harden bergia and macarons

japanese ranunculus and sweetpeas, hyacinths, sensation lilacs, fritillaria, blackjack tulips, harden bergia from california and variegated busy ivy 
i've been noticeably absent from flowering (Q called me out).  so here's a little something i put together for delivery tomorrow.  and the vine-y purple stuff, harden bergia, is completely amazing.  it gives the arrangement an unexpected looseness and flow, wabi sabi.

i have been instead flour-ing.  i accepted a silly dare from my sister that i cannot make a proper french macaron.  how dare she (and somehow two months have passed by)?

pete and i exhaustingly googled and read baker bloggers blogging about the triumphs and failures of the perfect macaron.  and i finally succeeded a few weekends ago, but only after throwing away seemingly 100's of batches (and dollars too) -- all hollow, over-mixed, under-cooked or footless.  at the moment, i just relapsed and forgot to double-up the cookie sheet and puffy, cracked, footless macarons emerged from the oven (oops).  i also need to find a secret to keep my parchment paper from wrinkling.

i'm quite grateful that there are others who have been very persistent at perfecting this cookie, not so humble pie being one of them.  i used this recipe with some modifications (and surf her other macaron posts -- a ton of helpful info).


- i divided her measurements by 1/3 so as to not waste ingredients
- for the egg whites, i set aside 5 grams of the 70 grams and beat the 5 grams until foamy
- for the remaining 65 grams of egg whites, i beat them in a copper bowl until they reached a firm peak (not stiff, and now a meringue)
- i dump the meringue into a clean bowl and then add the macaronage in two parts
- i fold the batter until all macaronage is incorporated
- and now here's the key, remember the 5 grams of egg whites?  add them to the batter and mix until the batter flows like lava -- mix slowly too because it's important to not overwork the batter.  i think this step is critical because the 5 grams of egg whites haven't been fully beaten and adding them helps deflate the meringue.  this is what the laduree recipe actually calls you to do
- my oven runs hot so i double up the cookie sheet and use parchment paper only; silpat doesn't give as nice feet for whatever reason
- i set oven at 335 degrees and bake for 23-25 minutes and rotate the tray at the 15 minute mark
- and because the cookies are in hot oven for a long time, i add an extra drop of food coloring to hide the browning (2 drops total, this could be cheating but whatever i'm not a professional baker)
- also, i just discovered today, that when i fill the cookies with buttercream (swiss meringue buttercream, naturally), i need to age the cookies for at least 48 hours, if not more.  if more than 48 hours, i'll amend this blog post

i don't know why this works but i have tried this at least 6 times and all yielding perfectly formed macaroons with no hollows and only 2% cracked (in my parents' oven and mine).  no pictures though.  they will follow.  trust.  i'm actually writing this post now as some of my friends who were brave enough to sample my earlier cookies would like my pointers.

a word on ovens though.  each one is different and i had to bake multiple batches at different temps.  i discovered that a hotter temp worked better when i observed a batch baking at 270 degrees going nowhere so i blasted the oven to 335 degrees because i remember reading somewhere that baking schools teach students to initially set at 335 degrees and then lower.  at 335, i saw beautiful feet pushing out from under the cookie.  go figure.  and my niece also helped me realized that undercooking the cookies likely caused the hollows, so i thought what the heck, there are two trays reducing the heat to the bottom of the cookie so leave the temp at 335.  

now with all that being said, i used the french method of macaron-ing, simply because the italian method seems pretty difficult to do without a stand mixer.  i don't have a stand mixer but have a copper bowl.  a mauviel copper bowl just looks so sexy and…french.  copper molecules + egg whites = easy, fast meringue.  i've also done this with a stand mixer and works just as well.  yeah and aged egg whites, some say do and some say don't.  i say do but if you don't have any on hand, then add egg whites in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water and whisk like mad until they foam.  just remember to set aside 5 grams for later.  

now, off to bed for me.




merry christmas!

merry christmas to you and your loved ones!  

