Jodi Miller Photography by Jodi + Kurt | VA Wedding Photographers | Destination Wedding Photographers » personal

Peace, Joy + Love

Jodi — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:44:27 +0000

We hope everyone has a warm and lovely Christmas! We are so excited for some time off to spend with family and friends. Stay tuned next week as we’ll be sharing our year in review post to wrap up 2011. Cheers and much love to you all!

Holiday Sweetness

Jodi — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:00:06 +0000

One of the best things about this time of year is giving and receiving holiday cookies. One of my favorite cookies Kurt makes are Chocolate Peppermint Macaroons, they must be one of the cutest cookies and they taste like bite sized brownies. So, this year we decided to share the love and send some to all of our 2011 and 2012 wedding couples. We love all of our couples and wanted them to have one of our favorite treats during this holiday season! Last week we spent two full days making and packaging up macaroons for all of our clients…let me tell you, it’s a lot of work making these little guys for close to 50 packages! Since this was such a huge undertaking, we wanted to share the recipe with you as well (with lots of pictures!)

Step 1: Assemble all tools and ingredients…
1 scale that can weigh in grams
1 large mixing bowl (4 qt)
1 medium mixing bowl (2.5 qt)
1 medium whisk (and a lot of elbow grease) or an electric eggbeater
1 small whisk (if making chocolate macaroons)
1 pastry bag (14in.)
1 icing tip (U 9e)
1 medium mesh strainer
1 measuring cup or other medium sized container to hold pastry bag
2 sheets of parchment paper or silicon baking mats
1 silicon spatula or other mixing utensil
1 oven set at 350 F

ingredients:

50 grams almond flour
100 grams 10x sugar (powdered sugar)
70 grams egg whites or 2 egg whites
65 grams granulated sugar

optional ingredients:
1 small pinch sea salt
25 grams cocoa
1-2 drops vanilla extract
1-2 drops food coloring

Step 2 (Grinding the “flour”):
Blitz together the almond flour and 10x sugar in a clean coffee grinder or food processor, then pass through a fine to medium mesh strainer. Any large bits that don’t pass through return to grinder. I typically do this in three parts, since my grinder can’t hold it all at once.

If you are making chocolate macaroons, pass the cocoa (separately) through the strainer and mix with the almond-sugar mixture using a small whisk.

Step 3 (Prepping the pastry bag):
Place icing tip in the small end of the pastry bag. Grab right above the tip; twist and stuff, to prevent the “macaronage” batter from leaking. Put bag in measuring cup and pull the sides up and over.

Step 4 (Meringue):
Making meringue can take a lot of work if done by hand, though the advantage is, it is very hard to over mix. Make sure to have egg whites at room temperature.

Try not to have any yolk in the whites when separating.

Prep your sugar with a pinch of salt.

Start by placing the whites in the medium bowl and whisking, then slowly add the granulated sugar and optional salt. The slower you add sugar the less whisking you will have to do in the long run.

I add about 1 teaspoon of sugar every 30 seconds. It’s okay to take small breaks from whisking, though don’t rest for more than 30 seconds.

Usually when I run out of sugar I’m close to the soft peak stage (left image). Once your meringue is taking shape, pull the whisk up and out to see how strong your “peaks” are – soft peaks will flop over immediately, stiff peaks will look like the top of a Hershey kiss (see right image). Add vanilla extract or food coloring in between the soft and stiff peak stage. Once your peaks hold a good shape, stop and immediately move on to Step 5.

Step 5 (Folding):
Fold meringue into the almond-sugar mixture in three steps using ⅓ of the meringue each time. The 1st folding is more like mashing, the goal is to “wet” as much as possible. Scrap the spatula if needed. The 2nd folding should be a bit more gentle, make sure to scrap the sides down and the scrap the bottom of the dish.

The 3rd folding (left image) be gentle with the batter, literally fold the batter over the meringue trying to keep as much air in the batter as possible. The final batter (right image) shouldn’t have any streaks of meringue or any dry spots.

Once finished, scrape immediately into the pastry bag, twisting the bag above the batter fully enclosing it.

Step 6 (Piping):
Macaroons can be made in most any size you want. I typically aim for a small to medium size, so I pipe a blob of batter with a diameter of about 1 inch. My technique: pipe straight down, gently squeezing the bag, till it reaches the right size, then release pressure, move onto piping the next one. Give about 1 inch space between each macaroon, because after piping you will pat the bottom of the sheet pan till they spread out and have a smooth top.

