Vanilla Macarons with White Chocolate Strawberry Ganache

Home - finally - and not going anywhere for at least a few weeks now. Between personal travel and business travel, I feel like I have not been home in ages. Summer is my favorite season, and I like to spend as much of it at home as possible, enjoying the flowers and pleasant weather in my garden. May and June flew by in a whirlwind of travel and we will be away for all of August, leaving me with just the month of July to savor the season. Even July is feeling a bit rushed to me. 

For the fourth, A's college roommates are descending on our apartment for barbecue and booze. I do always love to entertain, but with the past weekend spent in Oregon, almost all of the preparation had to be squeezed in this week after work. Fortunately, excursions to Sam's, Whole Foods and Chelsea Market for provisions are complete and the cooking has started. With the blueberry pies done a few weeks ago, macarons were in order. Red velvet cupcakes prepared the day of will complete the dessert trio. 

Now that I am consistently turning out perfect shells, I view each batch of macarons as an opportunity to try out new ingredients and combinations. Early on, I decided to make some sort of strawberry macaron to keep with the theme of seasonal ingredients and red white and blue desserts. In the end, I opted for a vanilla bean shell with a white chocolate and strawberry ganache filling. In my head, I had hoped that the filling would be a deeper shade of red, but pink is close enough, right? 

I made enough macs so that A and I would have a few to sample before the party. I mean, we need to make sure they taste okay! In review, I would give them three out of four stars. The shells might have been the best tasting shells I have ever made - sweet like a fancy, yet delicate vanilla wafer. The filling was good but not great, as I felt that the strawberry flavor should have been a little stronger. To be fair, A loved them, and I know that I can be a little over-critical of my own cooking. If I make these again I think I might try to find a strawberry flavored liquor to add to the ganache. 

At a minimum, I am just relieved that most of it is done with a day or so still to spare. All that's left to make are the red velvet cupcakes... and I guess the rest of the meal, though I have left A in charge of all things savory. Burgers are the husband's job! Stay tuned for the full 4th of July update and my almost fool-proof recipe for red velvet cupcakes! 

Recipes...

White Chocolate Strawberry Ganache

310 grams white chocolate

150 mL cream

1/4 cup strawberry jam

Splash of almond extract

Chop the white chocolate into smallish pieces and place in a bowl. In a small saucepan, mix the cream and strawberry jam together over medium high heat. The cream and jam should blend completely and come to a boil. Add a splash of almond extract and allow it to boil for a few seconds, then pour it through a fine mesh sieve into the white chocolate. The sieve will strain out any strawberry solids from the jam. Use a wooden spoon to stir the cream mixture into the white chocolate until the mixture is completely smooth. Continue to stir slowly for a VERY long time... probably more than an hour! You need to keep stirring as the mixture gradually cools and thickens to a consistency where it can be piped. Once the mixture reaches room temperature, you can use the refrigerator to help it along, by chilling it for 5-7 minute increments and stirring it in between. I don't recommend putting it into the refrigerator when it is still warm as this can cause the ganache to set improperly. 

Once the ganache is thick enough to pipe (it holds it shape when you allow it to drop off the spatula), put it into a piping bag and fill your macarons!

Vanilla Bean Macarons

Adapted from Pierre Herme's basic recipe for macaron shells

yield: approximately 36 gerbet

150 grams almond meal

150 grams powdered sugar

87 grams egg white

10 grams vanilla extract

Seeds from one vanilla bean

250 grams powdered sugar

67 grams egg white

62 grams water

Follow the prep instructions here, and use vanilla extract instead of orange extract and add the vanilla bean seeds to the almond meal/powdered sugar mix before adding the egg white. 

The Macaron Obsession Continues: Peanut Macarons

A few weeks ago, A and I were watching an episode of No Reservations called "Obsessed", which was all about chefs who were so obsessed with their craft that they had taken it to a level of perfection were food is art. The two of us looked at each other in disbelief, shocked and awed by their devotion, but also agreeing that neither one of us were likely to attain that level of perfection in anything we do. I mean, sure, I like baking and I like bread, but no, I don't have the patience, or even interest, required to determine precisely at which temperature a sourdough loaf should ferment to yield the best taste. Hell, I don't even measure the flour that I use to feed my starter - I just throw it in.

