Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Macarons October 27, 2009

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.  I love macarons.  They don’t take long to make, but it takes patients and knowledge about the process to get the perfect macaron.  I have made them a few times, but I haven’t taken the time to perfect them yet.  I have been lucky enough to get little feet on them every time, but I think I have over worked the batter because they are more flat than the traditional almost boxy look.

Since Halloween is on Saturday, I decided to make them a little festive.  I made the macaron chocolate and dyed it black with black powdered color, and then I made a white chocolate ganache filling that I dyed orange.  They turned about pretty good, but I think next time I will use a higher quality white chocolate.  To get the pretty swirl design set aside a small amount of the batter before you add the cocoa powder and dye to it.  Once you have the macarons piped out take a toothpick and swirl the white into the piped macarons.

Macarons

Source: Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern

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)

1 tbsp Black Cocoa Powder

1 tbsp powdered Black food coloring

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.

Blue Macarons September 11, 2008

I have been trying to figure out a way to use the rest of the Chocolate Glaze from the Daring Bakers’ Eclair Challenge and the left over egg whites that I accumulated from making two pastry creams, and I figured it out.

MACARONS.

This would also allow me to use my left over coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache and make blue opera macarons too.

I was inspired by Tartlette’s macarons that she made back in March. I just loved the color that she used. I decided that I would try my hand at dying my macarons this time around, but not do the little design she did. The recipe said to use 2 tbsp, but I figured that since my color was a little darker I would use only 1 tbsp. They are still a darker blue, but I didn’t care too much The fun part of sharing these with your friends is watching their mouth’s turn blue.

I was very happy with the result. All of the macarons were very tasty. I just need to figure out how to get the macarons to not be so flat, but I did get little feet again

I got little feet… July 15, 2008

I got little fee eet. I got little fee eet, yeah. :to the music of Jungle Fever:

HOLY CRAP!!!!!

I really can’t believe it.

My first try, first freaking try and my macarons have little feet (the little bubblies at the bottom of the cookie). I am extremely happy about this.

From all of the posts I have read about people trying to make French Macarons and all of the trouble they have gone through. I am completely surprised. I thought something was going to have to go wrong. But all three batches turned out perfectly with little feet. I need to work on my piping skills but man, that is awesome.