Today I embarked on a journey long-awaited. Melissa came
over and we gave the dreaded French macaron a swing. Known as the toughest
cookie to get right, macarons are not to be confused with the
coconutty-condensed milk lumps our husbands love. No, this delicate monstrosity
combines egg whites, almond meal, and powdered sugar in a very finicky process
to create light, meringue-y, beautifully colored discs. You take two of them
and pipe some kind of delicious filling and make what kind of looks like a
pastel hamburger.
French macarons have a terrible reputation for going
awry. I read a bunch of different articles and blog posts and was warned about
sifting, weighing, stabilizers, egg-freshness, egg temperature, baking sheet
covers, even humidity levels in the atmosphere. Quite honestly, it looked
intimidating.
But, quite honestly, it wasn’t nearly as scary in real
life! Melissa brought her wealth of baking knowledge, as well as piping bags
and tips. I brought…well, two noisy small boys. Melissa also brought Uncle
Lucas, who quickly held them in rapt attention with Hide and Seek and paper
airplanes. (Let’s hope I make macarons better than I do paper airplanes…)
We had enough batter that we were able to play around a
bit with variables, such as drying and baking times. Here is what we learned:
1.
Don’t sift almond meal in this.
2.
Do weigh your ingredients. I’m not sure that
macarons are as precise a science as it would seem, but we both know enough
about baking to be aware that weighing ingredients leads to dramatically
improved, consistent results.
3.
Do line your baking pans with silicone mats or
parchment paper. We used both in different batches, and both were great for
peeling off the baked macarons.
4.
It’s probably better to overwhip your egg whites
than under. That being said, our batter was a little too thick. You can see
from this picture that we don’t have the shiny flat tops we were aiming for. We
suspect this is because the egg whites were too stiff. We wonder as well if we
could have tempered this by stirring the batter a little bit more to take out a
little extra air.
5.
Do use a decent amount of food coloring. I think
we were aiming for a bit of a brighter pink, which we had in the batter, but
the oven dulled. Add a drop or two beyond what you want and I think you’ll have
it just about right.
6.
Do dry your discs before baking. Our rested for
between 35-55 minutes, depending on the batch. It didn’t really matter in the
outcome of the bakes.
7.
Don’t underbake your macarons. You want them
dried out and firm. They won’t come off the sheet otherwise. We baked the first
batch for 20 minutes at 300 degrees. The next two went in for 19 minutes. It
didn’t make a noticeable difference. They’ll be super crisp initially, but once
you add the filling they soften and get a little chew back again.
8.
Let your filling temper the sweetness of the
cookie. The cookie itself has no flour, but lots of powdered sugar. It’s very,
very sweet. We opted for a lemon curd/whipped cream filling, hoping the tang of
the lemon would balance the sugar. It mostly worked!
We had a great time working on this project and I think I
can speak for her that we will try again, either together or individually. And
I can speak for myself and state categorically that I’ve consumed enough sugar
for the entire weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment