Central city has opened up so much more since the start of the year. Our last visit was a few months ago. Net fencing prevented us from walking into the heart of the city; we could only peer into it. Yesterday, for the first time, we were able to walk into it and see all the restaurants, clothes stores, cafés and banks we used to visit before the quakes hit. They were all vacant, but at least they are no longer inside the cordoned off area.

    A few restaurants have opened back up in this part of the city. The fact that food places are opening here surely is a sign that people are coming back into the city—that there are people walking and working in central Christchurch again.

    This main artery in and out of central city has also opened (photos below). At the start of the year, it was partially opened, full of netting, construction cones and grey. Now, it is decorated in bright colours with matching planters lining the street. We wonder if painted central streets is going to be a feature of the new Christchurch.

    There are cute topiaries here and there, large eye-catching murals that span entire walls of buildings, paintings and an air bridge that’s completely covered in a bright blue sky artwork.

    We really like the artwork on this air bridge: stand at the right position and it should look like there is no air bridge. It’s just sky with buildings on either side. Being a grey autumn day as well as not standing in the right position, we didn’t manage to capture the effect on camera.

    Central Christchurch has been battered by a lot earthquakes. A little over two years after the quakes, it still looks that way on the whole, but there is definitely a lot more activity. More parts of central city is opened, roads are being cleared, landscaping is being done, more and more businesses are opening up. It’s really great to see this progress. We hear that this is the year of the rebuild and that the central city is planned to open up fully this year. We really hope this is the case. It will be exciting to see what Christchurch looks like as more and more buildings go up and city plans are made into reality.

We’re back with our All-Time Favourite Asian Series. We’ve written about this series before. We had a post about it way back talking about how much we loved the series after a friend lent the DVD set for us to watch. Many years have passed and since then, we’ve watched so many more Asian series; and still, this Slice of Life/Romance/Comedy series remains as one of our favourite Asian series of all-time.

    It Started with a Kiss, the Taiwanese adaptation of Tada Kaoru’s Itazura Na Kiss, is our latest entry to our All-Time Favourite Asian Series blog series.

Main Cast

Joe CHENG / 郑元畅 as JIANG Zhi Shu
Ariel LIN / 林依晨 as YUAN Xiang Qin
Jiro WANG / 汪东城 as JIN Yuan Fen (Ah Jin)

Based on Itazura na Kiss / イタズラな Kiss manga written by
TADA Kaoru / 多田かおる

Genre
Slice of Life, Romance, Comedy

A while back we wrote about finding this fantastic plugin called MiniLyrics that displays lyrics on the desktop screen as we play songs on various popular media players. It includes a database of lyrics to songs which saves us from searching for the lyrics ourselves. This database of lyrics is pretty wide-ranging, showing results for pretty much all the songs in our collection except for the less popular songs. (Perhaps the term isn’t quite the right one: they are pretty popular where they originate, just not with the group of MiniLyrics users who submit to the database, which is how the database of lyrics grows.)

    For our latest post, we’re going to write about writing your own lyric timings so that you can either save them as .LRC external lyrics files or embed them directly into songs itself so that any player that supports displaying lyrics will display them automatically when played.

Finding the Lyric Timings

    Finding the timings require loading the music file into a sound editor and reading the timestamps at which each lyric begins. We like to use Audacity. It’s a fantastic program for editing sound, with lots of features, and it’s free to download and use. If you don’t have a sound editor already installed with timestamps, we recommend downloading Audacity.

    With the sound editor running, import the music file into the editor. Scrub across the timeline to the beginning of each lyric and note down its start-time. You can note the times on the MiniLyrics’ Lyrics Editor or note it down on a text editor of your choice and then copy the lyrics into the MiniLyrics’ Lyrics Editor after you’re done.

    When you finish noting down the times, you don’t need to save or export the song file out. Just close the sound editor since we only used the program to grab the times and didn’t do any editing to the music file itself.

Using the Lyric Timings

    With the timings noted down, you can either create an external .LRC lyrics file from them or embed them directly into the song. Saving them as a separate external .lrc lyrics file will mean you’ll need to either store the .lrc files in a directory where you’ve set MiniLyrics—or any other media player capable of playing external lyrics—to find them or manually locate the lyrics yourself.

    If you choose to embed them, it will give you the freedom to play the song and display lyrics on media players that support embedded lyrics without having to define the directory of the stored external lyrics. We like to embed the lyrics for that reason.

In case you don’t wish to embed them, we’ll write about saving the lyric timings as .LRC file as well as embedding the lyrics into the music file.

Creating the External .LRC Lyrics File

    There’s really not much to creating the .lrc file. If you’ve noted the lyrics timings down on a text editor, like Notepad, all you need to do is:

1. Click “File > Save As…” on the text editor’s menubar

2. Type the name of the file follow by the ‘.lrc’ extension. (Do make sure the “Save as type” is “All Files” else you’ll get something like “lyrics.txt.lrc” instead of “lyrics.lrc”.)

3. Click “Save”.

    If you’ve noted the timings down into MiniLyrics’ Lyrics editor, do the following:

1. Click “File > Save Lyrics As…” in the MiniLyrics’ Lyrics Editor menubar

2. Type the name of the file

3. Click “Save”.

Embedding the Lyrics into the Music File

    Before we begin embedding the lyrics into the music file, we like to make a copy of the music file as a precaution. We’ve never had anything bad happen to the file, we didn’t corrupt the file or lose the file, but it’s always good to know that if something horrible happens, we know we have a back-up.