loyalty amaryllis (dark red), barbados amaryllis (red white variegated),
cambridge fringed tulips and japanese sweet peas





rose gold holiday


i feel like a terrible girlfriend.  i somehow managed to close a door on pete's pinky finger and give him food-poisoning...on the same day!  we watched a movie last night and a character said that accidents happen for a reason according to freud.  the poor guy thinks i have it out for him.  i don't.  seriously.

the holiday season is winding down.  i'm grateful that i finished my christmas shopping early this year.  now i just need a way of getting the presents to their recipients -- where's santa when you need him?  aside from presents, i have an arrangement to deliver and then my year will be wrapped up.  onto planning for 2014 weddings and travels abroad….

a friend gave me these lovely blush colored roses, haiku.  and i struggled a bit to make pink look festive (i also struggled with trying to get lady gaga and r.kelly out of my head, but that's a story for another day).  my local whole foods is running a special on poinsettias, something like $6.99 for a six inch pot.  and it seemed cheap enough to clip and add to my flower arrangement (just make sure to sear the cut ends of the poinsettias with a flame or boiling water before adding it to the arrangement).  who doesn't like a little gold for the holidays?

haiku roses, paperwhites, poinsettias, ranunculus and dusty miller



snow white


it snowed yesterday, some 4-6 inches supposedly but most of it melted with last night's rain.  it may have ruined santa con for the b&t santa-costumed crowed, but the snow and rain made for a peaceful night on the bowery.  with all the santa(s) and snow -- here's to christmas....

white fringed tulips 'cambridge', alabaster roses, japanese sweet peas and viburnum 


white fringed tulips 'cambridge', alabaster roses, japanese sweet peas, narcissus and viburnum 


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thanksgiving 2014


thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year and then everything goes downhill until new year's.  i'm not a big fan of christmas -- too much frenzied shopping and gift giving and seemingly less about family.  i suppose there are things that i do enjoy such as tree trimming, the smell of pine, poinsettias and amaryllis.

i'm recovering still after cooking my annual thanksgiving feast.  like other years, we prepared all dishes from scratch but unlike most years, we largely used ingredients found at farmer's market or locally grown.  our menu included:

roasted red bourbon turkey
cornbread stuffing
homemade gravy
cranberry sauce
orange cranberry sauce
steamed haricot vert
roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta and pomegranate
roasted lemon sage cauliflower
whipped butternut squash
apple pie
sweet potato pie

it would be a dream to be able to grow most things for our meal, then it would feel like a true harvest meal.  maybe someday....  

left:  low table centerpieces of white peonies, red tulips, 'titanic' pink roses, protea and seeded eucalyptus






purple


the days are starting to get colder and the days shorter.  but there are flowers blooming somewhere, just not here.  i miss my local product but having a bouquet of clematis, vanda orchids, white peonies, sweet peas, astilbe and ranunculus is not so bad.  i haven't used orchids too heavily in my work, but these vandas have certainly swayed me.





november update

hand-tied bouquet anemones, romantic antique garden roses, burgundy ranunculus, bush ivy and olive branches

i've been quietly making flowers for weddings and deliveries for here, there and everywhere.  i can never find the time for pictures or even worse the light is terrible for photos.

it's november now (clearly) and i miss my garden and having to harvest multiple bucketful of dahlias each weekend.  but it's over now.  i suppose impermanence is necessary.  now i have next year to plan for and can fully anticipate the start of spring -- my favorite season.  it would be easier to cope if i had travel plans but i don't.


dahlias (again)


i had a bumper crop of cafe au lait dahlias this week.  they're some of my best producing dahlias; after all, i do have 8 plants of them.  sometimes i wonder what it would be like to have a whole bed of cafe au laits -- is it possible to have too much of a good thing?  perhaps, but i am pretty confident that i'll miss their lovely faces come the other 9-10 months of the year.  all the dahlias, not just the cafe au laits, are looking so good right now.  i have lots of laterals, all full of plump buds ready to burst.



