Friday Fab Five 20 • Everyday Lifehacks from Barb

Okay, by the raise of hands… who tried the Million-Dollar BLT or the Wonton Tacos? I swear I have them on the grocery list for this week again. We just loved them. I want to give you All the Soup Recipes and All the Fall Flavors, but to be honest, I am in Arizona. Fall hits here about the day before Thanksgiving. Lol (but not really).

1. Snickers Mickey Macaron

Every now and then I like to keep you on your toes. So in this addition of FFF, I am including the recipe I taught last weekend in the GYGI Kitchen. It was a HIT. I’ll also throw in some tips and tricks so you can make this recipe with ease. Please let me know or tag me when you use it. It’s a good one!

1–You will need our shell recipe, found HERE.
2–You will also need the Mickey template that is attached at the bottom of this section (look for the yellow highlight). Make Mickey-shaped macarons.
3–Make (or buy caramel sauce).
4–Turn that into Salted Caramel Buttercream (recipe below).
5–Make nougat (below) and freeze as directed.
6–[optional] Make brownies to use as a crumble filling.

Let’s get making!

Caramel Sauce (or use pre-made caramel):
(watch THIS video before starting)

• 1 cup sugar 
• ¼ cup water
• 5 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Add granulated sugar and water to a medium saucepan and whisk to combine. 

Heat over medium-high heat. Bring it to a soft boil until the sugar goes from clear, to yellow, to amber, stirring occasionally. 

Once it has reached an amber color, whisk in the butter, then the salt.

Remove from the heat, then slowly pour in the cream and whisk to combine. Be careful — the cream will make the caramel bubble and it will be steamy and hot!

Finish by adding in your vanilla extract. The caramel sauce will be very runny at first, then will thicken as it cools. Store in the fridge for up to a week.

Salted Caramel Buttercream
6 tbsp unsalted butter room temperature (85 grams, or 3 oz)
1/4 cup salted caramel sauce store bought or homemade included here, above
1 1/2 – 2 cups powdered sugar (187 grams – 250 grams)

Place butter in bowl of stand mixer. Mix while adding the caramel sauce (MAKE SURE ITS COOLED COMPLETELY) add in powdered sugar and mix until fluffy.

Nougat Filling
Ingredients:
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup evaporated milk
2 (7 oz.) jars marshmallow creme
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cups salted peanuts, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add sugar and milk, stirring until dissolved, then bring to a boil.
While boiling, add in the marshmallow creme, peanut butter, and vanilla stirring until smooth.
Remove off heat and fold in chopped peanuts. Cool 5-10 minutes, or until warm (don’t let it go to room temperature).
Place the warm nougat into a piping bag (cut a decent size whole for the tip) and pipe small 1-inch circles of warm nougat onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I pipe dots until all the nougat is gone.

TIPS FOR NOUGAT!

Place pan of nougat dots into the freezer. The nougat disks will pop off the pan when frozen and makes them easy to place inside your macaron. (Yay for helpful tips.)

Assembly for Snickers Mickey Macaron

Pipe a Mickey shape onto your mat or parchment, bake as directed in recipe. Be sure to remove printed templates from underneath your mat/parchment before baking. Proceed as usual for our SweetMacShop shells.

Around the outside edge of the cookie shape, pipe a line of Salted Caramel Buttercream. Pop a circle of nougat into the middle. Match up a top, and proceed as usual, letting them mature so all flavors will blend.

Brownie Filling [optional]

If you want to add brownie to your Snickers Mac, just PRE-MAKE brownies and smoosh them inside the Mac with the nougat flavor. (yes, smoosh is a technical term.)

Download Mickey shape file:

2. Fall Cookie Recipes

I am not sure how many of you know this but we have done numerous morning shows. One morning show in particular, we showed our fall cookies — complete with crumbles in the cookie and on top. The crunch texture in the soft sugar cookie has quickly become a fan favorite.

Pumpkin Spice Crumble Sugar Cookie (shown in photo above)

Lemon White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie

Maple Pecan Sugar Cookie

These aren’t a crumble, but they are delicious:

Caramel Butter Bars

3. PSL for LIFE

Well, consider this another bonus, but I am going to give you a sneak peek to our PSL Crumble Macaron. I know, you can thank me later (Name that movie quote) (Hint: Sandra Bullock and football) (answer: Blindside) and moving on…

Pumpkin Spice Crumble

• 1/2 cup sugar (100 g)
• 1 1/2 tbsp brown sugar (25 g)
• 3/4 cups cake flour (90 g)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder (2g)
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt (2 g)
• 2 tbsp rainbow sprinkles (20 g)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (40 g)
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract (12 g)
• 2 tsp Pumpkin Spice (8g)
• 1 tsp Vanilla Latte Powder (4g)
• 1 tsp pumpkin spice to sprinkle on after baking
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar (sprinkle after baking)

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Heat oven to 300F.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle beater, whisk together the sugars, flour, baking powder, salt, and sprinkles. 
• Add oil and vanilla. Mix until clumps form.
• Spread the mixture on a parchment lined (or Silpat lined) sheet pan.  Bake for 20 minutes, breaking them up occasionally.  The crumbs should be golden brown and still slightly moist to the touch; they will dry and harden as they cool. sprinkle last teaspoon of pumpkin spice and sugar over warm crumble, toss to combine.
• Let the crumbs cool completely before using in a recipe or eating.  Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.  For storage up to one month, store in the refrigerator or the freezer.

4. Heading into Fall

I love the Fall season and to be honest, its very UNLIKE me to not have pumpkins out lining my porch at this point in September, but like life, this month is moving way too fast and I am cutting out anything that doesn’t feel necessary at this point. However, pumpkins and bats and all the fun will be pulled out of the boxes next weekend. My kids love all things holiday decorations and I am actually surprised they have let me go this long without diving into the fall pumpkin bins. Do you love seasonal decor? Either you love it or hate it, right. There is really no middle ground.

5. What’s On the Blog

This really should be called “what’s not on the blog.” Because I was traveling I didn’t get anything new published, but we are working on Apple Macarons, a chocolate ganache post and all things Halloween. I am also starting to show my Halloween creations on INSTAGRAM. So if you’re not following along there, head on over!