Step 7 (Waiting):
Depending on how humid your kitchen is, will depend on how long it takes for the macaroon’s tops to dry. On a normal day wait 10-20 minutes, then bake. I’ve noticed when I make chocolate the cocoa acts as a drying agent so I never have to wait before baking them, regardless of humidity.

Step 8 (Baking):
All ovens hold temperature and heat differently, so set the temperature to 350 F and adjust if necessary. Have 2 oven racks set in the middle and lower shelf. Place the first tray of macaroons on the middle shelf and bake for 6 minutes, then move it to the lower shelf baking for 5 minutes. Be sure to switch the placement of the tray when moving the tray down a shelf. So the macaroons that were closest to the oven door are now the furthest in the oven, so that they bake more evenly. Times may vary on your oven – to test if they are done baking, gently press on a the top of a macaroon, it should be firm and not squishy. If after you take them out and they start to look speckled, they probable haven’t baked enough; so if it’s only been a couple minutes, return the oven for 2-3 minutes.Let cool on pan for 10 minutes and gently transfer cookies onto a cooling rack. Store in an air tight container, refrigerating for up to a week or freezing up to a month. When defrosting let stand at room temperature – do not take off the lid till they are completely defrosted.

Step 9 (Icing):

Ganache Recipe:
115 grams semi-sweet chocolate chips
33 grams or 2 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon corn syrup (to prevent crystalization)
45 grams water (or coffee for a mocha ganache)
1 drop of peppermint extract
1 pinch sea salt (optional)

Put all ingredients in a pan.

Warm over low heat till melted.

Let cool and refrigerate 1 hour, then use or refrigerate up to 2 weeks.

Put a dab of Ganache between two macaroons and smoosh them together till the icing comes to the sides.

To add a little more crunch to your macaroons, you can cover the sides in crushed up candy canes.

Then eat.

These are the little packages we mailed out to clients. We also made a vanilla macaroon with jam…delish.

Recipes were adapted from www.davidlebovitz.com.

Christmas at The Lady Jane

Jodi — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:56:49 +0000

As most of you know I absolutely love Christmas! I love the music, the decor, and the atmosphere of the season. So, we just had to share with you what our good friend, Sara of The Lady Jane, has going on in her lovely shop. You may remember our post back in the summer when her shop officially opened in downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia. Well, this time her shop is completely decked out in holiday cheer. It’s like being transported into a place where Christmas lives up to all of its expectations. So for those of you who still have shopping to do (or those who haven’t started), make sure you swing by her shop…she has some great vintage finds and some cute holiday decor! Oh and be sure to tell Sara we sent you

love that she decorated her tree with teacups and saucers

we picked up one of these tree toppers from The Lady Jane and LOVE it

help heal Isaac… | personal

Jodi — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:30:38 +0000

Many of our posts are filled with young couples and thoughts of love, but today we wanted to talk about something else, something that has really weighed heavily on our hearts lately. There is a natural connection or bond that can occur between us as photographers and our couples, it has elements of friendship and a partnership; but it is best described as a feeling of being in the same boat, where you will either sink or swim together on this journey of a wedding day. There is a great amount of trust that is formed over this “connection” and continues past the engagement or wedding day. As many of you know, we are recently married (almost a year exactly!), and we too have felt this connection with our wedding photographers, Stephanie and Isaac of This Modern Romance. They have been a continual source of encouragement to our marriage by the beautiful work they created on our special day. It acts as an everyday reminder of the love we share as husband and wife, seeing our pictures throughout our house or on the screen saver of our computers. We have been so blessed by our photographers, and that is why we want to do something for them as they are in so much need of it now. Recently, Isaac has undergone intensive surgery removing a massive tumor from his brain. After the surgery, he experienced a stroke and is now having difficulties with recovery. As wedding photographers ourselves, we can’t even imagine what they are experiencing with this tragedy, not only for Isaac’s health, but also still maintaining their business and workflow. So, we ask that you pray for the two of them and God’s intervention and also, if you feel called, to help them financially through Isaac’s long rehab process. For more information on Isaac’s story or if you’d like to donate financially to Isaac’s recovery, please visit their site.

As many of you know, we haven’t posted our wedding photos, but trust me, they will be coming to the blog in just a couple short weeks (we’ve anxiously waited a year for this!). We’ve been holding out for an exciting publication to be released! So here’s just a sneak peek…