cafe au lait dahlias paired with coppery tones

suffice to say that this season's crop have done exceedingly well (not that i have much of a comparison point since it's only year 2 of doing this) and i'm encouraged to plant more.  i think 2-3 more beds, for a total of 5, would be sufficient to sate my dahlia lust.  (i say this now, but may regret my words in the spring.)  as much as i love the 'au lait's subtle pastel tones, i'm looking forward to adding new colors, such as deep burgundies, browns and reds and purples as well.

the only thing that could keep me away from my dahlias this weekend would be a killing frost.  it came early last year on october 12th.  keep your fingers crossed for me, please!

cranking out the dahlias


it's prime time for the dahlias and they're working hard to crank out their monster blossoms before the end of the season.  it's been hard navigating the potential nighttime frosts, but we've taken precautions by investing in a frost cover and diligently covering the beds whenever there's a frost warning.  frankly, the plants are putting so much out -- i have been giving flowers away by the bucketful and still have plenty left over to arrange!

i took some pictures for the local garden club where my dahlias beds will be featured and i'm pretty excited and honored.  hope you enjoy!















it's not a summer without dahlias


i'll admit that i was a bit worried about the state of my dahlia beds.  very worried.

but, as everything with gardening, with a little bit of patience (2 weeks' worth) these lovely plants shot up like rockets.  some are taller than me and many loaded with buds which i look forward to harvesting over the coming 6-8 weeks.  i'm still narrowing down the potential factors that i can improve upon next year, but my current theory involves soil temperature and watering.

the garden after the rain (left) and buds of cafe au lait dahlias (right) 
'innocence' dahlia (left) and daddy long leg taking refuge in a giant cafe au lait dahlia (right)
more cafe au lait dahlias and a baby toad (so cute) on the right 
cafe au lait dahlia with touche dahlias
a new favorite that i'm holding in my hand, 'hamilton lillian' dahlia.  love the salmon color


'innocence' dahlia peeking from out (left) 
dahlias are cafe au lait, innocence, chilson's pride and gay princess 
cafe au lait dahlia
giant white dahlia is called yuukyu



long overdue


it's been a while since i've posted on this blog.  i've been somewhat pre-occupied with non-flower activities between my last post and this one -- travelling, instagram-ing and photo-taking.  if you follow me on instagram and on photos, it will give you some insight on what i was up to.

i'm anxiously awaiting my cafe au lait dahlias to bloom in my garden in western MA. some of my earlier blooming dahlias have gotten they're start, but i dearly wish all the dahlias just upped their flower production.  garden-grown dahlias are the best, and much better than what i get at the flower market.  so until my garden starts putting out, i satisfied my cafe au lait lust with dahlias from the market -- not bad but wish i could have got them fresher.


cafe au lait dahlias, keira garden roses, putamayo carnations, ranunculus, flowering oregano and heather

dahlia beds


my favorite dahlia farmers are back in action!  

the dahlia beds were filled with sprouts and weeds after a long stretch of rain earlier in june -- very good for the dahlias and for the weeds as well.  i had hoped that the tubers would survive the unprecedented amount of rain and fortunately all but 5 were spared.  not bad a outcome, considering that i planted 80+ tubers.  





this is our first season planting in the fields and we learned one lesson pretty quickly:  we should have tried to kill the grass first before tilling, either through laying down cardboard or black tarp.  we spent this weekend pulling weeds from the beds, mounding up the sides of the beds, cutting away grass to keep it from creeping up the beds and then covering the beds with mulch.  

of course, when digging up the earth the way we did, we met our various neighbors who inhabit the garden alongside us:  two toads, a red-spotted newt and a number of worms and bugs, both good and bad.  i hope the the toads and newt eat the bad bugs and i used slug bait (sluggo) to get the slimy ones.  the field sits above an underground stream so i have a feeling we'll be seeing more of our newly-discovered friends.  





