My Summer Project - LACE

I've learned how to make lace when I was about twelve years old. I took a class in school, and I liked it. When I went to high school and I stopped visiting the classes, I stopped making lace. But this summer I decided I want to make some lace jewelry, and because I forgot how to make some of lace making techniques, I googled if they were on the internet. They weren't, so I just had to make do with my old notes. Luckily for me, I have great motoric memory. I remembered how to make them, and now I want to share this knowledge with you. So I made videos of how to make lace. This is the first one. I know I have to make another one real quick with the basics of how to tie the knots between the bobbins in the pair. And how to prevent the thread from just falling off the bobbin. I promise I'll try my best and do that in the next 24h.

And now to lace making. I put the video on YouTube for everyone to see.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

-Pillow

-Pins

-Colored thread (I used the one that's usually use for gobelin-making instead of the thread for lace-making, because it's easier to see what I'm doing in the video this way), like pink and violet

-Two pairs of bobbins (that's four bobbins)

-Scissors

-Patience

LET'S START!

-First your bobbins must have thread on and be tied together in a pair (I did that before I start filming...)

-Put the pin into the middle of the pillow and put the bobbins, so you'll have each pair on one side (two bobbins with pink thread on the left and two bobbins with violet thread on the right)

-In each hand take the bobbin of the right and put it over the bobbin on the left. Than take the right bobbin (=the bobbin on the right side) in the left hand and put it over the left bobbin (the bobbin on the left) in the right hand.

-Repeat the movement. If you're doing it right you'll get the original setting of the bobbins on every fourth repetition. (if you started with pink on the left and violet on the right, after the first repetition you'll get (from left to right) pink, violet, pink, violet; the second time you'll get violet, violet, pink, pink; the third time: violet, pink, violet, pink; and the fourth time you'll get the original setting: pink, pink, violet, violet.)

-When the braid starts moving too much (it's too long to continue without moving too much) just put a pin in the middle (after you're finished with crossing the right bobbin in the left hand over the left bobbin in the right hand) between the bobbins, so you'll get two bobbins on each side of the pin.

-I went around the pillow three times, so I really learned how to make it. But you can just continue until you're sure you know how to do it with your eyes blindfolded.

-When you're finished you need to tie it. Take a pair of bobbins into your hands and put the right bobbin over the left one, so you have the right bobbin's thread under the left bobbin, and the left bobbin's thread over the right bobbin.

-You need to make two knots for each pair. Cut the rest of thread away right under the knots (be careful so you don't cut the knot.)

-Leave the lacy braid on the pillow for a few hours, than remove the pins and you have your first official lace.

I know that it doesn't look like much, but it's the basic. I already filmed the next technique, I just need to edit it. It's more practical than the four braid lace... BTW I used this lacy braid for a bracelet, but you can also use it as a decoration for your homemade bookmark...

Hope you like my summer project =)

xxx

Lucy Jane

The Promised Macron Recipe

So here's the promised recipe for macrons. It took some time, but I finally did it.

For about 30 macrons (depends on how big you want the shells to be):

- 90 g of egg white (it's better if you leave it on a kitchen counter for a day))

- 30 g of white sugar

- 200 g of powdered sugar

- 110 g of almond powder/flour or fine blended almonds (preferably white)

- colour die for food if you wish (whatever the correct expression for this is, I hope you got my point)

Process (just be ready to repeat it over and over and over again, before you make perfect macrons):

-quickly mix egg whites, until you can see bubbles.

- add the white sugar

- mix until egg whites turn white and you are able to turn around the plate (you were mixing egg whites in) and the mix doesn't fall out of the plate
- add almonds and powdered sugar
- mix them into a think but creamy paste (mix like you're folding it (from downside to up)
- optional: somewhere in the middle of previous step add the colouring.
- paste is perfect when it flattens in about 10 s after you stopped mixing it

- put the paste into a plastic bag and cut off a really small piece of one corner
- make shells on a baking sheet (or however it's called - the thing you put your  cookies and stuff on so they don't burn into the baking pan) or you can buy a special macron baking sheet

- leave them to rest for about 60 minutes (depends on humidity), so they form a slight crust
- bake them in an preheated oven on 140 degrees Celsius for 22 minutes; when the macrons rise, lover the temperature to 130 degrees Celsius
- after we took them out of oven, leave them to cool down for 5 minutes
- turn macrons around together with the baking sheet
- pull the baking sheet off the macrons (not the other way around)

