Daring Bakers: 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.

Wow – what a deceptively difficult challenge! For a short & sweet recipe, with a mere 4 ingredients, it sure was a doozy. The discussion board was ablaze with chatter about the finer points of baking macarons. Should the egg whites be aged? Double up on baking trays? How best to dry the macarons? And most importantly – just HOW does one achieve the elusive feet?

I guess I should back up. I’ve never eaten a macaron, but I have certainly seen my fair share of them in pastry shops and on other folks’ food blogs. I always assumed I wouldn’t like them because I had the impression they tasted like meringue, which isn’t my cup of tea. But due to their growing popularity, I’d all but decided to give them a try when, bam, this challenge arrived. I knew these little buggers were reputed to be tricky, so I readied myself for a fight. Though I love the really complex Daring Bakers challenges, I also find some of the most valuable ones to be those that require us to hone in on and perfect a particular technique.

The main challenge here was getting the consistency of the macarons just right. They should have crisp outer shells but remain chewy on the inside. Most importantly, they should develop feet – a distinctive puff around the bottom of the shell. I baked 3 trays of macarons and only got about 1/10 of them to turn out as they should. For some reason there were two rows (on two different trays) that developed feet and a shiny, crack-free shell. The rest of them… not so much. Since they were all from the same batch of batter, my theory is as follows: the ones closest to the heat source did the best. Perhaps my oven temperature needs adjusting. Or maybe I shouldn’t have chosen chocolate macarons for my first go-round. If they’d been a lighter color I probably could have gauged doneness better. Also, they seemed to benefit from sitting out on the counter a bit after they’d been piped. I couldn’t fit all three trays in the oven at once, so I baked one, then the other two. The second two trays were the ones that had the” good” macarons. Interesting…

Luckily, the failures are just as delicious as the successes. We shared some with friends last night and have been munching away on them since then. I couldn’t resist making them a little Halloween-themed. I sifted 2 tbsp. cocoa powder in with the almond flour and confectioner’s sugar. A little orange food coloring in the vanilla icing and tada! Halloween macarons.

Daring Bakers: Mallow Cookies

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This post is dedicated to my Grandpa Z, who loves anything marshmallow, especially Peeps & Mallowmars. I thought our fabulous hostess Nicole had a great idea here – trying a homemade version of one’s favorite storebought things. Though not as big a fan of marshmallow as my grandpa, I decided to make the mallowmars first. The idea of piping marshmallow piqued my interest. I intended to follow up with milanos with a twist- chocolate cookies with a chocolate mint filling. However, I seriously underestimated the number of cookies I would end up with after trying the first recipe. Even after taking at least a dozen to my friend Emily, whose sweet baby Rachel decided to make an appearance 6 weeks early (!), I still had at least 50 cookies left. My next step is to give some to my brother. College students have a way of putting lots of homemade sweets away. In any case, the milanos will have to wait for another time.

I thought these cookies were good but not incredible. The cookie part is rather biscuit-like. I found it a bit too crumbly. The marshmallow was good and even though I thought I’d piped generously, I wished there was more of it on each cookie. I made my glaze with bittersweet chocolate and it came together nicely, though it needed to be refrigerated in order to harden, which the recipe does not mention.

Happy Birthday to You

I just started six, yes count them, six posts that I’ll be sharing in the next few days. I got a bit behind in my posting because we are still figuring out Jeff’s new camera. It’s been a bit challenging figuring out the easiest way to get the photos from his computer to mine. However, I’ve still been cooking and now I’ve recruited him as my partner in crime to help me snap some better photos. 

When I first met Jeff it was our senior year in college. We lived in the same apartment complex and ran into each other a few times. One of the first things we talked about was my love of all things culinary, so naturally Jeff asked what my signature recipe was. I stumbled around, trying to find an answer, and eventually had to just sheepishly mumble, “Pasta?” 

Two Non-Recipe Recipes

It’s so good to be back in the kitchen! I overdid my planning a bit this week and pulled out more recipes than I’ve had time (or appetite) for. Hopefully we’ll get hungry before the ingredients go to waste. 

When I saw green tomatoes at the market on Saturday I realized that I hadn’t made them yet this summer. So we had fried green tomatoes and some other veggies one night. They are just sliced, salted and peppered, coated in cornmeal, and fried in some olive oil. I love mine with goat cheese and honey on top. I convinced J to try the honey and he wasn’t so sure about it, so I guess it might be a personal taste. But hey, I thought I’d throw it out there. This was our first use of my new cast iron skillet. The whole not using soap thing is still a little hard for me, but I’m looking forward to using this skillet for cornbread, fried chicken, and my favorite blackberry cobbler, among other things I’m sure. 

Buttermilk Cookies

I have to admit… I wasn’t so sure about this recipe when I clipped it. The January issue of Gourmet focused on Southern cooking. In the letters to the editor section of a later issue, someone wrote in to complain about this fact, arguing that they don’t like anything that belongs in the category of Southern cooking. Seriously?! I can understand the grits thing… some people just don’t get it. But you don’t like fried chicken? Pecan pie? Pimento cheese? BISCUITS? Really. I’d rather not read the same magazine as you then.

Back to the cookies. This recipe was mentioned in one of the articles about Edna Lewis and the way they described them,  ”What you see here is the cookie of your dreams, with a tender interior and the slightest bit of crispness around the edge,” is what got me. Plus, the mouthwatering picture of a pile of cookies next to a bottle of lemonade didn’t hurt either.