gathered all the ingredients I needed, I rushed home and started working in my kitchen. There was something wrong with my macaron batter, I didn't get the feet as tall as usual, oh well. To build the bellini macarons, I sandwiched champagne meringue buttercream, peach gelee, and raspberry jams in between two macaron shells. I stored them in the fridge for one night to let all the flavors meld together and when I woke up the next morning, I ran to my kitchen, opened the container, and took a bite of the macaron. Emmm... oh... it didn't taste like champagne or peach or raspberry -___-" I couldn't believe it! I could only taste a little bit of raspberry and the rest was overpowered by the almond shell. Faiiiiiillllllll (> <) Well, my friends still liked the macs even though they couldn't tell what the flavor was, sighhh...

I didn't give up and tried to incorporate this flavor in other types of dessert. So I searched for inspirations online as always and I found La Religieuse, which is basically one small fondant-coated cream puff stacked on top of another bigger fondant-coated cream puff. I had been meaning to make this but totally forgot about it until I saw it again on www.parispatisseries.com. Okay, bellini religieuse it was! I made champagne creme diplomat, pate a choux, and peach-colored poured fondant. I filled the big puff with the creme, leftover peach gelee and raspberry jam, then dipped the top in the poured fondant. The small puff was only filled with the champagne creme and I dipped its top in poured fondant before attaching it onto the big puff. I decorated the stack with piped buttercream and voila, bellini religieuse! I bit into one and I tasted...... "tape" (fermented cassava from Indonesia)???!!! It tasted delicious to me, but still how could champagne cream tasted like fermented cassava? Probably, the yeasty flavor of the champagne combined with the bready taste of the choux caused that. Again, I couldn't really taste the peach and this time I even lost the raspberry. Fail #2 -___-" Don't get me wrong, they still tasted pretty good, it's just that I hate it when my dessert doesn't taste like it is supposed to. I gave up, next time I'll just make the religieuse with vanilla pastry cream and the macaron with raspberry ganache and peach gelee. Always learn from your mistakes, right? :)