'Tis the Season to be Jolly: Christmas Macs

Two new posts within 1 week? Amazing!! I almost cannot believe myself that I have the time to write another post this week. This one will be a short one but it is about mac attack and the new mac flavors Miel has for Christmas: cinnamon apple, peppermint chocolate, and strawberry'n cream. Most of you are probably more familiar with the first two flavors. Cinnamon apple and peppermint have often been correlated with Christmas, but strawberry'n cream? Isn't strawberry a summer fruit, you say? Yeap, it is. However, just look at the cake display cases in Japan and you'll find strawberry shortcakes wherever you go during Christmas. I think it's a Japanese thing, I'm not sure, but what I know is I love the combination of milky cream and tart strawberries. Since I love making anything I love to eat into the form of macs, I decided to include strawberry'n cream as one of my seasonal flavors for Christmas :D Additionally, it's been a while since I posted for Mac Attack, and coincidentally this post fits the theme for this month. I've checked out the other entries and they all looked awesome! Hopefully, you enjoy this one as well :)

Oh I almost forgot, Miel will have a new box (again) for Christmas! As always, my dad's creative mind couldn't stop working, so he designed another box for Miel. The Christmas box will contain 12 macarons and will be decorated with ribbons. Cards are available upon request. The good news is... THE PRICE IS STILL THE SAME! Such a good deal right? A lil bit marketing here, lol.. Okay, I guess I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves :)

 From left to right: strawberry'n cream, peppermint chocolate, cinnamon apple

Sorry Sorry Sorry... Again, Sorry!

As it is stated on the title of this post, SORRY... I've been abandoning my blog for I don't know how long. A little bit update of my life, my small mac business is growing and my daytime job has been making me busy too. Some of you may not know, but I'm working in my dad's woven label company during the day (yeah, some of you may think, "What?" coz it's totally not related to food). After work, I have to go home and bake until almost midnight everyday. Yes, including Saturdays and Sundays. So, I've pretty much been working non-stop these past months.

Thousands of macs and hundreds of cakes have been baked since the last time I updated my blog. My current bestseller is red velvet mac and red velvet cake. I know they taste delicious, but I didn't expect people to like red velvet so much these days. Is it just because of some trend? Or do they really like the taste? I know I do, but who knows what others think :p I'm currently preparing for Miel's Christmas package. It's nothing fancy, just a box of 12 macs and my seasonal flavors will be cinnamon apple, peppermint chocolate, and strawberry'n cream. I actually planned to make some kind of hamper with cakes, cookies, macs, etc for Christmas. Too bad, I think it'll be more than I can handle since I'm baking all by myself.

Anw, I can't share my recipes right now, but as always I'm more than willing to share pictures of my creations :D Some of the may look boring, because I don't really have time to style them with props etc. I promise I'll take more interesting pictures when I have time, which I don't know when *sigh* I guess, it's time to say goodbye again, til later y'all and wait for my better-styled pics :p

Rose & Rose Lychee Macaron Tower

I just realized that I have abandoned my blog for quite some time -__-" Working 2 different jobs day and night has been keeping me busy and I haven't had weekends or free time for weeks because of that.. I think I've told you in my previous posts :p But I still love it! I especially love it when someone saw my blog and ordered a macaron tower from me for her daughter's birthday, yeayyy!! Yesterday was her daughter's first birthday and she asked whether I could make a 25x40 cm macaron tower for her. The flavors she chose were rose and rose lychee in white and pink. It was a lot of hard work, baking the mini macs (I needed 230 mini macs to cover the tower), filling them, assembling the tower, making the base and the decoration. Phewww, took me a looong time to finish it. I was kind of scared that the result wouldn't be satisfactory, but thank goodness my worry was not realized. I loved the mac tower! But still, the customer might not like it and also I had to think of a way to deliver it without damaging the tower. The next day, my dad drove the car, my mom and I held the tower, and off we went to the birthday party location. I was soooo nervous, but thanks to my dad's great driving skill, we (including the tower) arrived at the party site safely :D After the party was over, I received a message from the customer and she said she and her guests loved the tower and the macarons tasted great, yeayyy again!! All that hard work actually paid off, I was so happy :) Anyway, I have to get back to work, below are the pics of the tower and til later!

Birthday Cake Birthday Cake Birthday Cake

Busy, busy, busy.. Those are the only 3 words that can describe my condition at the moment. On top of working from 9 to 5, I have to bake macs and cakes after I get home. My mom said I acted like a squirrel on too much caffeine, lol.. Tiring? Yes. But I feel soooo productive and happy every day! That's why people, you gotta do what you love :D I am very thankful that my mac and cake orders are looking good so far. When I started, I didn't expect it to be this good, I thought I would just receive a few orders per week. Thanks to my friends and family who introduced my macs to their relatives, now my order log is enough to keep me busy every night :) Buuuttt, I'm not satisfied just yet. I really want to introduce delicious-tasting macarons to Indonesians, trust me guys, it's the next cupcake and it can be even bigger than that. Well, since I mentioned about my macs, I'll just write a short advertisement here :p 

Are you in love with desserts? Do you always have a place for dessert?

Miel Patisserie offers you the best tasting desserts made with high quality ingredients. Taste is our number one priority, and thus we are trying our best to use the freshest ingredients available.

