Auburn, Maine
French Macarons
French Macarons are persnickety things. They involve the proper whipping of egg whites, almond flour, resting times, careful piping, and exact measurements by weight.
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Macarons are a meringue-style sandwich cookie that is filled - they're often confused with macarOOns which are a coconut and sweetened condensed milk confection.
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My first Macarons, made on March 21, 2020, turned out flat and gooey - I didn't truly understand "fold in dry ingredients" so instead I beat them in with my mixer. Round II, though, were nearly perfect other than the peaks, but I have since learned how to combat them.
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Weather and humidity are an issue because macarons need to "cure" before they can be baked, to the point that I can literally pet them. This can take from 45 minutes to 4 hours! Without an AC
unit on "dry" setting in summer, humid days can mean no macarons for sale that week. The quality of almond flour is crucial as well, as I discovered - had to say goodbye to 120 macaron shells that had the texture of an oatmeal cookie instead of a delicate, slightly crisp cookie. Also threw out the remainder of the four pounds of that brand of almond flour.
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Moisture levels, over- or under-whipping the egg whites, over- or under-folding the batter, any stray water or oil in the egg whites... the list of potential issues for failure goes on.
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And yet I love the little buggers. Macarons are fun! In the last 18 months, I've played with shell colors, different flavors of buttercream, and dry spices in the shell like cardamom or apple pie.
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In the early days, I wrote a bit about the process. If you're interested, keep reading!
To the right, you can see a picture of the shells (purple for Salted Caramel filling), one of my earliest attempts. Talk about peaks! They would barely fit in the box. Below, in autumn tones, are the Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie macarons I made on October 6, 2021.
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I fell in love with Macarons very quickly and I wanted to explore more flavors and options, but I SO did not want to make 28 more cookies each time. After scouring the web, I learned how to half-again my recipe for a bigger batch, and while that was handy, it didn't solve the smaller-batch mystery. So I'm taking it into my own hands - I'm going to quarter the recipe! Mathematically speaking, it should be a success. Time will tell. Oh, and my tummy.
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Stay tuned!
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. . . . .
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Aaaaaand that was a nope. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer with a 5-quart bowl, and it turns out that it's just too big a bowl to whip one egg. If I had a hand mixer or an old-fashioned egg beater, I may have been able to pull it off. As it was, I gave up
and made a full batch (with no complaints at all from my husband). To fill this set, my husband had requested dark chocolate orange ganache. I saw no decent recipe online, so I improvised - an entire 12-ounce bag of dark chocolate chips (store brand), a cup of heavy cream, 2 tablespoons of butter, and just shy of 2 tablespoons of orange emulsion. The result? A perfect ganache with amazing flavor, just like the chocolate orange spheres that are found during the winter holidays.
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On March 24, 2020, I made larger Macarons, about 2.5-3 inches across. I figured it might be nice for my farmers market customers to be able to buy one larger Macaron to test it out instead of spending a great deal of money on a half dozen. Grant you, the 3" will be priced within reasonable range (after all, it's bigger than the usual ones)
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You can see the finished product on the right with said dark chocolate orange ganache filling. With this batch of larger Macarons, I learned that the baking time should be upped by 2 minutes. I used blue food coloring gel in the meringue and was pleased to find that very little went a long way. These Macarons met their demise soon after being photographed.
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I've now experimented with flavoring the meringue, making different fillings, made 1" Macs up to 3" Macs, learned how to avoid peaks on the caps, and finally gotten my folding technique about right. After four batches, I'm confident in my ability to make a good Macaron.
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. . . . . . . .
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It's mid-June 2020 and I've been making and selling three flavors of Macaron at my Farmers Market for two weeks. I've sold out every time.
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I'm still learning, too. Today I watched a video by Preppy Kitchen on Macaronage that gave me some great information just in time for me to bake my second two sets of 'rons. What a difference! Flat tops, good feet, the works.
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The picture to the left shows my new packaging - isn't it nice? There's a piece of waxed paper under the 'rons just in case it's warm and the filling slides a bit (better than bare cardboard, I figured).
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I'll be introducing a flavored cookie this weekend - Cardamom, which is filled with vanilla buttercream. A few minutes ago I got impatient and took a cookie off the baking parchment a bit too soon after coming out of the oven and it broke. Shuckydarn, I just had to add the frosting and eat it.
Oh, speaking of eating, since Macarons take egg whites (to make the meringue for the cookie base) I'm left with many egg yolks... so I just had to make Lemon Curd. Made a batch two weeks ago, ate the batch. Made a double last week, still eating it. Today I broke 20 eggs which would equal five batches of Lemon Curd. I do not need to eat five batches of Lemon Curd.​
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Really.
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No.
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#wheresthespoon #toomuchdeliciousness #godshelpmywaistline
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