last of peonies

pink and white peonies, summer clematis and tweedia

i'm about OD-ed on peonies and here's the last of them.  may and june have been full of peonies for me -- a good thing, but perhaps a bit too much exposure.  i can't wait for next year, but i'm looking forward to garden roses, dahlias, hydrangeas and wildflowers this summer.


memorial day gardening


this weekend is typically when we start laying out plants and the like in our garden in western massachusetts.  saturday and sunday were brutally windy and cold.  and we had to make up for lost time yesterday when the sun and warm air finally broke through the clouds and cold front.

new dahlia beds on the right

i was somewhat disappointed by our lack of physical activity due to the weather.  most of monday evening was spent planting 70+ dahlia tubers -- the bending and kneeling has me walking like Quasimodo.  we're doing field planted dahlias this year.  i think having them in the box last summer restricted the ability to grow wider and instead of pushing out giant blooms, they competed for sunlight.  i'm testing my theory out with two 5' x 20' feet beds; i'm giving them more room and better staking.

i hadn't really been up to the garden since november and i'm surprised that most of the perennials made it through the winter.  three scabiosas and two poppies didn't make it though, but i replaced them two clematis instead.  i'm learning more about clematis (i love them) and how to properly care for them.  unfortunately, i missed the opportunity to hard prune these guys during the winter/early spring.  so after the first flush of this year's bloom, they're getting chopped for a stronger re-bloom in august/september. and hopefully, then i'll be able to sort out the mess of vines that i let go for too long.  i also planted annuals to shade their roots from the sun -- i'm hoping to see how that works out too.

my planting some new things this year -- i have a strawberry patch in one of the boxes.  also i'm growing a "new" columbine (new to me) called barlow which look like mini dahlias.  we'll see how it all goes....


mesabi strawberry patch  
black and pink barlow columbines







pink peonies


pink tree peonies, astilbe, allium neopolitanum and mint leaves

sometimes flowers are so gorgeous they leave me breathless. i picked up some pink tree peonies and raspberry sundae peonies very early this morning.  both smell incredible particularly mixed mint leaves.  i was hoping to find lily of the valley in the flower market, but there were none.  i think the scent of peonies, mint and lily of the valley would be completely intoxicating.

pink tree peonies, pink astilbe, allium neopolitanum and mint leaves

'raspberry sundae' pink peonies, pink astilbe, allium neopolitanum and mint leaves

'raspberry sundae' pink peonies, pink astilbe, allium neopolitanum and mint leaves

'raspberry sundae' pink peonies, pink astilbe, allium neopolitanum and mint leaves







my heart in amsterdam

vondelpark in amsterdam right before rain

at some point i'll write a longer post about amsterdam.  i'm suffering from a bit of writer's block tonight.  the one thing i'll leave you with is that i left part of my heart in amsterdam.  the flowers, the gardens, the bicycles, the canals.  you'll get to see more of it throughout the week.  i'm slowly working on editing and posting pictures.  pete and i were there for 8 flower filled days and you've seen some sneak peaks of the keukenhof and the flower market.  we went to aalsmeer -- the big flower auction -- and i got my hands dirty with another flower arrangement.

two words for you:  BLEEDING HEARTS!

bouquet of coral peonies, pink ranunculus, viburnum and bleeding hearts
bouquet of coral peonies, pink ranunculus, viburnum and bleeding hearts 
bouquet of coral peonies, pink ranunculus, viburnum and bleeding hearts
bouquet of coral peonies, pink ranunculus, viburnum and bleeding hearts




holland - day 2 at the flower market at the singel


we explored amsterdam today by foot.  we didn't intend to but stumbled upon the flower market at the singel.  lots of stuff to "ooh" and "aww" over.  there were some healthy looking peony tubers for 10 euros and pre-cooled tulips to plant straight away.  everything seemed so inexpensive and plentiful but we couldn't take anything back home with us.

however, like any self-respecting florist, i couldn't go home empty-handed so i grabbed several bunches of flowers.


and i made these with them.... hope you enjoy them as much as i do.