    On to the embedding. If you’ve added the times directly into the MiniLyrics’ Lyrics Editor, skip the first five steps and go straight to step 6.

1. Open/run the media player with the MiniLyrics plugin if it’s not already opened. (We use VLC player.) Hopefully the MiniLyrics window also pops up. If it doesn’t, you may not have installed the plugin for your player.

2. Load the music file into the media player with the MiniLyrics plugin. You can go to the directory and double-click the music file or you can go to the media player’s File menu and open it.

3. Play the song if it’s not already. (Playing the song will ensure that we are adding the lyrics to the song we want and not some other song in the player.)

4. Go to the MiniLyrics menubar. Bring up the Lyrics Editor by going to “View > Lyrics Editor…”

5. Copy and Paste the lyric timings into the lyrics editor.

6. Still on the Lyrics Editor window, embed the lyrics by going to “File > Save Lyrics in Song File…”

7. A dialog box will pop up (see picture above), asking which format you wish to save it as. Select the appropriate format for the kind of player you use. We like to select the one for Windows Media Player since we use that program as well. With MiniLyrics plugin installed, the embedded lyrics will show on the VLC player. (We assume with MiniLyrics installed, any of the options will display lyrics.)

8. Click “OK”.

Till next time!

Asian period/historical series, we’ve seen quite a number in this genre. We occasionally watch this genre for the action and the plotline (when it doesn’t drag on too much). For us, they are only great to watch once. Often they do not make quite enough of an impression for us to watch them a second time.

    In this latest blog entry, we’re going to continue with our second listing of our All-Time Favourite Asian Series. This next one is not only a historical/period series, but it is one that we’d happily watch once then rewind and watch again and again.

    The KBS2 series, Hong Gil Dong, is our next entry in our All-Time Favourite Asian Series.

Main Cast
KANG Ji Hwan / 강지환 as HONG Gil Dong
SUNG Yu Ri / 성유리 as HEO Yi Nok
JANG Geun Suk / 장근석 as (Prince) LEE Chang Hwi

Written by
HONG Jung Eun / 홍정은
HONG Mi Ran / 홍미란

Genre
Historical/Period, Action, Drama, Romance

Even being far away, at the bottom of the southern hemisphere, we are still able to get quite a lot of access to Asian series. Having three free-to-air Asian channels available to us broadcasting Korean, Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese dramas, online streaming, online stores as well as having friends who lend them to us we’ve been able to enjoy so many over the years. For our latest post, we thought we’d start a list of our all-time favourite Asian series.

    As we look at the series that feature on our list and think of why they are our all-time favourites, three things keep on popping up as the reasons: the story, the characters and the relationships in the series. The series in the list are ones we consider to have an interesting story that progresses well and logically; they have strong lead characters that make the story the reason it is interesting; and many of them have an interesting romance storyline as a main focus or as a sub-plot.

    So instead of simply writing up posts about our favourite Asian series and why we like them, we decided we’d write it like a profiling of the series, using the aforementioned three reasons—the story, the interesting characters and the interesting relationships in the series—as the basis for the posts. We figured if we wrote it this way, it’d give a chance for those who haven’t seen the series or are new to the world of Asian series to go see it.

    Okay. This is the first one. This one we saw many years ago and it was a pretty popular one. We reckon there probably aren’t too many people out there who watch Asian series that haven’t heard of this series. It’s a Japanese series set on a campus of a music academy, originally a manga that was turned into a live-action series. (Can anyone guess?)

    The first one on the list is Nodame Cantabile (Live-Action).

Main Cast
UENO Juri / 上野樹里 as NODA Megumi (Nodame)
TAMAKI Hiroshi / 玉木宏 as CHIAKI Shinichi

Based on the manga written by
NINOMIYA Tomoko / 二ノ宮 知子

Genre
Slice of Life, Comedy, Romance

In order to record the digital Freeview channels, the recording device must have the technology to pick up the digital signal. It needs a digital tuner to receive the digital channels and record them. VCRs and older DVD recorders do not have this digital tuner, and therefore will not be able to be used to record TV programs once New Zealand switches off the analogue service and switches over to the digital service.

    If you plan on recording digital TV programmes off of the TV after your region switches off the analogue service, consider getting a set-top box that not only receives digital channels, but also records them. It will be more costly than a standard set-top box that only receives digital channels, but it’s probably wise to think about whether recording the digital channels is something you see yourself doing a lot in the future. You don’t want to spend money on a set-top box that only receives and find out that you want to record and can’t, causing you to go out and spend money on another set-top box with the recording feature.

    Electronic stores stock a range of set-top boxes that receives and records digital channels. The Freeview site lists all of its approved set-top boxes as well. The set-top boxes that record are branded as MyFreeview as opposed to just Freeview for the standard set-top boxes that only receives digital channels. Remember, when choosing a set-top box, make sure it is the right one: choose a UHF MyFreeview set-top box if you’re using a UHF aerial to receive digital channels and a Satellite MyFreeview set-top box if you’re using a satellite dish to receive digital channels.

    So, what do you do with your VCRs and old DVD recorders? You don’t have to throw them out. You can keep them around for playing your VHS tapes and DVDs. They may not be able to record the digital channels, but they still function as VHS players and DVD players.

    That ends our series on NZ Going Digital with televisions. We hope it has been informative!

Happy digital TV watching!

Julia and Tania. : o) : o).

See our other posts in NZ Going Digital blog series:

After getting set up with digital TV, sometimes you find that you’re met with blank screens, pixelated pictures or missing channels. As a third part to our posts on New Zealand going digital with television, we thought we’d suggest some things to try when troubleshooting reception problems.

