DB: Macarons- Parlez vous francais?

I was really excited to see macarons as the challenge for this month's Daring Baker's Challenge! When I first discovered the food blog world I saw the abundance of macarons out there in cyberspace, all colors and flavors, and I even tried to make them a couple times. I was expecting this a long time ago, and after a few months of being in Daring Baker's with no macarons I was beginning to think the challenge was never going to happen! Alas, finally, the macaron challenge!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

For those who are not familiar: "In the United States, the term “macaroon” generally refers to a cookie made primarily of coconut. But European macaroons are based on either ground almonds or almond paste, combined with sugar and egg whites. The texture can run from chewy, crunchy or a combination of the two. Frequently, two macaroons are sandwiched together with ganache, buttercream or jam, which can cause the cookies to become more chewy. The flavor possibilities and combinations are nigh endless, allowing infinitely customizable permutations." Take a look and see- explore other Daring Bakers to see what they came up with!

So below is a picture of the macarons I made following the Gramercy Tavern Recipe. Strawberry and Chocolate, with a salted caramel filling or a chocolate ganache. Clearly these macarons were unsuccessful. No feet, didn't rise much, but boy did they look pretty! Many people in the forums commented on the ratio of nuts to whites to sugar, and apparently this recipe does not have the optimal foolproof ratio. To make them flavored I added dried strawberries to the food processor to make strawberry powder, and for the chocolate ones I substituted 2 tbsp cocoa powder for powdered sugar. I recommend using Tartelette's recipe or Veronica has the Macaron Chronicles detailing how to make macarons and the many steps. For the ganache I just used about equal parts heavy cream and chocolate chips and a touch of oil for shine.

After that try I gave up on that recipe and went back to Tartelette's recipe that I've made successfully before, but I only had maybe 1/4 amount almonds, so I used that little bit of almonds and supplemented the remainder with hazelnuts. Tartelette recommends using at least half almonds, but mine worked perfectly even with far more hazelnut than almond. I used Veronica's Caramel Fleur de Sel Recipe (except just with Kosher salt!-aka salted caramel). It is good enough to eat with a spoon. It is sweet and salty and not too rich. It is the perfect combo of flavors, and the consistency is smooth and thick. Delicious. It tasted great with the macarons. My only complaint is that they are so sweet! I measure everything out by weight, so I'm not sure if it's something I'm doing or if they're just super sweet by nature, but it's borderline too much! I think I'd enjoy them more with a bit more nut flavor and less sweetness. I want to try more flavors, because I liked the taste of the strawberry and chocolate ones, even though they did not work out well. For a beginner baker they may be intimidating, there are a lot of steps that require a certain amount of precision. I believe weighing the ingredients makes it more accurate and turns out a better recipe. Also good ideas are baking them in low humidity, because higher humidity increases failure rates according to what I've seen. As for the aged egg white question: I used both aged and microwaved in my attempts. I didn't see a lot of difference, but I would recommend one or the other instead of using fresh whites. If pressed for time, just pop them in the microwave for 5 seconds, twice.

Great Challenge Ami!

Basic Macaron Recipe:

Preparation time: Not taking into account the amount of time it takes for you to bring your egg whites to room temperature, the whole baking process, including making the batter, piping and baking will probably take you about an hour to an hour and a half. How long it takes to make your filling is dependent on what you choose to make.

Actual baking time: 12 minutes total, plus a few minutes to get your oven from 200°F to 375°F.

Equipment required:

• Electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer with a whisk attachment

• Rubber spatula

• Baking sheets

• Parchment paper or nonstick liners

• Pastry bag (can be disposable)

• Plain half-inch pastry bag tip

• Sifter or sieve

• If you don’t have a pastry bag and/or tips, you can use a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off

• Oven

• Cooling rack

• Thin-bladed spatula for removing the macaroons from the baking sheets

• Food processor or nut grinder, if grinding your own nuts (ouch!)

Ingredients

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)

Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)

Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)

Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami's note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons.

Additional Information:

David Lebovitz breaks it down:http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2008/09/making_french_macarons.htm...

More macaroon 411: http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/10/introduction-to-french-macarons.html

Get inspired by our own Tartlette!: http://www.mytartelette.com/search/label/macarons

Go behind the scenes of Paulette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXIvX0-CEu0

Watch a pro pipe macaroons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_RfiFoWZKQ&feature=related

Beating egg whites: http://www.glutenfreecookingschool.com/archives/egg-series-no-1-how-to-b...

My First Real Macarons....