Our specialty is French MACARON, which is a dainty little bite packed with flavor. The shell is made mainly of almond meal and the filling consists of fresh cream and butter flavored with all-natural fruit or flower extracts. Enjoy a macaron with a cup of tea or coffee and your dessert is complete :) We have a variety of flavor choices:
-Rose
-Rose Lychee
-Matcha
-Matcha Azuki
-Black Sesame
-Dark Chocolate
-Hazelnut Chocolate
-Pistachio Chocolate
-Pistachio
-Jasmine
-Violet
-Passionfruit
-Vanilla bean
-Honey lemon

The price is Rp. 100.000,-/dozen and you can pick up to 6 flavors/dozen. Delivery is available within Jakarta area with a fee of Rp. 10.000,-/address. Please submit your order by e-mail, sms, BB or FB a week prior to your delivery date request, because stock is limited.

Other cakes and pastries are available upon request (pictures are pending). Please consult by sending a message through Facebook or e-mail, so that we can accommodate your needs.

Thank you very much for looking and order your MACARONS now from MIEL PATISSERIE! We do our best to satisfy your sweet tooth and thrive for that big grin on your face after your first bite :D

Phone: 0856-1280086
BB:267ff350
E-mail: mielpastry@hotmail.com

What I've Been Up To..

Been busy baking macs everyday, tiring but extremely satisfying!! For people in Jakarta area, come order our macs! Just sms to 0856-1280086 or e-mail to mielpastry@hotmail.com :)

Miel Patisserie Reborn :D

I've mentioned before that I've been receiving macaron and cake orders since I got back from the U.S. I'm moving step by step towards my goal of having an online dessert shop called "Miel Patisserie". Well, the ultimate goal is to own a real shop, but for now online will do just fine :p I was still in the process of making samples, taking pictures, and planning out all the details, so I hadn't think about the packaging design for my macs. My dad, however, disagreed with me. Since I've been receiving orders, I should have a good packaging with my shop name on it so that other people can find my contact info and order from me as well. Talking about advertising before anything official is set up -__-" Despite my disagreement, he went ahead and ordered some boxes and labels with my shop name, as well as my contact info, on them. I have to say the boxes look good, not as fancy as Laduree or Pierre Herme, but at least they're much better than the plastic boxes I used to use :) Below are the pics (rose lychee, violet, and green tea red bean flavors).

Mom's Birthday

While everyone in the US is celebrating the Independence Day, we're celebrating my mom's birthday at home in Indonesia. I finally got the chance to bake a birthday cake for her :) I asked her whether she would like any particular flavor or cake type and she said "Up to you." As always -__-" I kind of hate it when people say up to you, because it makes designing the cake that much harder.. Anw, I decided to bake the fruit cream cake that my boyfriend loves so much, because the cake is not too sweet and I have all the ingredients on hand. The sponge cake rose beautifully, much much better than I've ever baked in the US. The crumb was soft and moist, I absolutely loved it. I used pastry cream lightened with whipped cream (creme chiboust) as the filling, no problem there since I've made that recipe for countless times. Then, I encountered my first problem: no long serrated knife to cut the cake. My mom only had a short serrated knife, so cutting the cake into 3 even layers was a struggle. Second problem: melting whipped cream. I have to say it again, I absolutely hate the heat and humidity in Indonesia! My whipped cream melted in no time, so I had to cover the cake as fast as I could. The end result didn't look as good as the other fruit cakes I've made, but I did think it tasted better, mostly due to the very successful sponge cake :D The cake was light and airy; the cream was fragrant, rich, but not overpowering; the fruits added a touch of sourness and freshness that complimented the cream very well. Overall, it was a delicious cake, too bad it didn't look as good as it tasted. Here are the pics as usual, til later!

Baking Macs @ Indonesia

Phewww, finally I get the chance to update my blog today.. I started taking macaron orders last week and yesterday was my biggest order so far, 150 pieces of those little dainty almond sandwiches. Baking all those macs was definitely tiring, but I enjoyed it because my macs turned out looking better than I expected :D Was it that easy? Did it turn out great the first time I baked them in Indonesia? Noooppeeeee... At first, I used Pierre Herme's recipe with the Italian meringue and the first few batches turned out great. Well, a little bit too sweet but that's due to the higher sweetness of Indonesian sugar compared to US sugar. Oh, and the filling melted so fast that I didn't even have time to pipe them onto the shells before they dripped from the piping bag to all over my counter -___-" Absolutely hate the effect of humidity and heat in Indonesia on macarons :( The 2 batches I made were for this month's Mac Attack: Fruit, thus the inclusion of griottine and berries into the fillings. I liked the pistachio griottine much better than the white chocolate berry because the second one was too sweet for my taste *white chocolate was never my favorite*

 Milk chocolate pistachio griottine macaron

White chocolate berry macarons

As you can see, my macs still looked good despite all the mishaps. And then, everything went wrong. I used the same exact recipe, ingredients, technique, oven, mixer, everything, but I kept failing. My macs didn't rise, instead they became just like regular meringue cookies. When they did form a skin and feet, the tops broke into little volcanoes. I made 5 batches and only got 8 decent looking macs :( Until now, I still don't know what was wrong. After I failed again and again, I was ready to give up and I only had 3 days to make 150 macs. If I were in the US with all my baking tools, it wouldn't have been a problem. However, my baking stuffs are still being shipped and I had to deal with the new ingredients. So, I decided to go with the simpler French meringue method. I was very skeptical because I tried it once and it didn't work. Surprisingly, I got really nice shiny macarons with feet! I was ecstatic! Then everything went smoothly, I finished baking all 150 macs in a day :D I think I'm done baking macs for a while, unless someone orders them. Okay, below is the pic for the French meringue macs, til later!!

Dark chocolate, matcha, vanilla bean, pistachio, rose macarons