The 2009 October Daring Bakers' Challenge: Macarons

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.

Imagine my excitement when I learned that my first Daring Bakers' challenge would be macarons! After a month or so of fussing with these finicky cookies, I couldn't wait to try a new recipe and learn some tips and tricks from other members. Here is the recipe Ami selected:

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.

Needless to say, I did not find success with this recipe either. Following the recipe with meticulous attention to detail yielded flat, dried out looking cookies that had nice flavor but did not even come close to resembling a proper macaron:



I could tell from the moment that I began to fold the dry ingredients into the meringue that something was off. The batter felt bubbly, and even after a half hour resting on the stove, the uncooked macarons would not dry out. Several other Daring Bakers suggested that the recipe is too light on the sugar. Three attempts later, I decided that this recipe was just not for me.

I was not ready to give up on macarons however. I think my favorite thing about The Daring Bakers is how eager the seasoned pastry vets are to help out novices like myself. For weeks, Audax and Tartelette have graciously provided endless advice, tips and tricks for how to coax the batter into a fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth macaron with both feet and a delicate shell.

After sifting through their comments and recommendations, I found a number of issues with my technique that had led to past failures:

1. Egg whites should be whipped until stiff. I was so paranoid about "over-mixing" that I think I stopped whipping at soft to medium peaks a few times. You will know they are ready when you can turn the bowl upside-down and the meringue does not move. (A gave me a very curious look the first time he saw me doing this)

2. Mix the dry ingredient in about 1/2 to 1/3 at a time - otherwise you will never get everything to mix together.

3. Once the dry ingredients are in, gentle does it. It is so easy to overmix at this point, and it seems that it is better to undermix than overmix, as spooning the batter into the piping bag mixes things up a little more.

4. Once the shells are piped onto the cookie sheet, let them dry at least 30 minutes, though the amount of time you need will vary based on the humidity where you live. I discovered that less time yields brittle shells, while more time yields macarons that are too crisp.

5. Even though many recipes say to cook them for 8-10 minutes, mine always took at least 15 to bake.

6. Once your macarons are done baking, turn the heat off in your oven and crack the door, leaving the macarons inside for about 20 to 30 minutes. This will make it easier to remove them from the sheet.

Though my latest batch was still not perfect, following these rules and using a recipe based on Tartelette's formula produced something near perfect. Seventh try is the charm, right? At Audax's suggestion, I have started using ratios for my recipe - a perfect solution to random amounts of extra egg whites.

The shells came out beautifully - nice, puffy and round on top with perfect little feet on the bottom. Since I had expected another failure, I did not have anything exciting to fill them with, so I mixed some cinnamon into leftover cream cheese frosting.



Voila, cinnamon macarons with cinnamon cream cheese icing:



While this batch looked perfect, the interior of the cookies did not rise enough, leaving an air pocket inside, which makes the cookie crumble when you bite into it. I am hoping that trouble-shooting oven temperatures will fix this issue.

I dare say that baking the perfect macaron has become a bit of an obsession for me. I ordered Pierre Herme's macaron cook book yesterday from Amazon.fr, with hopes that it will provide additional insight into how I can perfect my technique.

More to come!