Today is the day! I am so excited! I feel like a proud mama with a hoarde of little babies...except that I want to eat the entire batch, which I guess makes me like those spiders who carry around their young on their backs but if a young one falls off mama eats it! Anyways, totally random thought. I actually got up the nerve to try, and made macarons successfully today. Diana, culinary genius of Thyme to Lime and I decided to make these at the beginning of the week, but it wasn't until Friday afternoon that our dreams came to fruition. Please check out her first macaron experience here! I can't believe they actually turned out alright! There were so many possible hindrances: my baking experience, humidity, not grinding the almonds up fine enough, first time ever making real macarons, the list goes on. I did attempt Nigellas Pistachio Macaroons. They didn't turn out great either, but the recipe is fraught with short cuts. Definitely not the "official" macaron technique.
This time, however, the stars were aligned. Like they say in the commercial, on my side I had a high degree of culinary expertise combined with years of practice... haha right! I did read up on the recipes first off, believe me! I read every post I could find on Veronica's Macaron Chronicles, as well as Tartelette's blog, and I read Tartelettes Tutorial in the Desserts Magazine probably 3 times at least. I used her basic almond macaron recipe listed in the magazine, as well as the Bittersweet Ganache (Same as Toffee Bittersweet Ganache, minus the toffee). My little hamburger looking confections turned out fantastically!
Here's my step by step approach, adapted from those two macaron masters:

Almond Macarons:

3/4 c whole almonds

2 C sifted powdered sugar spooned into measuring cups

3 egg whites

1/4 c granulated sugar

Pinch cream of tartar.

Prepare parchment paper by measuring and cutting to size of sheet, and then using small end of shot glass to trace circles. Flip over so pencil is on back side of paper.

Grind almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor until almonds ground into smithereens and sift twice. I even put the little chunks that got sifted out back in with a little bit of the sifted through sugar and pulsed again to try to further blitz them to bits.

Add the cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat at medium speed until frothy. Slowly add the granulated sugar and continue beating until the whites medium-peaks and are glossy. I used Tartelettes upside down trick-If you can hold them upside down in the bowl and they don't fall out they're ready!

Add your dry ingredients slowly to the meringue taking about 4 additions all in all, but fold like you mean it. According to Tartelette it sounds like she really goes for it. Test the batter on a plate, put a little bit down, if it flattens by itself then its ready. If it stays tall it probably needs a few more folds.

Pipe the batter to little mountains. Put tip perpendicular to paper about 1/2 inch above. Pipe and batter will spread automatically with the force, and then as you let them settle on their own they'll spread out into little discs of even height instead of mountains. Let rest for 30 minutes to an hour before baking.

Bake for about 10 minutes, turning if necessary midway through.

My parchment circles (ugly picture! If you look closely, close one eye, and tilt your head to the left you can make out the circles):

My blob of batter, folded in, and a little chunky from the almond bits.

Batter piped into circles:

Fresh out of the oven! And I think they have feet! Still not exactly sure what feet mean, do, or how they get there, but I'm pretty sure that's them!Bittersweet Ganache 1 c heavy cream 1 c bittersweet chocolate Heat cream to boil, take off heat, add chocolate, let sit 2 min, stir to combine, let cool to pipable consistency.

Not everything was perfect though. I had two racks of macarons going, the top rack and the bottom rack. The gorgeous ones I photographed are the top rack. The bottom rack didn't get as much heat and so were underdone. So I put them back in, but it didn't really solve the problem. Not bad, but not as breathtakingly beautiful as the top rack batch. The texture was a little different too, but overall taste was GREAT in either. In the picture below you can see the ones on the bottom right look a different color, almost mottled, not the smooth shiny topped ones to the left. Those were the bottom rack dwellers.
All in all, this was a fantastic experIence! I'm leaving for vacation in a few short hours. Ridiculous, I know, who makes macarons right before packing to go to Turks and Caicos for a week!? They are so tasty and so sophisticated! I'm so pleased, I can't wait to come back and try more flavor combinations!
Special thanks to Veronica of Veronica's Test Kitchen and Helen of Tartelette, both of whose glorious baking talents I admire, for making it so easy for me to get this right!

Not Quite Macarons...

I decided to try my hand at Nigella's Pistachio Macaroons, "the world's most elegant macaroons." Sigh. Mine tasted good, but tragically came out flat. Ultra flat, and sticking to the pan. The taste was pretty good, although I would recommend only using a small amount of icing on each, because its ULTRA sweet, although flavorful. The best ones are in the pictures... sad huh?? I really like the idea of them and the flavor, so I think I'll try again tomorrow. I'm not sure where I went wrong. I beat the whites up very well, everything looked like I thought it would, but then I took them on a short car ride (potential for evil). They looked like they survived the car ride pretty well....but maybe not. Oh well, at least they don't use a lot of pans or make big batches. Here's Nigella's recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Macaroons:

1/3 C or 3 oz pistachios

3/4 c confectioner's sugar

2 large egg whites

1 tbsp sugar

Buttercream

1/4 c or 2 oz pistachios

1 2/3 c confectioners sugar

1/2 c unsalted butter, softened

2 baking sheets lined with wax or parchment paper

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Grind pistachios in food processor with confectioners sugar until fine as dust. Whisk eg whites until fairly stiff but not dry, sprinkle the sugar over and whisk until very stiff. Fold the whites into the pistiachio-sugar dust, and combine gently. Pipe small rounds onto pined baking sheet using a pain 1/2 inch nozzle. Let them sit for 10 minutes to form a skin. Then put in oven and cook for 10-12 minutes, they should be set, but not dried out.

Remove from the oven and let cool, still on their sheets, while you get on with the filling. Grind the nuts and confectioners' sugar in the processor, then cream the butter and continue creaming as you add the nut dust. Make sure it is well combined, then sandwich the macaroons together.