Team JJ's Bakery: lemon meringue pie

Made two dozen lil LMPs and a pocket apple pie each for dessert as the family were coming over for red wine lamb shanks dinner! Think the lil LMPs are great for tea parties...in fact ANY party! Good bite size for each person.

Baked the apple pocket pies a little too hot so the edges are slightly burnt :( Still, was good to try out my WS apple mould for the first time!

Got a pink cake stand in anticipation of Ani's (My little darling ragdoll Anarchy aka Kiwimagic Ice Angel) first birthday. We've got an amazing present for her! Tell you more on her birthday post.

Would love some handmade Jeanette Zeis and Whitney Smith ceramic tiered cake stands, cake stands and cupcake stands at some point to have a collection to stage a beautiful tea party. Just don't like the cheap thin Made in China ones that Stevens sells. Also need some glass domed sets and antique looking tea & saucer & dessert plate sets! All sounds rather pricey...better build up slowly ;P

Made three types of goodies today! Let's do reverse order for this post!~ Instead of my usual preliminaries-utensils- step by step pics-finished product, would be too lengthy a post.

JJ requested a snowman macaron and here is what I came up with!

Meet Mr Snowman!

Was easy to achieve one piece for this shape~ Pity I didn't have pretzel sticks for arms :(

Vanilla Macarons with Vanilla Bean Ganache

Macaron stack

As you may have noticed, I gave the italian meringue method a whirl this week. This is the more commercially viable method and the method recommended for macaron newbs because it is 'fail proof'. Compared to the french method, italian gives a smoother slightly glossy finish and with a whiter colour is better for coloring. On the downside, it's shell and texture is less delicate and too sugary for me personally. However, prettier for a gift especially to non-macaronites!~ Maybe I should read up on the swiss meringue method as well! Would be interesting to see and taste the difference :)

I wanted to compare Silpat to parchment paper...

Parchment on left vs Silpat

Underneath- Parchment on left vs Silpat

I've seen pictures online that show Silpats usually have a wetter foot but was not the case this time. I will try again when I use the french method to see if the difference is more pronounced.