Macarines not Macarons

My first Daring Bakers challenge since my wedding and the hardest one I’ve ever done.

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.

The marker of a perfect macaron is a crunchy outside, a soft chewy centre and FEET. If you want to know what feet are, as I did not manage to produce them, take a look at this interview with Dorie Greenspan.They are the frilly skirts around the base of each macaron piece.

The first batch were attrocious, I cooked them for the specified time but it was way too short. They wouldn’t even come off the baking paper. See…

After two and a half hours of baking, this was not the result I was looking for. I don’t think I’ve ever been as depressed as a baker. It was an epic macaron fail.

Fortunately, the second batch came out much better. No feet and shiny exterior even though I rested them:

But they came off the baking paper! And the raspberry white chocolate ganache was just the right consistency.

I was a little worried with the ganache because I had made a lychee batch for the epic fail macarons and that came out too runny (but oh so very very tasty). Though the ganache recipe specified a certain amount of raspberries, I just ignored this and added them one by one until it had the right amount of raspberry flavour and tartness but I could also keep an eye on the texture.

Here is a chocolate one filled with his two little raspberry friends…

No distinctive “feet” so I don’t feel like I can call them macarons. However, they were crisp on the outside and wonderfully chewy on the inside and tasted much better than the last store bought macaron I ate (granted I do live Sydney not Paris) so I decided to call them Macarines!

Chewy goodness…

After several hours, I was able to unstick a few of the epic fail macarons and fill them with the two runny (but amazingly fragrant) lycee ganache. To validate many a home economics teacher who has soothed distraught children by telling them that often the ugliest creations taste the best, whatever these things were, they tasted fabulous.  So maybe I can call these ones Almond Macarettes with Lychee and White Chocolate Syrup.

In the end, after wanting to never bake anything ever, ever again, I discovered some perspective, learnt a few lessons about making macarons (apparently, you’re supposed to separate your egg whites and leave them out for 3 days – this makes them stiffer) and was glad I made the effort. And of course, had some very tasty dessert for a Tuesday evening.

Here are some Daring Bakers’ challenges that were rather more successful:

• Use Real Butter’s Green Tea and Adzuki Bean Macarons
• Mandy Mortimer’s amazing assortment including Orange & Lime with Cononut Buttercream Macarons
• Vanilla Cocoa’s chocolate macarons with chantilly cream and fresh raspberry
• Safron & Blueberry’s beautiful painted macarons
• Passionate About Baking’s lovely candy coloured macarons
• Stetted’s awesome bacon and cheese macarons
• Home Gourmets’ Hazelnut and Toffee macarons
• Very Small Anna’s marshmallow filled macarons
• Pretty jewel macarons from Les gourmandise d’Isa (in French, but plenty of pictures)
• Ice Tea’s stunning painted macarons
• Savour Fare’s Salted Caramel macarons
• Fabulous bunch of macarons (including a pumpkin one!) from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives.

And some tips, articles, alternative recipes and methods:

• Serious Eats’ Introduction to the Macaron
• American in Paris, David Lebovitz, lists his favourite macaron resources
• Syrup and Tang’s instructions and common pitfalls
• Many people reported having success with Tarlette’s macaron recipe (which is based on weight but has been translated into volume)
• Mercotte’s step by step Italian meringue method
• Food geek’s almost foolproof macarons
• Fanny from Foodbeams’ beautiful Macarons à la rose de Pierre Hermé
• Audax Artifex expansive article on getting the perfect macaron

Here’s the recipe that we used:

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.

My ganache recipe was from The Australian Gourmet Traveller macaron issue. I halved it and added raspberries to one lot and chopped up lychees to the other.

And if all of this sounds too hard, here’s a recipe for the other sort of Macaroon.

Tagged as: dessert, ganache, gluten free, macaron