Problem: Blank screen, No signal or Weak signal message

Problem: Pixelation

Missing Channels

A lot of the times, TV reception problems can be easily fixed by checking connections, scanning for channels again and restarting the system. If that doesn’t work, then you may need to simplify the set-up by removing extra pieces of equipment like VCRs or checking that the aerial or satellite dish isn’t the cause. We hope this has been helpful!

Our last post to this series will be about recording devices for recording digital channels. See you next time!

See our other posts in NZ Going Digital blog series:

We’re back with our second part to NZ Going Digital with televisions: the equipment required to watch Digital TV. The following list is all that is required to get people watching Digital TV (if you aren’t already):

1. TV
2. UHF or Satellite Digital decoder/set-top box/receiver (from now on, we will call it a set-top box)
3. UHF terrestrial aerial or a satellite dish

Many will not need to get all three in the list. It’s unlikely many people will need to source a TV because old TVs can be used to watch digital TV. Many will already have the UHF aerial that is required to receive digital channels, so all that is left to get is a set-top box. In case you aren’t sure if what you have works, we’ll briefly go through the requirements and suggestions on how you can figure out if you’ve got the compatible equipment and devices for receiving Digital TV.

1. TV

2. Digital Set-top box

3. Aerial or Satellite Dish

So to sum up, in order to continue watching TV, it may be that you already have digital TV on your TV set and you will not need to do a single thing when the country completely goes digital by the end of this year. If you find that you aren’t viewing digital channels, there will be some investment necessary in equipment, but once this investment is made, you will be able to watch more TV that is clearer and better sounding for free.

Before we end this post, we’ll just do a condensed version of what has been written. The following combinations will allow you to watch digital TV:

• Old TV with audio/video inputs + UHF Set-top Box + UHF Aerial
• Old TV with audio/video inputs + Satellite Set-top Box + Satellite Dish
• New TV with in-built Freeview + UHF Aerial
• New TV with in-built Freeview + Satellite Set-top Box + Satellite Dish

Next part to this series, we’ll talk about troubleshooting TV reception problems.

Till next time!

See our other posts in NZ Going Digital blog series:

As some say, TV is like a window to the world. It is an important medium for keeping people informed of the ongoings through news broadcasts as well as of course provide entertainment. Our country is following the rest of the world, switching completely over to digital TV this year. Last year, the Hawke’s Bay and the West Coast region of New Zealand were the first regions to switch over to digital while the South Island will be going completely digital in April 2013. The Wellington region will switch on August 2013 and the Auckland region will switch December 2013 respectively, meaning New Zealand will have completely switched over to digital by the end of this year. Watching TV by the way of the analogue signal will be of the past as it will be turned off and the only way to watch TV is through the digital signal. We thought we’d dedicate a few posts to the subject of televisions going digital.

    Our first blog to this series is about what digital TV is, what channels are available on digital TV and what equipment is required to view digital TV.

What is digital TV?

For us viewers, digital TV means clearer pictures, better sound quality and more channels. It will also mean the ability to receive other services such as radio and text services on the television.

What’s the point of the country switching over to digital?

    As well as the above reasons of digital TV offering clearer pictures, better sound quality and more channels, there is also another reason for the country going digital with our television. Without going into the technical side (as well as to save ourselves some unnecessary headaches trying to grasp it all, : oP : oP), the main reason is efficient use of the frequency spectrum.

    Digital TV uses less capacity in the frequency spectrum. To transmit one analogue channel, it uses a single frequency. In contrast, digital TV technology allows multiple channels as well as other services such as radio and text services to be transmitted all at once in the same amount of space.

    In short, transmitting channels via the digital signal will allow broadcasters to transmit more channels at a time and it will free up the spectrum for other services.

Who offers Digital TV?

    Here in New Zealand, digital television is available via the Freeview service, SKY TV, TelstraClear TV, or IGLOO. Freeview is an organisation organised by major broadcasters in New Zealand. Freeview has been offering us free to watch digital channels since 2007.

    There is no subscription fee associated with getting Freeview digital channels. However, there is a cost to getting the equipment neccessary to receive digital channels (more on this later).

    Sky TV and IGLOO are paid services, offering digital channels through paid subscription.

What are the (Freeview) Digital Channels?

    The following list are some of the channels that are broadcasted in the digital signal (channel number and then name of channel are listed below):

• Freeview 1 – TV One
• Freeview 2 – TV2
• Freeview 3 – TV3

• Freeview 4 – FOUR
• Freeview 5 – Maori TV
• Freeview 6 – U

• Freeview 7 – TV One Plus 1

• Freeview 8 – TV3 Plus 1
• Freeview 9 – C4
• Freeview 11 – Trackside
• Freeview 12 – Choice TV
• Freeview 18 – The Shopping Channel
• Freeview 22 – Parliament TV
• Freeview 28 – Chinese TV 8
• Freeview 29 – Channel 9 (Chinese TV)

The list of digital channels above are location dependent and may not all be available in your region. To find a more comprehensive list of channels available for your region, check Freeview.

Do I have Digital TV already?

    A lot of people have Digital TV already. Digital channels have been broadcasting since 2007, so it may be that you are already watching digital channels. To find out if you have Digital TV already, you can flip through your TV and see if you see any of the following channels:

• Freeview 6 – U
• Freeview 7 – TV One Plus 1
• Freeview 8 – TV3 Plus 1
• Freeview 9 – C4
• Freeview 11 – Trackside
• Freeview 12 – Choice TV
• Freeview 18 – The Shopping Channel
• Freeview 22 – Parliament TV
• Freeview 28 – Chinese TV 8
• Freeview 29 – Channel 9 (Chinese TV)

    The above list are only available on the digital signal. If you are seeing one or more of these digital channels now then it means you are already watching digital TV. You will not need to worry about not having any TV to watch when the analogue signal is switched off because you are already set-up with Digital TV.

(Again, we want to note that some channels may not be available in your region. Channel availability is dependent on which region broadcasters choose to broadcast. Most people should be able to get Freeview 6 Freeview 7, Freeview 8 and Freeview 22, however. So on your remote, press the corresponding numbers and see if you get some of these channels.)

This completes our first post to NZ Going Digital with televisions. Our next post will be on the equipment needed.

Till next time!

See our other posts in NZ Going Digital blog series:

Two months after the devastating February 22 2011 Christchurch quake, we headed to downtown Christchurch with our digital still camera that had a video function and took footage of the devastation: we wanted to see for ourselves the images we saw on our television sets. Army personnel manned the only inner city street opened for thoroughfare and viewing into the devastation. Months passed and slowly the city began to open up, and more and more of the city became accessible to the public. We headed back earlier this year to capture short clips of the city again. We had quite a lot of footage and thought we’d edit them and put together a very, very short documentary-like video.

    Just a little about the video, the equipment we used and the day we went to take the shots:

    A huge part of this video was taken with the video function on our digital still camera with a maximum resolution of 640 pixels by 480 pixels. The lack of video features of a digital camera means our video is very simple consisting of mostly pans and stationary shots. We experimented with the zoom feature, but we had little control over the speed of the zoom and opted to not use it.

    The day we went to capture the shots was a particularly windy day; we contended with a wind gust of 65km/hr and we felt like leaves, blown around and almost uprooted from the ground; and so, without a tripod, trying to keep the camera motion steady and smooth was a challenge. Please excuse shots that are less than steady and smooth. : oP : oP.

    After recording the narrations, we took the shots and the audio files into Apple iMovie. As some of you may know, iMovie comes with all Mac computers. It is a simple video editor with no layers and typical transitions and effects; so our video is not filled with special effects or colour adjustments of the footage but consists of basic editing and transitions. We think simple does suit the video so the features in iMovie was sufficient for putting together this video.

    We invite you to watch our short video and we hope you will get a small insight into what the city is like in the year 2012, over a year after our most destructive aftershock! If you would like to support Christchurch, please purchase yourselves a couple of bands4hope and support the rebuilding of Christchurch! Thanks muchly for your support!

    MiniLyrics adds lyrics to many popular media players and applications: the list includes Windows Media Player, VLC Player, iTunes, WinAmp and Spotify. It’s a cool piece of add-on software. You simply download the MiniLyrics plugin, select the players you wish to use it with, install it then load the songs. (You may need to go into the player’s option/preferences to turn on the MiniLyrics. For a more detailed setup and installation, go to MiniLyric’s Help page.)

    Many of the songs will then automatically load with lyrics without you having to search them out. Upon loading the song, the MiniLyrics plugin will do a search of their database for lyrics; so you won’t have to manually search for them and load them into the player. If you find the timing is a bit off or there’s a mistake in the lyrics, there is an internal lyrics editor that allows you to correct these mistakes.

    The database which MiniLyrics draws upon is very big. We found that not only were there lyrics for English language songs, but also Chinese, Japanese and Korean songs, which is fantastic! We did come across songs that the database returned no results; so we had to create our own lyrics file (in .lrc format). Creating a lyrics file can be done using the MiniLyrics’ internal lyrics editor, too.

    The coolest thing about MiniLyrics is the way it displays lyrics. There is an option where you can display the lyrics anywhere you want on the screen. How this works is the MiniLyrics window will pop up upon launching the player. The lyrics are displayed on this window which you can move to any area on your screen.

    After a short moment, this window disappears and all you’re left with are the lyrics. If you set it to scroll and remain on top of all applications, you can continue to work, surf the Internet all the while sing along to your songs.

    Pretty awesome, right? We think so. The only thing is, it is a free-to-try software. To get it fully activated, you must purchase an activation code. We downloaded the free-to-try version and it appears to have all features activated. Whether some of these features will become inactive after a certain period of trial, we can’t tell. There also doesn’t appear to be any mention of a trial period… We’ll have to keep using the free-to-try version and see how long the free-to-try period is.

You have to be quite a fan of the CBS science fiction series, Star Trek: Voyager, and to have followed it from the pilot to the finale to truly appreciate Star Trek: Voyager – Distant Shores, with each chapter delving into untold stories of the U.S.S. Voyager crew.

    The opening chapter begins with the end scene of the one-hour seventh season and series finale, “Endgame”, with the future Janeway releasing a virus into the collective and the Borg, the Borg Queen and assimilated Janeway slowly becoming immobilised by it. Janeway’s conscious floats and wanders to places of the past. The stories from points in time in Voyager’s journey then begins, telling experiences of particular characters that is not seen in the television series.

    There some memorable chapters such as the chapter that focused on Talent Night, an item that was pass-mentioned at the opening scene of the third season episode, “Coda”, and a couple chapters that focused on Seven of Nine. Those were captivatingly written and a joy to read. There was one chapter that focused on the relationship of the captain and the commander. It offered more than what the show offered, but fans of the pairing, it was disappointing to say the least. However, as stories in the book are inserts in the timeline and events of the television series, it’s understandable as not much could veer from what’s already been written.