That's how your macron shells should look like

- put two together and put a marmalade or chocolate ganache or a cream cheese mix in between
-et voila:

Bon appetite
Lucy Jane

How (Not) to Make Macarons

The Cronut might be next black, but I still prefer the good old macrons. But, I do have to confess, that even dough I haven't tried a cronut yet (it was first introduced, like a week after I left New York City) I do have the perfect words for this culinary masterpiece: It's like my two favourite desserts got married and made a baby! Sadly I didn't make up those words, I heard them in one of the series I'm watching (N.C.I.S. Los Angeles, and it was said by Deeks to Kensi, when she brought him one).

Sadly I don't know the recipe for cronuts, and I read somewhere, that the chef that invented them sued a bakery in Los Angeles that made the same pastry for using the name cronut; But I do have a recipe for macrons and a story of how I made them.

For all of you, that don't know what a macron is, it's a French dessert made from egg whites, powdered sugar, almond powder and topped off with a different flavoured toppings. Macrons are also Blair's (for all of stone-age people, that don't know who this is Blair is one of the main characters in TV series Gossip Girl) favourite deserts. The most famous company that is considered to make the absolute best macrons.

The first time I had the pleasure of trying a macron was at a family gathering in Switzerland. Some of my relatives lives there and we celebrated my cousins birth. Her godfather is super rich, and he bought a "macron cake" in Paris and had it delivered with a train to Bern, where the celebration was held. It was the first time I even saw a macron, I had no idea how they taste or what are they made of. But I fell in love with the first bite. Learning how to do them seemed like the only option, considering that I'm not as rich as cousins godfather. So I did.

As all electronic age kids, I sat down in front of the computer and googled it. I found bunch of recipes and YouTube videos that showed how to do them. And the impulsive person I am, I decided to start right away. Without thinking or checking if I have all the ingredients, I just went right ahead.

The first thing I figured out was I didn't have any sugar. And you can't make macrons without sugar. So I went to the store and bought sugar. Naturally I bought the normal one (not powdered), and since I didn't feel like going to the store again, I decided to use the sugar I bought.

The next problem were almonds. I bought almonds with their peel (is this a correct word? I had to googled it and now I didnn't know how to use it...) still on. So I had to skin them. This is a long and dreadful procedure, that I never want to repeat. First I had to put almonds in a pot filled with hot water, waited for a few minutes and than almost burned my fingers, trying to peel the peel off (still confused over the word peel, hope you got what I wanted to say). After more than half an hour I finished and was getting ready to blend them, only to find out that my blender is broken. At this point I was losing the interest of making macrons and almost gave up. But I didn't. I used an old blender, that didn't do the job properly, which only added to the list of what did wrong. When the paste for the macron was finally done, I just wanted to sit down and eat some chocolate. But I had to make those perfect round shells, before I could do what I wanted. It turned out , it was easier said than done.I believe I made exactly one beautiful round macron. All the others looked like, hmm how should I put this, a five-year-old played darts with a balloons filled with macron paste. But the tip of the iceberg was, that the macrons didn't have "the foot". That is the crusty thingy that makes them so special. This was the first time I made them. It wasn't that they weren't good or eatable, they just didn't look right.

This depressed me so much I didn't want to repeat the horrible process I went trough the first time. It took me almost a year to try again. I tried a different recipe, but I still wasn't able to do them right. So I repeated the process the next year. And they still looked horrible. I did them 6 moths ago, and they still didn't have "the foot". But a month ago I finally, did it!

For a change I bought almond powder, instead of blending them myself. It turned out it was the right thing to do. And I used powdered sugar as well.

I must tell you that I used more than 40 eggs and 2 kg of sugar, before I made my first perfect macron. So don't fell bad if your macrons aren't perfect the first time around. You'll get it eventually.

Here's how my macrons looked like, and the last picture is a macron from Laudree. I think they look almost the same. What about you?

Sugary goodbye,

Lucy Jane 

p.s.

I can't believe it, but I almost forgot to add the recipe. And then I figured out I lost it somewhere in that giant pile of my stuff on my work table where I save all those stuff. So in a day (probably two or three, considering the size of that pile) I will make a post with THE recipe for the best home-made macrons in town!