But then last night, standing in my kitchen, in an explosion of flour, egg whites and almond meal, I realized that macarons actually might be my obsession. I spend a really unhealthy amount of time thinking about macarons, when I am not actually making them. That copy of the Flavor Bible I requested for Christmas? Not to help us cook better like I claimed. No, my true motivation was a new source of inspiration for creative macaron combinations. I want to buy a stupidly expensive macro photo lens for my camera so I can photograph them better. I am content to spend hours in the kitchen (and lots of money on almond flour) fussing with the recipe. I never get bored. Instead I just want to make more.

Lately, I have deviated from the standard recipe and started experimenting with different types of nuts. For easter, I tried pistachio, which was delicious. This week - peanut, for a decidedly American macaron. Sure, other cultures eat peanuts, but peanut butter and peanut flavored sweets strike me as pretty unique to American culture. I guess the Euros have nutella, but hazelnuts just aren't the same as peanuts. 

For this batch, I subbed 55 grams of almond meal for ground peanuts, and then sprinkled some crushed peanuts on top to give a visual hint of the flavor. The flavor was pretty striking, with the peanuttiness giving these macs a very different taste that the traditional almond based cookies. I filled them with a peanut gianduja cream, which made them taste almost like gourmet Reese's peanut butter cups. 

While the filling tasted great, the texture was not perfect. I used all natural peanut butter, which for some reason did not set in the chocolate as I expected. After an hour of stirring, the milk chocolate and peanut butter mixture was still too runny to pipe onto the cookies. Adding powdered sugar still did not thicken it enough. Also, I was lazy and did not temper the chocolate, which meant that there was a tiny bit of bloom after the macs cooled. Next time around, I think I will use more typical peanut butter, as the texture will probably lend itself to a better gianduja mixture. 

Recipe for the macarons after the jump!

Yeasted Banana Waffles and Gingered Orange Macarons

"We've gained weight! NO MORE DESSERTS!" were the words coming from A's lips that brought horror to my ears.

Now that the Christmas party is over and we are diving into the new year, A has decided that I shall be banned from baking desserts (with the exception of my monthly daring bakers challenges... I managed to get a pass for those). Fine. We have gained some weight. We should probably start the diet now. But no more desserts??? Can't I just make them? I don't have to eat them.

To be honest, I don't really love eating them anyway. I am sure that many bakers would agree when I claim that I like baking for the joy of seeing what I can create and the pleasure of watching others enjoy what I have created. I don't bake so that I can eat sweets every weekend. Quite the contrary - if you knew how many times I asked A if I could just throw my latest creation away so that we wouldn't have the sugary calories tempting us on the counter.

Let's see how long this ban on sweets lasts. I have already managed to get around it for this weekend as we have guests arriving from out of town. (A said I could still bake for guests, just not for us!). Next weekend is the antiques fair, and he has asked me to prepare macarons for all of the generous dealers who have set aside tickets at the front door. So I guess the moratorium starts in February?

Having out of town guests for us means a tremendous amount of advanced planning on our part - whether it is one guest or four (I should add that this is something we love doing!). I spend the weeks before pouring over recipes and restaurant reviews and concocting an itinerary around home cooked meals from a carefully selected menu, as well as a number of meals out at our favorite restaurants. As New York has no shortage of excellent restaurants, A and I usually lean heavily on brunches at home that will keep stomachs satisfied until dinner so that we can avoid expensive NYC snacks during the day.

So the menu for this weekend includes 3 brunches, and of course some sort of welcome cake to nibble on arrival. In addition to some of my go-to brunch items (quiche, scones, etc), I decided this was the perfect excuse to try a recipe I had been eying for awhile - yeasted banana bread waffles served with a fresh fruit salad. Waffles are sweet, but not dessert, right?

I originally found the recipe that I used on Seven Spoons. It caught my eye for two reasons - first, it was a recipe that could be prepped the day before, and second, it offered a new twist on an old favorite. The scent of spiced banana bread wafting through the air was enough to make this recipe worth it. The waffles themselves were delicious. Light, fluffy and not too sweet.

Finally, for our guest's wife who was left back in LA, a batch of gingered orange macarons packed for the plane.

Recipes after the jump!

Pear & Hazelnut Tart, Citrus Macarons

I noticed that a number of people are stumbling across my little blog because it is coming up in google search results for "macarons" and "air-pockets"... I am assuming from people who are struggling to solve the problem of air-pockets in their home baked macarons. Since google seems to think that my blog should provide that information, I decided I should probably share some of what I have learned on this subject over the past few months of trouble-shooting recipes.

It took about 3 or 4 months of experimenting for me to find a reliable recipe. As mentioned in a previous post, I started working with a "french" method recipe, but ultimately settled on the Italian method, which seems more complicated at first glance but is actually much more forgiving. See this post for more information on the difference between the french and italian methods. Syrup and Tang also has an excellent explanation of the two.

With the french method, I never solved the air-pocket problem. I tried every oven temperature variation... I tried baking with two sheets to insulate the shells... I tried over mixing and under mixing... each time my shells looked beautiful but the texture was completely off. The exterior shell would crunch when bitten, revealing a large interior air pocket between the softer "cake". A combination of patience and Pierre Herme's italian method helped me fix this problem.

I noticed that even with the italian method, the air pocket problem still exists if you try to eat the shells fresh out of the oven. The air pocket also remains if you try to eat the shells immediately after filling them. Interestingly, if you fill the shells and then refrigerate them for about 24 hours, the air pocket disappears and the macarons have the delicate texture of those you find in a professional bakery. I think it has something to do with the shells absorbing some of the moisture from the filling - it softens the interior and just helps the whole thing come together. Moral of the story - macarons can't be rushed!

Moving on to this week's baking... as the Christmas party in Salem rapidly approaches, I find myself trying to squeeze in a few last test runs to make sure that everything comes out alright. We had a dinner party on Friday night, and as usual, I volunteered to bring dessert. I had a ton of leftover hazelnuts, so I thought I would give the pear frangipane tarts another go. The first time I experimented with this recipe, I did a straight walnut frangipane. It was okay... A loved it... but I did not think that the walnuts were flavorful enough when paired with the poached pears. Hazelnuts did the trick, giving the tart a more interesting flavor. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream adds a nice touch. A miniature version will be added to the Christmas menu.

And of course some macarons to accompany the coffee. Now that I can make them, I will gladly jump on any excuse to whip up a batch. Leftover meyer lemon curd meant citrus macarons were on the menu.

Recipes after the jump!

I am a macaron master: Hazelnut, white chocolate and coffee macarons

I have finally mastered the macaron. Okay, so maybe I haven't exactly mastered it, but I am close enough that I can pretty much make a batch of decent cookies on demand, whenever I want. Music to A's ears... my phone call on Friday afternoon announcing that I would no longer need to make macarons every weekend. I had finally found the right recipe and honed my technique to the point that I can produce reliable macaron shells at any time. Other home bakers out there who have tried to make macarons will understand just what a triumph my success was. (This funny write-up describes the macaron obsession accurately.)

A few weeks ago, my Pierre Herme macaron cookbook arrived from France. After a few days studying and translating the recipes, I had decided that it was time to pull out the mixer and start separating some eggs. At first, I found his recipe a little intimidating due to its call for the use of a thermometer. All of my past attempts at macarons had involved the French method, while Herme recommends using the Italian method. The difference is that the French method involves whipping egg whites and sugar into a stiff meringue and then incorporating the dry ingredients. With the Italian method, it is necessary to prepare a hot sugar syrup that is then poured into the meringue to produce a stiff Italian meringue that almost has the texture of marshmallow.

The Italian method involves a few extra steps, but it yields much more reliable results. Perfectly smooth shells with fluffy feet and, most importantly, no air-pocket inside. Another bonus - overmixing is not as much of a problem as it is with the French method. In fact, in my trial and error, I found myself undermixing more often than overmixing. If the batter looks lumpy, keep mixing. If you see beaks forming on the tops of your shells as you pipe them out and those beaks refuse to sink into the shell after a few seconds, keep mixing.


You might ask after seeing the photos... why do they have a funny blueish-green tint? Honestly, I was so convinced that I would fail yet again, that I thought this would be a good time to play with food coloring. I added some blue dye just to see what would happen. Of course this would be the time that the batter cooperates, leaving me with beautiful, but oddly tinted cookies.

A little hazelnut garnish on top gives these a little something extra.



Here is the recipe I used, adapted from Macaron, by Pierre Herme:

Macaron Shells
yield: approximately 36 sandwiches or gerbet

60 grams hazelnuts
110 grams egg white, aged
300 grams powdered sugar
150 grams almond meal
37 grams water

Preheat the oven to 360 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove hazelnuts from oven. Place nuts in a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin.

Whisk the almond meal and 150 grams of the powdered sugar together in a small bowl. Add 55 grams of egg whites to the top of the mixture. DO NOT mix in the egg white. Set the mixture aside.

Mix 150 grams of powdered sugar and the water in a small sauce pan. Put 55 grams of egg white into the bowl of a mixture and begin whipping to create a stiff meringue. Begin heating the sugar/water mixture on medium high heat to create a simple syrup. When the syrup reaches approximately 245 degrees, remove it from the heat and slowly add it to the meringue by pouring the hot liquid down the side of the mixing bowl as the mixer is still running. Continue to beat until the mixture cools.

Fold the almond/sugar/egg white mixture into the meringue, using firm strokes at first to incorporate all of the dry ingredients. Continue to mix carefully until the mixture has the texture of cold honey. If you lift the batter up with the spatula, it should fall off slowly in thick ribbons.

Transfer the batter to a piping bag and pipe onto a parchment or silpat covered baking sheet. Sprinkle hazelnuts over the tops of the shells. Let the piped shells rest for approximately thirty minutes, or until they are dry to the touch. Bake in a pre-heated over at 345 degrees for 15 minutes, or until the shells show slight color.

Remove from the oven and let the shells cool for a few minutes, then slowly remove them from the parchment paper and move them to a rack to cool completely.

Coffee Ganache
200 grams white chocolate
200 grams heavy cream
10 grams coffee

Melt the white chocolate over a hot water bath. Meanwhile, bring the cream to a boil over medium-high heat. Once the cream is boiling, add the coffee and remove the mixture from the heat. Cover and let steep for a few moments until the coffee has infused some flavor into the cream. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and mix into the melted white chocolate. Pour the chocolate mixture into a glass dish and cover with plastic wrap so that the plastic is touching the surface of the chocolate. Refrigerate until the chocolate has a firm yet creamy texture.

Meyer Lemon Macarons

I have never really been crazy about citrus flavors; orange is okay, but lemon and lime are flavors that I usually pass on when served alone. When it comes to candy, I will pick out the reds, leaving anything yellow and green behind. I am one of those red swedish fish people.

As I get older, I find myself more tolerant of the flavors. Though still not my favorite, I am willing to taste lemon or lime flavored things and even occasionally experiment with the flavors myself. I am not sure if my palette is changing, or if maybe I am making an effort since lemon and lime are two of A's favorite flavors. He has been known to polish off an entire key lime pie on his own if given the opportunity.

Over the weekend while grocery shopping, I saw meyer lemons for sale at the produce exchange. Now normally I wouldn't have noticed the lemons, or any of the citrus for that matter, as I only tend to grab the occasional lemon or lime demanded by a recipe. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a lot of information popping up about meyer lemons on various blogs I frequent, so I have kept an eye out for them. After learning that they are sweeter and less acidic than regular lemons, I hoped that they could be the answer to my citrus aversion. Four made it into my basket, with A announcing that meyer lemon sorbet was just what he was craving. I quickly squashed those dreams and announced that meyer lemon curd would make a perfect macaron filling and that he would have to wait until another day for sorbet.

Honestly, I think my quest for the perfect macaron is making me a little nuts. I have noticed that I now judge food purely on how it might taste inside a macaron!



For the macarons, I used Tartelette's recipe, which you can find here.

I used a lemon curd recipe from Fine Cooking. I followed their recipe exactly, other than substituting 4 meyer lemons for the lemon juice they call for. Lemon curd has proven a challenge for me in the past, but this recipe seems fail proof. For some reason creaming the butter, sugar and eggs before mixing in the lemon juice seems to produce a smooth and creamy curd.

Place a dab of whipped cream on a shell followed by a dab of lemon cream. Gently sandwich the two cookies together. If you really can't wait, you can eat the macarons immediately, but I thought they tasted better after a day in the fridge.



Yum! While I don't think that meyer lemon will be a flavor I make often, I did enjoy it. A did too, though he is still grumbling about the sorbet.

This batch of macaron shells was a vast improvement over past executions. They melted in your mouth. I still had problems with air-pockets despite lowering the baking temperature to 310F. Next weekend I will try them at 300F.

Perhaps even more exciting than the macarons I baked was the arrival of my Pierre Herme cook book! Enfin! I think it only took two weeks for the book to arrive from France, but I feel like I have been waiting for ages. Maybe next weekend could be my first attempt at the "Italian" method for making macarons that he recommends... and maybe I should rename this the macaron blog!

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!

Macaron almost success!

I think life is finally returning to normal after an unusually hectic August. A and I were travelling for weddings and family commitments every weekend, culminating in our annual Labor Day tradition – a visit from our West Coast friends.

What a waste today was. Friday… the end of a four day work week, turned into a three day work week for me due to busted internet, which forced me to stay home and wait for the cable guy. I know… I probably should not complain. But the weather was foul and I have no internet, which means I can’t work… can’t do much of anything and I am stuck inside, waiting. Also, I know I will pay for this unexpected day off when I arrive back at work on Monday to the pile of untouched papers and unread email.

What does one do when stuck at home with nothing to do? For me the answer, of course, is bake. I decided that I might as well make a third attempt at macarons. Veronica over at Kitchen Musings was kind enough to respond to my calls for help. After taking a look at the photos of my past efforts, she suggested that I was probably under-baking them. My third attempt indicates she was right.

I made the standard recipe for almond macarons listed at Kitchen Musings. I decided that until I get these things right, I better not waste ingredients by trying to make fancy flavors. Third time is a charm. Though the macarons were still not perfect, I did not have the same problems with deflating cookies sticking to the sheet and falling apart. They didn’t exactly glide off the sheet like the recipe says they should, but I was able to remove them without completely destroying them. Though they did hold together, I noticed that the top of the cookie did seem to sink into the “foot”, while the skins were still a bit fragile. I suspect that this could have resulted from slight over-mixing – something I will need to focus on for the next time around.

In the meantime, A should be delighted to see that this batch is not going straight from the oven into the garbage. His dollars and cents mindset causes him some anguish each time he sees me throw out ingredients. “Stop wasting money” he says, to which I remind him that trial and error at home is cheaper that tuition for pastry school!

I think that a dark chocolate ganache would be a nice complement for my first almost macaron success!

Macaron Fail!

My husband returned from Mexico last night, walked into the kitchen and asked, "why did you all of a sudden decide to make macarons tonight?". I looked at him indignantly and said, "you don't just decide to make macarons all of a sudden. This is something I decided to do last Monday night when I took the eggs out of the refrigerator."

The advanced planning necessary for making macarons makes it all the more devastating when they don't turn out. Last Monday, after spending quite some time perusing the macaron tips on Kitchen Musings and Tartlette, I decided to give it another go. Nothing motivates me to action like discovering something I can't do well... so expect to see more failed macarons on this blog until I manage to get it right.

I followed the instructions for a basic macaron shell that Tartlette provides, added some vanilla bean, and incorporated some of the tips from Kitchen Musings. My eggs "aged" on the counter for 48 hours... my whites were whipped to a glossy meringue... the almonds and confectioners sugar were folded in until the batter had the consistency of "magma". The macaron shells piped out beautifully onto my silpat (I used parchment in the last macaron fail, so thought I would try something new this time) . I let them rest on the counter for about half an hour before popping them in the oven.

Just as last time, when pulled from the oven, my macaron shells were a picture of perfection - glossy shells with fluffy looking little feet.

However, within moments, they began to sink, resulting in cracked shells.

After giving them a few moments to cool, I tried to remove a few from the silpat for closer inspection. Instead of peeling off, the top skin of the macaron came off, leaving a gooey, messy filling stuck to the silpat. What a disaster... and I haven't a clue how to fix it. HELP!

Into the garbage they went.

I have decided to close this post with a successful batch of cupcakes that I made last Saturday just to make myself feel better, and to prevent this blog from being about my baking failures. Every once in a while I do have a baking success!

An almost success

Last night I made my first attempt at macarons. After spending a few days perusing the Tartelette and Kitchen Musings blogs, I felt I was ready to give it a shot, and settled on a strawberry macaron recipe at Tartelette. I probably should have made something more basic, but I thought the dried strawberries sounded interesting. In sum, the whole affair was almost successful.

The first step was drying the strawberries. The procedure for this seemed simple enough - slice them thin and pop them in the oven at 250 degrees for about an hour. Pull them out and let them cool completely. I followed the steps exactly, but here is where I got confused. If you leave the strawberries to cool on the parchment on the sheet, the parchment seems to retain some moisture and keep the strawberries soggy. When I noticed this, I pulled the strawberries off the parchment to finish cooling, but I don't think I did it fast enough. The strawberries were not as dry as I would have liked them to be when I put them in the food-pro with the almond flour.

I snapped the photo below right as I pulled the macaron shells out of the oven. At first glance, they seemed almost perfect - excellent results for my first try. The cookies were glossy with a nice round dome and even had little feet. I was so excited I called my husband (he was away on business) to let him know the results.















Well... as soon as I got off the phone, my almost perfect macarons became decidedly not perfect. In cooling, the shells began to crack and some started to sink in the middle. I pulled one off the parchment for inspection to discover that inside the fragile skin the inside of the cookie was still very gooey and moist. I think that somehow I underbaked them.

Into the garbage they went.

I hope to try again on Sunday.