    An interesting relationship that was brought up in the book was B’Elanna Torres and Harry Kim. A chapter revealed B’Elanna’s thoughts of Harry as a potential suitor. This was a very surprising thing to have read.

    And so, the strength of this book is that it give more development to the characters, describing thoughts, worries and vulnerabilities that wasn’t apparent in the show. In this respect, it was what kept pages turning; however, the book as a whole was lukewarm; good, but not spectacular. The book was a good read, a nice collection of stories that brings back fond memories of the show, but not a book that makes you want to go find other fans of the show and talk excitedly about it.

    The Italian Meringue method of making macarons has its perks, but we are definitely fans of the French Meringue method of making macarons because of its relatively less complicated method. However, as the French meringue and Italian meringue differs, there are good and bad points in each method and the resulting look of the macarons.

Method

    The Italian Meringue requires an extra step of the sugar syrup (made with just sugar and water) to which needs to reach a certain temperature and be timed well with the whipping egg whites. The Italian meringue requires good time management. Because of this, you will either need a second person to help or a stand mixer so that you can make the sugar syrup and whip the egg whites at the same time. Otherwise, it’d be quite a juggling act trying to do both the sugar syrup and whipping the egg whites at the same time with a hand mixer. This extra step of making the sugar syrup makes the process more complicated.

The French Meringue method does not require the timing that is required for the Italian Meringue and it doesn’t require the extra step of making the sugar syrup. It only uses the four main ingredients: egg whites, ground almonds, caster sugar and icing sugar. The process is relatively easier.

Stability

The Italian Meringue produces a more stable meringue and for this reason it is not as easily to mess up or affected by environmental factors. The French meringue method is very sensitive to environmental factors and poor technique.

Skill

Though the process involved in the Italian Meringue method is comparatively more complicated than the French Meringue method, the required skill/technique and understanding of the importance of good technique and other factors that affect macaron making is much higher for making macarons using the French meringue. The more stable meringue of the Italian Meringue allows room for error, while there is very little room for error with the more unstable French meringue.

Appearance

Some have said that the Italian Meringue produces better looking macarons than ones made with the French Meringue, but we say that you can produce some good-looking macarons with the French Meringue, too. Below are some examples of macarons we have made using the French Meringue and the Italian Meringue. The recipes we chose were randomly chosen online that have been found to work very well by others.

Above: Another example of macarons using the French Meringue method. Notice how the feet can be straight up and down with the French Meringue method also? It is of course still ruffled.

The images show that you can produce pretty good-looking macarons with both methods. It’s just easier to produce good-looking macarons consistently with the Italian Meringue method and that’s because of the higher stabililty of the Italian meringue. With the French Meringue method, you will more likely to fail because of the relatively more unstable nature of the French meringue.

Below, we compare some similarities and differences between the two methods:

Texture

The Italian Meringue method produces fuller, more compact interiors than the French Meringue. The compactness of the Italian meringue macaron interiors means they aren’t as light and airy or melt-in-the-mouth as macarons made with the French Meringue.

Vibrancy

The colors of the shells are much more vibrant in the Italian Meringue macarons.

Shell Thickness

The Italian meringue has a relatively thicker shell, but only slightly and sometimes the difference is unnoticeable. We’ve noticed that with macarons using the French meringue method, the shell can get similar to a sheet of ice. When bitten into, it has a very delicate crunch and shatters into very tiny pieces—so delicate and thin that the tiny broken pieces angle into the filling, but not pierce into it. We’ve not come across an Italian Meringue macaron with a shell as delicate.

Feet

The feet is straighter and inline with the shell with macarons made with the Italian meringue (example image can be found above under Macarons – Italian Meringue Method). It is possible to get the straight-up-and-down feet in the French meringue macarons but that requires all factors that affect successful macaron making to be in balance—technique, environmental factors and oven (in depth discussion of all these can be found in our eBook, “Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You”).

Success Rate

There is less disappointment of failure with the Italian Meringue method as it allows more room for error. The examples of the Italian Meringue macarons we’ve shown (all the Italian Meringue macaron images above) are from our second attempt of Italian Meringue macarons. Our first attempt were produced under high humidity and had idle whipped up egg whites sitting and waiting ready for around a minute for the sugar syrup to reach the correct temperature. It was not perfect, but good:

Above: Full interior, however has a thicker shell than what’s called perfect.

Above: some collapsed interiors. This image shows a large chunk of shell piercing into the filling and demonstrates what a shell—Italian meringue or French meringue alike—should not be.

This shows how slight errors won’t ruin a batch with the Italian Meringue method. The French Meringue method will not allow for error as even slight errors will show up very visibly in the macarons—collapsed interiors/hollowness, weak shells, splattered feet or even no feet and cracked shells.

Final Words
The French Meringue method of making macarons requires less fuss and we choose it because of that reason. Not only that, but the French meringue macarons, in our opinion tastes better simply because it does produce a more lighter and airier macaron with a more delicate shell.

    If we were to advise which method to use for beginner macaron makers, we would suggest the Italian Meringue method because of the stability of the meringue that the method produces. That extra stability created from the extra step of the sugar syrup allows much more room for errors, so the extra step of getting the sugar syrup to the exact temperature and timing it perfectly with the whipping egg whites is worth it if it means that you get macarons coming out of the oven looking like macarons. Getting a candy thermometer to make sure the sugar syrup reaches to the correct temperature and timing it with the egg whites is an easier thing to learn than understanding and balancing all the factors that affect macarons, required to produce perfect macarons using the French Meringue method.

