Macarons in Brooklyn

Tamales!

2011-07-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... They aren't macarons! I've been so busy with whatever it is I've been doing that I haven't made macarons in well over a month. Gasp!

I always crave New Mexican Chile - red, green, doesn't matter so long as it is NM Chile. With that in mind, I had some pork lying around and said, hey, I'm going to make tamales! The first batch was with some masa that had been in a jar for who knows how long, and well, the tamales tasted like it. I am loathe to throw out food, but they were inedible. Out we went to get a fresh bag of masa and canola oil, soaked more corn husks and got to making the tamales.

Here are my steps:
1. Saute lots of onion and some garlic in a pot, once soft stir in powdered red chile, Mexican oregano and a couple bay leaves.
2. Add the meat (I used meat that was already cooked), stir to cover with the spices, then cover with water and/or stock.
3. After a couple hours, check to see that the meat has absorbed a lot of the liquid. At this point, strain the meat, reserving all of the liquid. Pick out the bay leaves (I'd let the meat cool a bit before picking through the meat!)
4. Take your strained meat and either chop it by hand or run it through the food processor, then return to the pot and add the cooking liquid until the meat is very moist - almost wet.
5. To prepare your corn husks (if you can't find corn husks just cut parchment paper into rectangles): bring a pot of water to a boil, place the corn husks in ensuring they are completely covered, then cover with a lid and let sit for at least 30 minutes.
6. Make your masa: 6c maseca, 6c water, 1.5-2c canola oil (I prefer to use less oil), 1TB salt - stir until combined and smooth. It should look like a ball of dough, mine tends to be more wet than dough-like so use your judgment!
7. When your corn husks are soft and pliable, remove them from the water and set on a platter.
8. Now you are ready to wrap your tamales! I wish I had pictures of the steps that I use, but it is pretty simple and here's a good link to use as a source: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/tamales/Tamales_Recipe_.htm - Just think of wrapping a tamale like you would a burrito - you want about equal proportions of meat to dough and the dough touching when you roll the tamale together. I usually put a glob of masa in the corn husk, smoosh it down with my fingers, then take the meat and almost roll it in my hands into a log, place that in the middle of the masa'd husk then roll it up. Make sure one end of the husk is folded over so is easier to stack in your steamer.
9. Steam the tamales for about 1.5 hours, more if your steamer is jam packed. Don't forget to check the water level every so often! You don't want all your hard work to go to waste!

Note: I broke down all of these steps into two days: Day One - Meat, Day Two - Assembly and Steaming. Made it so much easier, and I had so much meat, husband and I ended up sitting and assembling for half an hour three nights in a row. So, you could totally do this in a day or take four or five!

I like to make a quick chile sauce to serve on top of the tamale, though they don't need it. Husband likes cheese on his, and I like sour cream but we didn't have sour cream the other night. (For the sauce: take dried red NM chiles, soak overnight, seed, then put in a blender with a bit of water so it will puree)

That's what I've been up to lately! Pickling tomorrow - cucumbers, beets, etc...

Sorry for the lack of macarons, it's been really busy and a bit too hot for me to be in a kitchen with the oven on all day. I have some ideas for new flavors which I am hoping to get to try out next weekend.

Macaron Box Special

2011-05-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

From now through July 5th, I am selling boxes of 14 macarons in any three flavors that you would like for $22. (For example, you could get 4 lemon, 4 raspberry and then 6 milk chocolate passionfruit.)

www.psmacarons.com

Absent Macarons!

2011-05-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

I've been absent for a while, have had many things to do - most importantly I've had macaron orders to fill! My most recent, and upcoming, order is for a dozen each of chocolate, pistachio and raspberry macarons. Been working on them today, and thus far on this rainy, super humid Sunday, all's well in the kitchen!

Will update with pictures soon!

In the meantime, here's a picture of my new mode of transportation:

Spring and Macaron Boxes

2011-04-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

As I continue working on macarons at home, I've been enjoying the beginning of spring. Happily, I've been relaxing at home and catching up on some things. It is a macaron-less weekend which isn't the end of the world.

I've spent the last two weekends working on these:

The box has (clockwise from top left): milk chocolate passionfruit ganache, vanilla, salted caramel, raspberry, chocolate, pistachio. I finally found boxes that are the size that I like, but they hold 14 macarons. I'm going to add additional chocolate ones to the next sample boxes that I make so that the box holds them all upright.

I got an order for three dozen (salted caramel, raspberry and chocolate) macarons and here's the result! I liked these boxes a lot but they were a pain in the but to open and close which was kind of a problem for the person who bought them. They look super cute though! It was nice to see a stack of boxes filled with macarons.

Here's what it looks like when everything is all set up, measured out, and ready to go for the sampler boxes:

Pretty neat huh? I get really excited when I see everything beautifully laid out in the bowls.

My hope is that I'll slowly start to get more and more orders for macarons through www.psmacarons.com!

Buy Macarons!

2011-03-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

I started a new site dedicated solely to selling macarons online. So... if you think that I make yummy looking macarons and want to buy them, you know where to look!

Check it out: www.psmacarons.com

Macaron Heaven

2011-02-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

I am super excited. Why you may ask? Well, for Christmas my parents gave us a microwave/convection oven. It doesn't hold a half sheet pan, so I purchased some tiny sheet pans to put on the rack in the oven. If I make a half batch of chocolate macarons, I am able to pipe out two small pans to make about 20 macarons. I can't tell you how perfect this is. At first my husband and I were like, where are we going to put this?! Now, I'm really happy we have it. Not only because it has made a batch of chocolate macarons perfectly, but because you can do lots of other things with it. On Friday night I made french toast with the convection setting (loading up a round pan with bread, then covering it with the custard) - it was wonderful having dinner ready in 20 minutes with only one pan to clean, well two because we had some sausage with it.

Here's some pictures from the home-convection macarons:

Right?! Not bad!!! I cannot get the shells perfectly smooth using the ultra-fine almond powder that I bought so I might go back to making my own. Hmmm... maybe not. Now that I think about it, I remember fighting with macarons a lot more before finding this particular brand of almond flour.

Then, of course, I couldn't stay away from Orsay for too long, I made pistachio and hazelnut shells. I didn't get a chance to make the gianduja ganache for the hazelnut shells or the pistachio buttercream because I had a dinner to get to... The following week I made pistachio macarons with pistachio buttercream.

Aren't they beautiful?!

Pistachio Macarons

Now that's what a macaron should look like!!!

You know what's funny (funny strange, not funny ha-ha)? For the past two weeks, I haven't made macarons and I haven't missed it that much. One reason is that my drawings are in a show at Gallery Della-Piana north of Boston. The Salem News even wrote an article about the show. So, my husband and I went up for the opening. We ate at Myers and Chang, then Sibling Rivalry the second night. This past weekend I was spring cleaning and spending time with my husband. It was nice to have a day without obligations or prior commitments to be together. Went to Shanghai Cafe for soup dumplings, met a fellow macaron maker (can't live a whole weekend without macarons!), browsed around in Strand Bookstore, then had an impromptu dinner invite. Lots going on for a "relaxing" weekend, I think we do less when I go to Orsay for the first part of the day on Saturday!

Instead of making macarons at 5.30 last night, I started making chicken xacuti, kale and rice - of course I don't have a picture. I was too busy making the food to stop and take pictures! Though, the bowl of spices, tumeric infused coconut and all that blended together was quite gorgeous. I almost stopped, but I was in the groove a bit too much. Husband made jerusalem artichokes with tomatoes, kalamata olives and balsamic vinegar. Quite the delicious dinner!

Maybe macarons this week/weekend?! We'll see...

I'm supposed to make macarons tonight but...

2011-01-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to bail out of my homework and go shopping instead. Perhaps I'll make them tomorrow night, and just prep all the ingredients tonight. Is that bad? Hmmm... Maybe I'm bailing because I don't know what to make?

Long time no post!

2011-01-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe it is January 16th and I haven't posted anything in so many weeks!

First, I had my father's surprise birthday party, where I made many macarons and mini-tartlets; then it was Christmas; then two weeks of on and off migraines and now! I have work in a group show at Della-Piana Gallery in MA in less than a month! Needless to say, macarons have taken a backseat to the show preparations and migraine recovery - of which I had another migraine yesterday.

I spent the whole day at Orsay on Dec. 3rd making macaron shells (thanks again Orsay!!!) This is what shells for over 400 assembled macarons looks like:

I made vanilla, hazelnut, pistachio and chocolate shells; then yellow, orange, blue and pink shells in the standard "light" vanilla flavor.

Luckily I had started the buttercreams well in advance, so had lemon, pistachio, hazelnut, vanilla all set to go; and chocolate ganache as well as passionfruit-milk chocolate ganache.

I made a very thick blueberry ganache which was very good but after the macarons had been in the freezer for a week I felt that the filling took on a freezer taste - almost like freezer burn. I don't know how else to describe it, it tasted frozen. Very strange. Such a disappointment too, as I used many many blueberries that I had picked over the summer at my parent's house! Luckily, I saved some of the filling and used it in a tart - reheated the filling then added more blueberries. It was great.

When it came time for the party's macarons, they were loaded up on two tiered trays. We had many many leftover, so I think I brought too many! (I brought about 25 from each of the 8 flavors - way too many between the cake and the mini-tartlets that I didn't get a picture of!!!)

The cake was from Almondine Bakery, the same bakery that made our fabulous wedding cake. It was a pistachio giaconde with lemon curd and raspberry gelee with a not too sweet meringue. And, we put 60 candles on the cake.

Last but not least, this is what my freezer looked like after bringing half of the macarons up to my father's party. Now, we're down to that black container and the small blue lidded one because I sold a bunch to a friend.

2010-12-03T09:56:00.000-08:00

Been making a list of current flavors that I make, will add more to the flavors list as I test out new ones:

Milk Chocolate Passion Fruit Ganache
Vanilla Buttercream
Pistachio Buttercream
Chocolate Ganache
Lemon Buttercream
Cherry-Raspberry Ganache
Blueberry Ganache
Hazelnut Buttercream
Maple Buttercream
Raspberry Buttercream
Salted Caramel

If you want pricing/ordering info, check out themacarongirl.blogspot.com

My First Macaron Gig, and How it Went

2010-11-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't take any in progress photos of all the macarons I made for a catering job because I was so focused on getting the job done that I completely forgot to take pictures! Excuses, excuses. However, I promise I'll take in progress photos next time I bake at home - since that's still going oh so well... Thank goodness I have somewhere to go to make macarons. The caveat is that I made 4 batches for myself and like 6 (of the same kind) for the restaurant! What a massive amount of macarons! Luckily, I didn't have to fill the ones for the restaurant, and am happily taking my time filling the ones for the catering job. Got up early this morning to fill the vanilla ones (with the usual vanilla buttercream) and the lemon ones (with a lemon zest buttercream). Tonight's mission is to fill chocolate and berry macarons.

I changed my almond flour, and didn't run everything through the food processor like usual and it made a HUGE difference. Note to self: always use food processor to zip the confectioner's sugar and almond flour together. ALWAYS. Granted, the new almond flour is divine and shouldn't warrant the food processing, but I think it is key - mostly because the corn starch that is in the confectioner's sugar absorbs the excess moisture in the almond flour. I could be wrong on that one, I'm sure I am, but that's my story right now. As you can tell, I like my theories.

