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!

The first menu item: Apple Tartelettes

The weekend went by all too quickly in a rush of bad weather and errands. On top of that, I've been sick with a winter cold. A WINTER COLD!! Yes, it is October and it really feels almost like winter has arrived. I feel incredibly cheated by all of the global warming cassandras. Here I was looking forward to balmy fall weather and instead I am getting highs of 45.

In addition to annoying me in general, the cold weather also makes me feel like Christmas is just around the corner. Yes, the Christmas Creep has hit our household. No... I haven't decorated or anything, but I am in full planning mode for my mother-in-law's dessert party. This weekend I was finally able to test my first recipe.

Last Christmas A gave me some miniature tart pans for Christmas so I plan to serve two different types of mini-tarts at the event. I am hoping the tarts will save me some time since many components, such as the crusts, can be prepared days, or even weeks ahead of time.

After scouring the Internet for recipes, I found a finally found a winner on Tartelette's blog - her recipe for her grandmother's apple tartelettes. I liked this recipe because it reminded me of apple pie with a twist. The tartelette featured a baked apple filling with pie spices like cardamom, but called for baked apples for the top instead of a lattice or second pie crust. The lemon sugar, vanilla bean, and crushed almonds added unexpected depth to the flavor.

Instead of baking them in medium tart pans as Tartelette did, I used my minis. A half recipe produced enough filling for 9 mini-pans which was great news. A single full recipe should do it for the party.

The prep work was quick and the flavors delicious. I presented them nervously to A, who wanted to know why I couldn't just make plain old apple pie (one of his favorite desserts). A single bite later, I was instructed that the recipe was a winner and apple pie would not be needed.



WOOHOO! One menu item down. Only 8 to go.

I still need to play with the crust for this recipe a little. In my first attempt, the crust stuck to the pans making it difficult to remove the tartelettes without damaging them. This is a problem that I will troubleshoot in the coming weeks.

And of course, this week's posting would not be complete without my weekly bread, a sourdough loaf. I will write about bread in future weeks.

The Daring Bakers & Holiday Parties

Once again travel pulled me away, this time for a wedding in LA, making this blog less and less of a routine for me. I hope I can get back into the grove with this.

I don't really have a whole lot to report at the moment. I recently joined The Daring Bakers, and have spent most of my baking time plugging through my first challenge. Results will be posted at the end of the month.



Until then... what else should I bake this weekend?

As a Christmas gift to her (clearly she means a gift for me, right?), my mother-in-law has asked me to "cater" a dessert party at her home in Salem over the holidays. I have only about two months to come up with a menu and test recipes, which is stressing me out a little. I am stressing about the menu, making sure people like everything and making sure I can cook everything on time in someone else's kitchen(!). Then, when I am finished stressing about that, I start stressing that I will never become a professional if I am this worried about a single, small event. Ugh. Being a perfectionist sucks.

At any rate, as the menu solidifies, I will start posting what I have chosen, not chosen, and of course, the results of my experimenting.

Something savory for a change...

I have been gone for awhile. A ran off to Mexico for a few weeks for work, taking the camera with him to document the festivities for a friend's bachelor party, and leaving me unable to update the blog. I suppose I could have written some posts sans images, but what fun is a blog without pictures? At any rate, it is October now (how time flies!) and I am back.

Fall has arrived and the unseasonably cold weather makes it feel as if winter is really just around the corner. It was the first weekend that A had been home in a long time and the first weekend in months that we had nothing scheduled. The two of us were looking forward to relaxing at home and finally indulging in some home cooking. The chill in the air brought a craving for comfort food - something warm and hearty. A wanted a stew - heavy on the meat and potatoes. Stew isn't really my thing, so we decided to compromise with a veal and porcini ragu from Epicurious.

The lazy weekend meant plenty of time for adventures in the kitchen, so we decided to take things up a notch and break out the pasta maker (a perfect wedding gift that has been woefully underused, sorry E). I have made pasta a few times before with moderate success... moderate success meaning that the dough held together but could not really be shaped. Since we had all day to experiment, we decided to go bold and try the fresh pasta recipe in the French Laundry Cookbook.


Needless to say, the recipe came together perfectly. After I finished kneading and set the dough aside to rest, I declared that if this pasta works, Thomas Keller is a genius. A reminded me that many people already considered Thomas Keller to be a genius and that the outcome of my pasta would have no impact on his reputation.

At any rate, for a first try, the pasta turned out beautifully. The dough rolled out easily, with minimal breakage, and remained moist until it I was finished cutting. I got a little overzealous with the machine and tried to roll almost the entire recipe as a single sheet of pasta. Next time I will definitely cut things down - it will make my life much easier.

I can't wait to try this again in a few weeks!

Here is the fresh, uncooked pasta:



Here is the pasta, cooked and sauced with veal and porcini ragu (I usually add extra meat and sausage):



And of course what is pasta without bread to accompany it: