i can't believe i've not heard of rose petal jam, or jelly until i saw this as one of the components of a verrine i intend to make. given my love for rose there was no way i could miss this out so i went ahead and bought the reddest rosiest red roses i could lay my hands on. i knew the color was gonna turn out pretty and striking and true enough, it was a blood red hue not unlike raspberry jam.

i had macaron orders for two consecutive days. first one was a wedding order, from the bride to her bridesmaids as thank-you gifts. flavors are rose, pistachio & dark choc.

second one - birthday gifts. flavors are matcha adzuki, passionfruit milk choc, caramel fleur de sel & dark choc.

** edited to add : one more last minute order. rose, caramel fleur de sel, black sesame.

i made 200 macarons these two days and the aftermath is extreme dark circles under eyes and aching back, hands & feet. so so tired and desperately need some sleep now *yawns*

apart from sadaharu aoki & hidemi sugino, i was told that toshi yoroizuka (鎧塚 俊彦) is another prominent pastry chef in japan and if i were to go to japan i must visit his boutique at midtown tokyo. frankly, i've not heard of him so i googled and found out that this has quite alot of his recipes (i think its his official site). the only thing is they're in japanese and apart from ingredients used, the method & steps are not stated at all. this is actually not surprising consider that if you can attempt professional level cakes and entremets, you should hv already memorized the steps by heart. i wouldn't say i was very confident but i was up for the challenge. imagine, i had to rely solely on google translate to translate the text from japanese to english + make this without any written steps, its a little like playing with fire.