One of the downsides to sharing a fancy schmancy convection oven is that sometimes you have to wait a really long time to bake your stuff, I think that was the problem with the chocolate macarons - they sat on the rack waiting to be baked for two hours. The tops were are all slidey. (I know, slidey isn't a word.) Not only that, they were under-mixed. This new almond flour allows me to mix the batter more thoroughly than before. Though, I believe I will switch over to Italian Meringue and see what happens. My home oven is so frustrating.

The list of macarons made for the catering job:
Lemon
Vanilla
Berry
Chocolate

Apparently they were a hit despite some aesthetic issues. Next time.

The Stuff of Dreams

2010-11-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

Too bad I didn't get a picture of the milk chocolate passionfruit ganache filled vanilla macarons before I ate them, they were quite good! Suffice it to say they were yellow, and tasty, if not a bit too vanilla-ey. But really, how many pictures does a girl need of the same dessert? You tell me, how many pictures do you need of the same dessert?

I got scolded for not piping out straight rows of macarons all the same size. The other day, during lunch, I made three stencils, oh wait, four: 1", 1.5", 1.75" and 2" circles on a bunch of letter sized paper for me to tape together so that they fit ever so perfectly on my half sheet pans and then I can practice piping. Also, I was unknowingly holding my pastry bag incorrectly. This is why going to Orsay is a good thing!!!

I've embraced my no macarons at home rule thus far, though I did dream about making straight up meringue and piping it onto a thousand sheetpans... maybe that was a nightmare? Someone stole my eggwhites to use for omelets or something and was starting to mix in egg yolks before I rescued them! Yes, nightmare, definitely.

Here's a tiny version of my stencil, I didn't feel like making individual rings all on one sheet (you know, with 1/4" increments) so I did plain old black circles. If I weren't going away this weekend, more on that in a minute, I would have my husband pick up egg whites from the restaurant supplier and I'd be in the process of making my nightmare, I mean dream, a reality.

You may be asking, where am I going this weekend? Well! I'm going to a teeny tiny town near Binghampton, NY to participate in a pig slaughter/butcher. I really won't be doing the slaughtering, or the butchering, but I'll be there taking photos and most likely being horrified. I won't watch the actual slaughter, my nightmares are already vivid enough. This is a learning experience, knowing where your food comes from and what goes into the processing of the meat, and I am looking forward to it on some levels. Mostly, I am happy to be out of the city for the first time in two months. I can't believe I've gone two months without leaving the city, I'm so used to heading out of the city at least once a month to do something! I didn't even get my peak foliage hike in this year, too much going on!

There was something else... oh! Apparently I am not cursed all around in the baking department at home. Made a lovely apple pie last Saturday, with whole wheat pastry flour crust that was actually flaky. I've never been able to make a flaky whole wheat crust before. Was super happy. But, my oven? Apparently it is either stuck at 300F or at 450F now, no in between. I think it is time to call the landlord and see about getting a new oven, or a new thermostat for the oven!

Will update soon, hopefully with pics of the piggy. Poor tasty piggy...

Macaron Hell

2010-11-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Last week, when I made macarons, it was on a very warm rainy day here in Brooklyn. This week, well, it is raining again though it is cool out; I figured I'd have a better chance at not having grotesque macarons.

I am just so frustrated with this I think it might be a sign that I need to take a break from making these at home for a while...

Let's compare shall we?


At Orsay

At Home

Same thing, same recipe as always, same same same! The difference? Orsay's fancy oven, my crappy oven. Orsay's relatively cool and dry working environment, my recently damp and warmish working environment.

These macarons give me the blues

I'm hosting a dinner party tomorrow night, wanted to make some chocolate macarons, and blueberry (myrtille) macarons but I guess that's not happening!!! Even my blueberry filling didn't come out right!

Here's what I think is going on since up until two weeks ago I haven't had any problems working at home:

You see those little blobs in the otherwise smooth shells? They are air pockets that should have tapped out of the shells when they both settled after piping and after being "banged" out - to remove the peaks. I think this is happening because it is so humid it is creating an extra layer of moisture (thus gumming up the sugar) not allowing the larger air pockets to release. This gumming that I think is happening could be due to the confectioner's sugar that I am using (Domino brand) as it contains cornstarch to prevent caking - and we all know what happens when you mix cornstarch and water together.
I think the low pressure is what is making the shells hollow - the crispy outer shell is great because that is what forms first, then the feet/collar/pied, then the meringue inside the shell needs to "adhere" to the outer shell. But, it can't because of the low pressure - like blowing up a balloon and having it not want to stay in the air but if deflates on the floor.
I KNOW I'm doing everything right, for crying out loud I'm using the same recipes I've been using and the only thing that has changed is the weather, and time of day. Stupid weather. Stupid job.

I left the macarons out overnight, on the parchment paper, and the bottoms of the shells are still sticking to the paper! What frustration!!! You see the lines on the blue shells? That was from them sitting upside down on a cooling rack so that I could try and pry them off of the paper.

I was about to cry this morning, and am ready to convert to Italian Meringue for weather like this outside, and even in general because I am so absolutely frustrated that I'm willing to sacrifice amazing texture for consistent results. Even the chocolate ones didn't work out - they ALWAYS work. They are the ones that keep me sane.

Sigh...

After checking through a few more blogs, I am also thinking that because of the humidity I should have baked my macarons for a longer period of time. Also, am going to try making my own confectioner's sugar in the blender. I'm determined to get these things right, on a consistent basis, without IM.

Weekend Macarons

2010-11-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful day at Orsay on Saturday, I made a spiced macaron shell with a pumpkin buttercream filling and then a vanilla shell with vanilla buttercream. Both were made with FM in the convection oven, set to 140C for 20 mins. This time, I think I overbaked them - they were much crunchier out of the oven than usual.