Make perfect macarons with our new eBook, Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You

    We found no trouble picking up the Italian meringue method of making macarons after learning how to make macarons using the French meringue method. We don’t think the transition would have been so easy if we started out making macarons using the Italian Meringue method. The constant failure with the French meringue method would have had us give up and revert back to using the more stable and less disappointing method that is the Italian Meringue method of making macarons.

    This concludes our “Macarons: Quest for Perfection” blog series. Please check out our eBook on macaron making, “Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You”. It is a book discussing the factors that affect macarons and provides tips and recommendations as well as a troubleshoot guide. Purchase a copy of this eBook and arm yourself with the knowledge and produce perfect macarons consistently. Or, maybe you have been following our macaron blog series and want to show your appreciation by either purchasing a copy or help us spread the word about our eBook to other macaron makers having trouble turning out perfect macarons. Direct them to our eBook information page: http://www.juliaandtania.com/publications/mmwrdty/.

That’s a wrap!

Julia and Tania. : o) : o).

See our other posts in Macarons, Quest for Perfection blog series:

“[N]obody thought [Jeremy] Lin could make it in the NBA. He was too short and too weak, with a mediocre jump shot.” – WIRED

We are not basketball fans—though, on occasions, we’ll watch a game or two when there is nothing else on TV—but this story about Jeremy Lin being picked to get some game time with the New York Knicks caught our attention. We love this story as well as have some dislike for it. We love that it features a guy who breaks steoreotypes. He’s academically successful and he’s a basketball hero; and he proves being smart and being able to play professional basketball don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And despite not fitting the image of what coaches, scouts and whoever else thought, is a basketball-star-in-the-making, he manages to prove to them that he didn’t have to fit this mold of theirs to become the missing ingredient to posting a winning streak.

    Now, the part of the story we don’t like: it took a time of poor team performance and a last-resort decision to get him some game time. How often does this happen, where just because people didn’t fit the profile or did things not quite to what is the standard of doing things that they were turned away and never given a chance to prove themselves? A lot. It happens during sports team try-outs, school applications, job interviews… just basically anywhere where you’re being judged whether you’re the right person for something.

    Sometimes, the vetting process that’s in place doesn’t work. We don’t know all that much about how prospective basketball players are found, so we’ll use candidate selection for jobs instead.The words in the resumes, the words that come out of a person’s mouth may look and sound good and on point (or not good and off-point as the case may be); but they don’t always reflect the true value of the person. Sometimes, what it takes is being given a chance to show their skills and talent on the job, in-field, over a reasonable period of development time that the person’s true worth is finally grasped.

    It was just fortunate that the New York Knicks suffered a loss to Boston Celtics (source: Wikipedia). Otherwise, they would have not discovered Jeremy Lin, someone that didn’t meet selectors’ standards, but was more than capable and very worthy of a starting member, as he meant the difference between a struggling team and being back on the winning side. To find his true worth, they just needed to give him real chance to see him in action and prove himself.

    Best Buy is this retailer in the United States that specialise in electronics. They also sell US iTunes cards/codes to international customers. You can be from New Zealand, Australia, the UK—almost anywhere in the world and buy the US iTunes codes off their site with your non-US credit card. The best part is they don’t add a service charge like on Ebay and other online sites that sell the codes. The amount on the iTunes cards is the amount you pay for and get in credit. Sometimes they’ll even have discounted prices on iTunes cards. A few weeks ago, they were selling a $100 and $50 US iTunes card for US$80 and US$40, respectively. So, not only do you not have to pay a service charge, you get extra credit on your account!

    When you add the US iTunes card to your cart, make sure you choose the right one. They sell both the card version and the code version. The code version will have ‘Digital Delivery’ in brackets next to the name of the card (i.e. Apple® – iTunes $50 Code (Digital Delivery)). This is the one that will get you issued a US iTunes code through email. Once you have selected the card(s) you’d like to purchase, make sure you fill in the address as stated in their International Orders page. You’ll be asked to fill out a US address and a US phone number that matches your credit card. For the address, fill in the address they provide you. For the phone number, you can provide any number you have (the phone number doesn’t have to match your credit card it seems)

    There you have it. You can now buy US iTunes cards/codes abroad. Pretty handy if you’ve got a US iTunes account and don’t want to trouble your US friends anymore or you’ve moved to another country from the US and don’t own a US credit card anymore.

Make perfect macarons with our new book, Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You

We have read that one of the worst things that can happen to pastry chefs is when they move to a new kitchen and they have to work with a new oven (‘new’ referring to ‘different’ as opposed to the age of the oven). Despite using the same recipe, using the same temperature setting and baking time that have worked for their previous oven, they find the recipe and its settings do not work for the oven in their new kitchen. They find that they have to learn the oven and see what works and what doesn’t temperature-wise, which consequently means figuring out the baking time as well.

    When working with a macaron recipe, the experience is not all that dissimilar. Instead of you testing the recipe on different ovens, the recipe moves around to various ovens and is tested when each of us use them on each of our ovens. When this recipe is used in various kitchens, you may find (through reading or hearing others’ outcome) that for some people the temperature setting and baking time stated in the recipe works for them, but for you it’s a disaster. This is because every oven is different. Different types exist as well as different models. Variations in design, technology and additional features in the ovens influence the optimal temperature, baking time and oven set-up.

    To figure out what the optimal temperature is for your oven, we recommend obtaining an oven thermometer to start off. You want to make sure your oven temperature is accurate and that there isn’t too much variance in temperature during baking: macarons are sensitive to temperature and you want your oven temperature to be as accurate as possible. (If you find that the reading of your oven temperature is inaccurate, you will need to have it looked at and recalibrated.) Once this is taken care of then you can begin testing your oven for the right temperature.

    When testing temperatures, we suggest sending in partial batches. Don’t send in the full batch. Send in little batches at a time. Pipe your batter into groups of two or three and send them in separately: you will waste less and have more to test this way.

    The main signs of too high oven temperature are browning, cracking and the collapse of the meringue. Sticky bottoms and pooling of the meringue are signs the temperature is too low. Uneven baking—that is, macaron shells on one side browns more than the other side—is the cause of uneven heat distribution. In the latter case you will need to make alterations to oven set-up and (say) rotate the baking sheet midway through baking.

    If you find that no matter what temperature or adjustments you make you still get less than perfect macarons, it may be that the problems aren’t oven-related. It may very well be technique and drying related.

    When you finally have a temperature that you believe works for your macarons and your oven, it’s time to figure out for how long. Use the recipe’s temperature and baking time as a guide. If you have set your temperature lower that its recommendation, bake the macarons longer, extend it for a minute at a time, making sure macarons aren’t over-baked. Similarly, if your temperature needs to be higher than the recipe’s recommendation, bake the macarons less.

Four batches of French meringue macarons: apricot (top-left), rose (top-right), vanilla (bottom-left) and dutch-process cocoa (bottom-right).

    There have been information suggesting baking macarons in convection ovens with the fan on and missing a bottom bake element produces not so great macarons, we can attest that this is not true. Our oven is a fan-forced convection oven with no option to turn off the fan, no bottom element, prone to hotspots and the temperature can sway as much as 5°C during baking. Our baking sheet occasionally pops during baking, too, causing one corner to be at a 20° angle. Still, we manage to produce full batches of macarons with glossy shells, ruffled feet and full interiors. Failed macarons are not the result of having the wrong kind of oven. To produce great macarons, you must first get your technique right and then dry your macarons then study your oven. Do the aforementioned correctly, and macaron shells will materialise. Don’t give up. You can bake macarons in any oven!

    This concludes the series on Macarons, Quest for Perfection—at least for the time being. We may add a blog to the series in the future relating to macarons using the Italian Meringue. Just before we sign off from this blog series, though, we would like to do a bit of self-promotion for our new eBook we published on macarons, which covers much more information than we’ve done in this blog series and is available for purchase.

French meringue macarons!

Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You [EBOOK]

    In our Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You eBook, you can find out more factors that affect the success of macarons and new information which has not been covered in this blog series. We cover not only what factors affects turning out perfect batches of macarons, but also how they affect them. We provide detailed information about the techniques used, the ideal conditions for baking macarons—humidity levels and temperatures—and more information about baking macarons in ovens and our oven settings and set-up. The book also includes a troubleshoot section for macarons with colour photos, discussing the many problems macarons encounter, their cause(s) and the solution(s) to the problem.

    We hope you have time to traverse over to our page on our Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You eBook. If you go as far as purchasing a copy, we will be forever grateful for your purchase and support! The price of our book is around the price of two macarons. Imagine how many you could turn out. You’ll never have to spend a dime on buying macarons again once you start turning out batches and batches of beautiful macarons shells yourself after reading this eBook of ours. ; oP ; oP.

Happy macaron baking!
- Julia and Tania. : o) : o).

See our other posts in Macarons, Quest for Perfection blog series:

Above: French meringue rose and vanilla macarons. In the rose-flavoured batch, we had accidentally pierced through the skin, but feet still developed; good technique and correct drying time allows feet to form.

The next topic in “Macarons, Quest for Perfection” is Drying Time. When it comes to resting and drying the macarons, there is a lot of disagreement and confusing information out there. Do we dry them for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, or an hour? Do macarons even need to be rested and dried? There are people out there who stand by the claim that macarons can be piped and put straight into the oven. Through many, many wasted batches of macarons, trying out these varying drying periods—or lack there of—we can say that not only must macaron shells be rested and dried, but they must be dried thoroughly.

Make perfect macarons with our new eBook, Making Macarons: What Recipes Don’t Tell You

    The macaron’s signature foot is formed through having a strong skin form on its surface. This skin must dry to a point where they are dry to the touch, be able to glide a finger on the surface of the shell. This will help them withstand the oven and enable lifting of the shell and reveal the batter underneath, creating feet. Not letting them dry or rushing this step will mean cracks on the shells and lack of feet or uneven feet.

    The time it takes for macarons shells to develop this skin will depend on your baking environment. How warm and how humid it is in your baking environment (not outside!) will affect the length of time your macaron shells will dry. If your environment is warm and relatively dry, the time it will need to sit out will be shorter. If it is cold and the air is damp (i.e. high humidity) then your macarons will need to sit out for longer. Do not be surprised if your macarons need to rest/dry for triple the time recommended by some recipes, especially if the recipe calls for a short 20 or 30 minutes: even under the best baking environments, macarons don’t dry in such a short drying period.

    We have never had any success making a batch of macarons drying for such a short period of time. Others, however, have. Those who have managed to make macarons with little to no drying time, we can only presume that they are either using the Italian Meringue as the base, their oven has some special feature we’re not aware of that allows drying of the shell, or the specific combination of their ingredients allow for no drying time. Curious to see if it was the Italian Meringue or the combination of ingredients that permitted macarons to not need any drying time, we went in search of, firstly, a recipe using the French Meringue that maintains the “no drying needed” stance, then we searched for a recipe using the Italian Meringue.

    With the recipe that used the French Meringue and no drying time, there were a number of differences from the recipe we normally used. In terms of the ingredients list, there was the addition of salt. (In a basic macaron recipe, it consists of only egg whites, ground almonds, icing sugar and caster sugar). It asked for egg whites from any type of egg as opposed to the commonly asked, ‘aged egg whites’ and they must be whipped to a very stiff meringue. In regards to proportions, there was slightly less sugar in the meringue and less ground almonds to one egg white.

    A technique it employed that we normally didn’t employ is the rapping of the trays several times. After piping, it asks us to rap it hard on the countertop so that air bubbles are rid of and do not rise to the top during baking and cause cracks. We’ve never had to rap our baking sheets; we only give light taps under the baking sheet. If you have the perfect batter consistency, light taps is all you need—if at all. And we’ve never found air bubbles on the surface to be the cause of cracks: if macarons are left to dry, air bubbles that surface during the drying process will not cause major aesthetic problems to your macaron shells. So, the fact that this recipe was asking us to basically slam the sheet down onto the table for that reason was quite surprising to us.

    The last difference, it instructs us to put it straight into the oven at 300°F (148.9°C) and bake for around 18 minutes.

    The result was not good, to say the least. The shells were fine up until the five-minute mark. Thereafter, they began to strain against the oven heat. They puffed up and out, they became porous, fissures appeared. There was no foot of any kind on any of them. By the ten-minute mark, we decided to switch our oven off. They had turned out as we had expected them to. They progressed exactly like our very first batch of macarons when we made the mistake of drying them not long enough. So, there was no point in continuing to waste electricity on this batch.

    Predicting that the batch would go the way of feetless and porous macaron shells, we had piped three macaron shells from the same batter on another baking tray to test how they’d perform if we dried them. We didn’t dry them till they were touch-dry, though; we only dried them to the point where we could touch the rim and no batter stuck to the finger. We figured a short drying time of about 30 minutes should be more than enough drying time for a recipe not asking for any drying time. And the result was that there was improvement: there were feet this time, but the shells did crack. Nevertheless, they did look like macaron shells.

    We moved onto testing our next theory about macarons using the Italian Meringue base as not needing drying time. We found a recipe and tried not drying them. We can say they went the same way as the previous recipe that didn’t call for a drying period.

    From these two failed batches and semi-success with the one we dried for a short period, we conclude macarons do need to dry. Having made many successful batches before, we know our failures were not due to poor technique: we know how to spot the perfect batter consistency. We know it wasn’t the weighing of ingredients since we use a digital scale and made sure it is accurately calibrated. The only other variable we may need to consider is our oven. The writer of the recipe did not give information on the oven they use, how it operates, or if temperature was kept consistent throughout the baking time. We also can’t help to wonder if there is an oven that has some special feature or operates in a way that allows skin to form on the shells whilst they baked—because—skin absolutely needs to be there in order for lifting to occur so feet forms. Maybe the oven was the difference between us succeeding with their recipe and failing.

    Whether the oven played a part or not, to reduce the undesirable result of macaron shells expand up and outwards, crack and remain feetless, make sure you dry the macarons. This step is time-consuming, but this step is necessary. Dry them thoroughly, until it is touch-dry and your finger can glide right across the surface of the shells. This will give the macaron shells a good chance of developing feet and keep the shells from cracking under the oven heat.

Macaron failures: macarons with too little drying time results in cracks.

See our other posts in Macarons, Quest for Perfection blog series:

Living in a relatively small country, not everything we’re looking for is available here. There was a time when we really wanted to purchase some Auralex foam for some audio recording we were doing. We searched online and went to a lot of physical stores. No success. More recently we’ve been searching for specialty ingredients and equipment for some Christmas baking. After a long search and a lot of leg work, we did manage to find the ingredients and equipment we were after. How did we find them? Through the business’ websites.

    Out of all the businesses that we think should have websites, it should be those that sell specialty goods. There is a benefit to having a website. So many people like us do their searches online first before heading out to the store. Having a website for the unique product range would certainly bring in more customers. This unique range would also be enough to send the store to the top of search engine ranking, which mean less need to pay for advertising for top spot. After that, it’s pretty much be a done deal between customer and business (it would have been what would’ve happened had we found a local online or physical store that sold Auralex foam).

    Specialty stores don’t have to have an online store, just a well laid out website to showcase the specialty products they sell. Provide a location and people like us will visit the place. We understand building and maintaining a website can be expensive. So, it doesn’t have to be one that requires a paid webhost, designers and coders. A free hosted blog on the product range from a place like WordPress would be good alternative.

    A website, an online presence would go a long way into making the discovery a lot easier. We had believed that very little in the way of specialty goods was available in New Zealand. But now, having had some success in finding them, we think it’s not that no specialty goods are available in New Zealand, it’s that they’re not visible enough to be discovered.

P.S. Happy New Year! May 2012 bring lots of joy and prosperity!

WEBSITES OF INTEREST:

Consumer Rankings

In case there is anyone looking to start up a website, at Consumer Rankings, they’ve published the 10 most popular web hosting companies (all of them overseas). We hear that Bluehost is a good web host to go with, and judging by their ranking, a lot of people agree with that, too.

WordPress

    Another option is to have a hosted blog from WordPress. This is not just a site providing blogs. There are full functioning sites with search, categorisation, social media integration and shopping carts in WordPress. With their large database of themes, there’s sure to be a design that matches the look and feel of anyone looking to promote their business more, too. There are plenty of plugins available to perform all kinds of functions, taking the out the need to write or install complicated code. The ease and flexibility of WordPress sites makes setting up an online presence a breeze.