I was allowed to form the coconut macaroons and financiers at the restaurant, not making either batter, and I filled the tart tatin molds again which was really nice. Anything repetitive I'll love, but I couldn't do exactly the same thing all day long every day. No thank you. I've been pumping the pastry chef for information, how much of this dessert does he have to make every day/week, how much butter do they go through, stuff like that.

Now that I've successfully made macarons in the awesome oven, I can figure out ideal times for them. For example, the chocolate ones only need 20mins whereas I believe that the non-chocolate ones need 15mins.

I've tried the pumpkin one, it was beautifully softened and chewy, but the vanilla one after 24 hours in the fridge was still too crunchy. Will try one tonight, hopefully it will be good to eat now! They were made Saturday morning, so this is 3 days!!! I have read that buttercreams take up to 3 days because of the low moisture content, tonight will be the test.

Vanilla on the left and pumpkin spice on the right (in their happy to go container from the restaurant)

vanilla on the left, pumpkin on the right

Apparently, the pumpkin ones' shells are crayola crayon "peach". Hmmmm... yeah well, I think they are pretty and that's all that matters. They are especially pretty with the contrasting bright orange-yellow filling. My husband insisted that it was an unusual subtle color combination, and very nontraditional.

Speaking of pumpkin, I think the pumpkin ones would taste much better made with fresh pumpkin. I thought that roasting organic canned pumpkin would get rid of the canny taste, but it didn't. Sorry Chef. I agree with you, canned pumpkin is gross. Don't worry, I'll never use it again. Come to think of it, while I am thinking of it, I don't even use canned pumpkin for pumpkin pie at home! Shame on me for sullying your kitchen with it.

While I had a good run at Orsay on Saturday, last week's misery in the kitchen is still bothering me. I truly believe it was the weather and nothing else that I was doing or could have done. Even so, I brought them to a friend's house for dessert on Saturday and was embarrassed of the macarons for not being just right. The pistachio ones were too big, the chocolate ones had cracks and were over baked, the only ones that seemed to survive unscathed were the vanilla ones. C'est la vie.

Not everything can be perfect all the time.

UPDATE: The Vanilla ones are just right 3 days later, however because they were baked a bit too long there is a gap between the shell and the meringue. Now I know that they were baked for too long.

Also, found a picture of the disaster night's mise en place (minus one batch's worth of ingredients):

Vanilla, Pistachio and Chocolate mise en place (missing the lemon batch)

At some point in the future: American vs French sized macarons

The Macaron Gods

2010-10-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

I think, since I deal mostly with F.M. and not I.M. that I have to pay additional homage to the Macaron Gods. I made 4 types of macarons last night, with the buttercream and ganache made the night before. It was so crazy, and a little stupid, considering it had been super rainy and humid (and warm) all day. Even running the a/c two hours before starting didn't help much. I ended up with strangely shaped macarons - not from overmixing mind you - but from the heat and humidity in my apartment. To add insult to injury, my oven decided that 285F on the dial meant 500F. I was freaking out halfway through baking the macarons (got a lot of cracks from the heat - no wonder) before reminding myself to check the oven again. Out came the wooden spoon to cool the oven down, down went the dial, and lo and behold my macarons were so much better! Granted, they were perfectly fine just not perfect.

What is it about macarons and perfection?

I can say that I know what meringue looks like when even a little bit of oil is mixed in with it - it isn't meringue at all but a runny, goopey mess. I decided to use a homemade orange sugar for the shell and, well, I didn't end up with orange sugared shells at all. They had to be thrown out.

I am so frustrated with last night's macaronathon. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get better foot/collar formation, but really, I've been checking out Pierre Herme's and Lauduree's images and you know they aren't all perfect either! Also, my collars/feet are about the same size (if not larger) than Bouchons... If you close your eyes, taste the macaron, you wouldn't notice that the feet aren't as big as usual. Sigh.

Why can't I just be happy that I make them at all?

Sour Cherry Italian Meringue Macarons

2010-10-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

Cherry Macarons - sour cherry jam filling, vanilla shell

I decided to try the Italian Meringue (I.M.) based macarons since I've actually seen them work in a professional kitchen a few weeks ago. I used my vanilla castor sugar as half of my sugar for the sugar syrup (heated to soft ball stage - just a smidge above) and whipped it until it was cool, frankly I think I should have used a small hand mixer instead of my monster stand mixer because I only made 15 macarons! Apparently, about 60g of egg whites yields 15 macaron shells. That's good to remember, that 1/4 of the egg white weight will be your approximate assembled macaron yield. Basically, I piped out a full sheet pan and then 5 more larger shells, wish I could have gotten 6 larger shells.

Okay, so here's the scoop - I finally got them to work with the I.M. I feel that I overmixed the batter by a touch, but it could also have been attributed to the fact that I was concurrently making three stockpots worth of chicken stock (two 8-10qt pots then a huge 15.5qt goose pot) that is still being reduced down to 8 quarts. It is a lot of stock to freeze...

Back to the macarons! The kitchen was super humid, it was warm out, and the kitchen itself was 80F so I feel that I did not in fact overmix the batter, but waited too long in the day to work on the macarons. I had a similar situation happen back in May, it was crazy hot out, I was trying to make macarons and as they rested they got more and more lopsided looking from the humidity.

Regardless, I sprinkled some cocoa powder on top of the shells since cherries and chocolate are a great combo and why not?! I don't know how I feel about decorated shells yet, perhaps I should get some glitter dust and try that out.

Interior

Here's the thing with IM vs FM - if you want a moist and chewy shell use FM, if you want a drier, sweeter, less chewy shell use IM.

If I were going to make a ton of these a few days ahead for a party, I might use IM if I were combining it with a fattier nut (hazelnut, pistachio.) Otherwise, I'm sticking with the FM.

I like the flavor combination of the vanilla, cocoa powder and cherry jam.

These were made for the Mactweets Mac Attack Challenge - pink! Check out the blog: http://mactweets.blogspot.com/

PS - The holidays are around the corner! I am more than happy to make these for your party, gift, etc. Get in touch with me for pricing if you are interested!

My Idea of the Perfect Macaron

2010-10-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've decided to post what I feel is as close as I'm going to get to a perfect macaron in my not so perfect oven:

These macarons have been consistently made with French Meringue because frankly I think the texture is better than Italian Meringue. The filling is a dark chocolate ganache made with 70% cocoa, the shell is made with organic cocoa powder.

This is a macaron that's sat in the fridge for two days (piped on a Saturday, eaten on a Monday.)

The filling and the shell have just started to merge ever so slightly, but the shell has maintained its own identity. Basically, the filling has softened up the shell where it has met. If it has done more than that, your filling is too wet and you will be disappointed. I've learned how to pipe better, to mix better, and how to bake and cool these babies so that I don't get weird air pockets or inconsistently sized feet. The feet all boil down to the batter, not resting. You can rest a macaron shell until the cows come home, but if you didn't mix the batter correctly you will not have a proper shell.

So that's my idea of a perfect macaron. Of course, I'm still learning how to make them consistently without Italian Meringue, speaking of which... I am working on a post regarding Italian Meringue.

Some Things I Learned

2010-10-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

The first thing that I learned is that you should never go to a volunteer job sick, you not only embarrass yourself but you probably embarrassed the person who stuck their neck out for you in the first place.

The second thing that I learned is that you need to roast pureed pumpkin (from a can!) to get that bitter taste, and all that extra water, out of the pumpkin before whipping it with buttercream.

The third thing I learned is that I cannot talk to my husband while trying to make macarons - especially while the egg whites are whipping - threw me off my game and I ended up with macarons that looked like this:

Now, it isn't all my husband's fault, first off I was using super fresh egg whites (at most I'll usually use a mix of fresh and old which yields beautiful results) - these were straight from the fridge because they were being made on a whim. Second, I had just pulled the almonds out of the freezer, didn't let them warm up and didn't run them through the food processor long enough so there were lots of chunks of almonds in the macaron shells. (Did I mention I was processing the almonds while I was helping my husband truss a chicken? Didn't think so.) I knew things were going to go downhill, but I kept going anyway, I should have just stopped. I also think I used a few too many grams of egg whites, when I'm always on the nose. No, I did. I was bad.

I learned that macarons cannot be "winged".

I always get my mise en place together before doing anything, this weekend, not so much. I was sifting the almonds and sugar together while the egg whites were whipping, thereby resulting in a frantic mindset in the kitchen where I kicked my husband out and said he had to leave. Yeah, no wonder my macarons were undermixed (as witnessed by cracks and large bubbles, and little peaks that didn't get pounded out after piping) they had little if any feet, and a wet runny messy buttercream. Deciding to make macarons at 5.45 on a Sunday when you hadn't been planning on it isn't exactly the best idea for me.

I learned that I really do need to have my mise together before starting, just makes life simpler in the long run.

I learned that I'm better with the whole baking thing early in the day, the earlier the better.

I learned that you can make macarons that taste eerily similar to pumpkin pie, which is pretty awesome.

I also learned that I really want to make buttercream with maple syrup instead of a white sugar syrup - lo and behold Martha Stewart has a recipe! The lack of feet didn't matter so much for the taste and texture of the macaron. I think next time, I may just try the dreaded Italian Meringue again.

I learned that my piping skills are getting way better! Woohoo!

Update: After sitting in the fridge for two nights I have extremely mushy macarons from the pumpkin buttercream - the top of the shells are still crunchy but everything else is nothing but mush. Will definitely remedy that this upcoming Saturday with a new batch.

Fun at Orsay

2010-10-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

Fun you say? Yes, working on a Saturday, for free, from like 9.45am until 4pm is fun. At least it was for me...

Is there a lot to say about it? Hmmm... I made my chocolate macarons (and underbaked them by 5 mins - errr...) filled them, and then watched the pastry chef (I can't spell his name so when I can I'll update this!) make vanilla macarons that we got to color a neat purple color. I wasn't able to take any home because they weren't firmed up enough from being filled otherwise I'd have pictures. There was another girl there for the morning/early afternoon, I didn't talk to her much since she wasn't there for very long and I was busy doing stuff.

I managed to spill half of my ganache on the countertop - whoops. Gotta make a mess somehow huh? Like, last weekend, I managed to spill all of the sugar for the buttercream on the floor then had the vacuum's belt break. Fun times.

My poor piping skills notwithstanding, as well as my underbaked macarons, I was super impressed by the fancy oven. No space between the shell and the meringue! Who knew?!

Since I have now experienced Italian meringue based macarons that aren't nasty, I'm going to make them next weekend - maybe ;) Perhaps I should wait for the following weekend, since I'm going back to Orsay on Saturday. Is it next Saturday yet?!

Thanks Chef!

Update!

2010-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Oh bliss!

I've been invited to a local French restaurant to make macarons on Saturday morning! Can't wait to tell you all about it on Sunday! It'll be my first time in a pro-kitchen, so I'm very very nervous and excited, and fearful that my macaron skills are not up to par or worse that the macarons I'll make come out horribly wrong. I'd much rather be the amateur baker than the amateur baker that was brought in to make macarons who can't make macarons... Talk about butterflies.

I think I'm more nervous about this than the day I got married. Seriously.

Deep breath, deep breath. I can do this, I can do this... Will I do this?! Will I do this well?!?!?!

Success!

2010-10-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Two tries in a row now with my macarons, and wow. I swear they are better than the last set. I am going to continue to toot my own horn here because I am so proud of myself, and my husband for his endless patience with me. I love how with food you know when something is good, you can taste it, see it, hear it; it is so much more clear-cut than with visual art. Which, by the way, is my first love. I've been on a bit of a art-making hiatus, trying to figure out what I am doing with my work, what I'll be doing next, what I expect to come from my work and so on. So I guess I've been in a bit of a creative crisis when it comes to my artwork. Which is why making macarons, Madeleines, tarts, etc is so gratifying - I know that it is successful, and when it is not. So simple, so clear.

Because I can't leave well enough alone this weekend, I had to make three batches, I started prepping at 1.30pm on Saturday and finished at 5.30; I was filling the ones I didn't get to before dinner at 12.30am. This has to stop. I don't understand how I am so obsessed with these cookies, and for so long! I will never be able to buy a macaron here in NYC ever again, without being disappointed that is.

Below is an image taken by my friends at their place. Because you know, four people will eat this many macarons in one sitting after a full meal and pear tart - yeah right! From back to front, there's vanilla filled chocolate, hazelnut filled hazelnut, vanilla filled vanilla, and chocolate filled chocolate. In reality I made: chocolate shells, vanilla shells, hazelnut shells, vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache. I also made some hazelnut buttercream from the vanilla buttercream, and tried to make a white chocolate rose ganache but it tasted like soap. Apparently I should not trust a recipe that says to use rose water because the result is a very expensive soap tasting chocolate that gets thrown out. So, failure of the week. Which is fine I am told because one can't do everything right all the time, hence all of the batches of macarons that have gone wrong over the months.

Julia Child's butter cream is my go to recipe, I like that it is not too buttery - which is counter-intuitive when having a butter cream, however I'd like to taste the vanilla, cassis, etc that's in the butter cream as well.

I think I have finally learned my oven, what temp to bake at , what I need to do and am really happy about it. I do think that resting the shells for about 20 mins after they've been piped is a good thing, I only had two "blowouts" (cracked) shells out of 8 pans! So basically, I had six pans of perfect macarons. Sigh. Heaven, well it would be heaven if I could sell these little babies. That would be amazing. So, if you or anyone you know would like to buy these, get in touch with me ;)

Hopefully my new camera cord will get here, I lost the USB cord from my camera which is why I don't have any pictures from the past two blog posts (this one included.) When I finally get the cord, I'll upload some pictures. I looked through my apartment four times for the cord, I don't know what happened to it and am so frustrated with not knowing where it is!

It's been rainy here for what seems like an eternity, though this past weekend was lovely. I am so happy that I was outside a bunch yesterday, and had a chance to wander through the farmer's market in Union Square for my week's food shopping. I love this time of year, well, every time of year except the middle of winter. I think I might try pear filled macarons next. Time to mix it up.

Another picture from this most recent batch (taken from my phone):

It is a mess of macarons!

Dinner Party

2010-09-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

After hosting a fairly large dinner party, in my fairly small apartment, I feel quite proud of my macaron skills this time around. But I know not to get too cocky, because macarons can turn on you at any moment...

My first love is lithography, specifically stone lithography wherein you draw with oil onto a piece of limestone then process it with chemicals then print it - to oversimplify a rather long and complicated process. Lithography is just as tricky as macaron making - you have to take the time to know your stone, how much you can push it when etching it with the chemicals/acids and how to print it just so that you get the perfect image. In a printer's fantasyland, all of these steps go smoothly from one to the next and there are no problems, but this is why it is a fantasy. In reality, Murphy's Law reigns the lithography studio. You can go from printing a four color print, with four different stones, have the first three stones print gorgeously then that last stone falls apart. The etch was too weak, your image starts to fill in, the ink isn't setting into the previous layers correctly, oh the possibilities for having a print go wrong are endless. So, what is a printer to do? Problem solve via process of elimination until you've done it so many times you know how to fix a problem before it is really a problem. It takes a very long time to learn lithography, let alone to learn how to make good lithographs. There are people that make alright lithographs, bad lithographs and very few that make great lithographs. Such as it is with macarons, there are good ones, alright ones (like Bouchons - sorry Chef Keller) and bad ones (MadMac is a good example of a macaron that I've had that I've been super disappointed with.) I'd really like mine to be considered of the good ones.

I've been making macarons since April, and think I have finally figured out my oven, what needs to be done, how many pans I can squeeze into it at any given moment, the temperature, and for how long the macarons should bake for. This is just the baking, I realized there is an art to cooling the macarons, in addition to the art of macaronnage which I firmly believe the "flows like magma" is a bunch of hooey because really, I don't live in a place where there is magma flowing from the earth so how would I know what it is supposed to look like? From TV? YouTube? Pah. People should be saying, when mixing the dry into the egg whites for macaronnage that the batter should relax slightly after all the ingredients have been incorporated and there are no lumps of egg whites left - ie that the batter is smooth. Is it that much harder to say that rather than the batter should flow like magma? Totally ridiculous. So anyway, for me, I think I figured it out. I can confirm the details upon my next batch of macarons, because I am going to do everything the same. I took notes.

I still believe that the French method is the correct/ideal method for macarons, I actually am getting angry with people insisting that Italian meringue is the way to go. It makes me so upset that I can't get a good macaron from the "easy" Italian method when I use the "hard" French one with good results. Shouldn't I be able to make a decent macaron with the "easy" method?! Makes me feel like there is something wrong with me...

By the by, I don't believe you have to rest the macarons for 20mins to an hour before baking in the oven, I popped plenty of sheets of macarons in the oven last time without this rest period with few problems. Granted, I have yet to get a full batch of perfect macarons - my outside ones tend to crack open - for whatever reason, so that's the next problem to solve once I confirm the details of consistently making them. I think it is the way the heat is distributed throughout my oven - it hits the outside macarons to hard and fast thus baking them too quickly and splitting them open.

Oh, back to the dinner party, I'm lucky (depending on how you look at things) to be friends with two chefs, born and raised in France, who can give me a thumbs up or down when it comes to these sorts of things. I can't help but toot my own horn here when I say that both of them, after trying the macarons said that they were superb. Superb! Ah, my heart and head have swelled with pride! I think each of them ate a dozen macarons at the dinner party! I can put away three at most, but not a dozen, and certainly not after everything we ate prior to dessert! And the smiles from them, wow. I wanted to cry from happiness, I also didn't quite believe them at first thinking that they were being polite.

The menu for the dinner:
Hors d'ouevres - radishes with butter and French gray salt, olives, baguette, pistachios and a cashew-chickpea hummus served with pita chips (thanks Laura!)
Main - braised lamb shanks, lentils and sauteed carrots
Salad of boston and red salad bowl lettuces with mustard vinaigrette
Dessert- chocolate, pistachio and vanilla macarons, sour cream twists (an old family recipe) and an assortment of grapes

So that's that. Hopefully my next report will be positive! Keep your fingers crossed!

The Evils of Italian Meringue

2010-09-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I love Italian Meringue - I could eat the stuff by the bowlful. I hate it in macarons, I hate the texture it produces in the cookies, I hate the air pocket issues, I hate how the feet/collars don't form correctly and I just don't like how the cookies taste.

I've tried two different (albeit similar because really, how many different macaron recipes are there out there?!) and both times, they came out oh so wrong. Granted, I'm still battling with the French meringue method, but at the same time I have more practice with it and I'm getting better about not over folding the mixture during "macarronage".

Yet again, I was so angry I didn't take any photographs and can't believe that I spent time out of my weekend doing this and coming out with these weird lumps of cookies/shells. In reality, it took me an hour to set up, prep the batter, pipe the batter, bang out the pans, and get cleaned up before putting the pans in the oven after the skins had formed - and I was taking my time!

I'm sorry to the author who spent a lot of time writing this recipe, but it doesn't work for me and I am officially not going to waste my time, and perfectly lovely ingredients, on it only to be disappointed. (Can you tell I am upset over this? I really hate spending time on something, to have it not work out, and to not learn anything other than to not try it again.)

Based on the steps above, I used these proportions (at least I think I'm remembering correctly): 100g egg whites (aged in fridge for 5 days); 240g sugar (50g of which was used in the egg whites prior to the sugar syrup - my favorite vanilla castor sugar); 140g almond meal; not quite a gram of egg white powder; 3/4 tsp fresh lemon juice; 50g water

Perhaps what should be done is use only 50g egg whites then use the 50g of water with enough powdered egg white that when blended with the water would create 50g of egg whites for a total of 100g egg whites. Hmmmm... I bet that's where this recipe and the one above goes sour... makes sense that there's too much water and not enough albumen protein to bind the almond flour and sugar together thereby creating brittle yucky dry cookies rather than the ones that I love so much that are based on the French method.

Such a disappointment. I'm sighing and sad writing this now.

Hopefully this weekend will be better, perhaps I'll go back to my tried and true chocolate macarons, then redelve into the wonders and frustrations of vanilla macarons...

Then again, maybe I'll try this method again just to prove to myself that Italian Meringue isn't for my macarons?

Madeleines!!!

2010-09-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm gearing up to make macarons, and was planning on making them as a late birthday present for my mother this weekend, but I got a madeleine pan as a wedding present on Monday. How could I go wrong with making these today?! My boss's daughter brought back the tin for me from Paris, it is aluminum with a copper core.

It was cool enough for me to turn the oven on at 8.45 this evening, and I whipped up a quick batch of these babies. The batter has to chill for at least an hour before it can be piped into the tin, so it was perfect for me to make, pop the bowl into the fridge and walk away for a while. I am forever grateful that I have a copy of the FCI Pastry book, they have recipes for almost everything that I need that I don't have in other books. Works out pretty well. So, if you want to make this recipe, get the FCI book and instead of using grated orange or lemon zest, incorporate cardamom (about 1/8tsp ground), a half teaspoon of rose extract and a teaspoon and a half of Benedictine (or Grand Marnier, which I would have preferred to use) into the batter.

What a thrill it was to follow the recipe (sort of) and have the cakes come out right the first time! Granted, there are of course things that I would do differently next time. Mainly I will perfect my piping technique - got some air bubbles in some of them because of my piping the batter in a circular pattern a la macarons versus a straight line from one tip of the scallop to the other.

Also, am making orange caster sugar for the next time I make these and I don't have any oranges or lemons lying around. I think orange-cardamom would be fantastic.

Nothing like a Madeleine on a Saturday night with a bit of powdered sugar dusted on top!

Hopefully, up next I'll have some macarons for you!

A Recipe for a Friend

2010-08-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Because I'm so good with writing recipes, yuck yuck yuck, here's what I've got for my go-to dessert:

Blueberry Tart

I don't like super sweet desserts, I much prefer natural sweetness to over-sugared sweetness... funny that I love making macarons so much - must be the challenge. If you veer towards the sweeter side of the fruit filling, be sure to sugar to your taste.

The tart, this week, took two weeks to make. Why? Well, last weekend I started rolling out the tart dough and managed to drop an entire jar of flour, filled with 2.5lbs of flour, all over the kitchen. I was in my bare feet, there was glass and flour everywhere. It was pretty much a disaster. I was so upset I just wrapped up the dough, put it and the filling in the fridge and left it alone for a week. Sometimes, you just need to do that. Those times are especially important when there is flour all over the kitchen that takes more than an hour to clean up and you haven't eaten breakfast yet because you wanted to make a "quick" tart on a Sunday morning. Yeah right! Oh, this tart should have had a vanilla custard between the shell and the blueberries but of course my custard didn't set right. So, I decided not to mess with it, turned the custard into french toast and let my blueberry tart be as it always is:

Pate Sucree Tart Shell (needs to be modified to the FCI recipe... or whatever recipe I decide I like best for the week)

Ingredients
    * 2 1/3 cups cake or pastry flour
    * 1/3 cup sugar
    * 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled, cut into small pieces
    * 2 egg yolks
    * 1 or 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions (preheat oven to 425)

In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, combine the flour and sugar. Add the butter and process until the texture resembles fine meal.
In a small bowl, whisk together the yolks and 1 tablespoon of the cream. Scrape into the machine and process until a ball begins to form, using the additional tablespoon of cream, if necessary. Remove the dough from the machine, and on a lightly floured surface, press down into a circle.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
After refrigerated, roll out on a lightly floured surface until 1/8" thick and line the tart pan with it.
"Dock" the bottom of the shell's dough with the tines of a fork, place in the fridge for a half hour
Place a piece of parchment paper in the shell (do not use foil), weight it with beans, rice, pie weights, etc and bake in a 425 oven for about 20mins then remove the parchment and weights and bake for another 5 mins until lightly browned.
Cool on a rack until ready to use

I use a deep tart pan, but you can use a more shallow one if you'd prefer. I like tons of blueberries.

Filling
1. Take about 3 quarts of blueberries, reserving 3 cups, and place in a saucepan with about 1/4c granulated sugar, a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon (1tsp.)
2. Heat through until bubbly, reduce to a simmer if very bubbly, stirring often
3. Taste for sweetness, add more sugar to taste
4. Take 2TB water, and mix with 3TB cornstarch until cornstarch is dissolved; stir into blueberries in saucepan and cook over lowest heat until taste of cornstarch is gone - the idea here is for the mixture to thicken up enough to hold its shape when cut - so if it not thicker you should dissolve another 1TB of cornstarch in a bit of water and add to the pan
5. When sauce thickens a bit, turn off let cool for about 10 minutes then stir in 2cups of the reserved berries

To Finish
Take cooled filling and pour into the cooled tart shell, sprinkle the top of the tart with the rest of the fresh berries and serve with fresh whipped cream (I use organic heavy whipping cream with a teaspoon-full of vanilla sugar and hand whip it.)

Store in fridge

I am so ready to make macarons again

2010-08-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

I am so sick of this heat and humidity, it means I can't work on my favorite dessert! I have a little notebook filled with flavor combination ideas, a friend gave me a macaron book (in French of course) as a wedding present, and I managed to find some pretty awesome looking powdered food coloring at the Broadway Panhandler. Unfortunately, they didn't have powdered yellow (except luster colored) so I went with the gel yellow instead of the powdered. So, I guess I'll be on the lookout for powdered yellow, and you'll be seeing some strangely colored macarons this fall! Yay!

Egg Noodles in Broth

2010-08-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

With all the leftover pork from the reception, we had to do something with it. We froze a bunch of it in serving size baggies (enough for a meal for Jason and me) and made a stock from the trotters and head of the pig. The stock came out lovely. We even used a clarifying raft for the first time - very exciting. Again, I don't have pictures because I was in the moment with it and find that stopping to take pictures kind of ruins my joy. No wonder I'm not a food photographer!

I made some pasta with plain white flour and duck eggs from John Boy's Farm, kneading it until springy, then running it through the pasta machine. For me, I have to remember this, setting 5 is the way to go for cappelini - my pasta machine just won't cut a thinner rolled out dough. I wanted to have them really thin, like vermicelli, but instead my pasta machine rolled out the dough with a few lines scored on it instead of cutting it. Bummer.

I brought the stock to a boil, added some Japanese seven spice seasoning from the Spice House, then some soy sauce, finely minced onion, and the tops of a bunch of scallions. I removed the scallion tops after they steeped in the stock for about 15 minutes then added finely sliced carrot (like allumet, but more flattened - i don't know what the cut type is at all, it is a Pam-style cut.), red pepper flakes, ginger powder, shredded kale and some thinly sliced pork, then let them both cook through before adding thinly sliced oyster and shitake mushrooms. I then added the par-cooked noodles to the pot, waited a couple minutes then added bean sprouts. I served the noodles/broth/soup? in our lovely new bowls, topped it with some scallion and ginger.

This was a lovely dinner, was filling but not heavy, I didn't feel the need for dessert, though I did have some anyway, and was just the right combination of vegetables noodles meat and broth. My biggest gripe about the dish was that the broth should have had more chicken in it (we used some chicken in with the pork stock), and some sort of fish.

Dessert was, you guessed it, more blueberry tart. We did pick over 50 quarts of blueberries this summer and this tart is the best way to use 3 quarts of blueberries all at once. Not that I should complain about home-grown blueberries, but we don't have the freezer space and are now considering a chest freezer for the blueberries, pork, pork stock, green chiles and whatever else we come up with next!

Up next... hmmm... I don't know. Maybe some beet salad with goat cheese, candied walnuts and a crab omelet?

Gnocchi with Summer Vegetables

2010-08-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

I love this time of year because the herbs are great, the zucchini and summer squash are delicious, and the tomatoes are aplenty. What better way than to celebrate than with Bouchon's gnocchi with summer squash and tomatoes? We got duck eggs from John Boy Ubaldo's stand at the Pound Ridge, NY Farmer's Market to make the gnocchi, we think the gnocchi is so much better with the duck rather than chicken eggs. The texture was fantastic and it was rich without being heavy.

After boiling the gnocchi for about a minute until they floated, and setting them on parchment paper after draining them on paper towels, we had to sautee the squash and zucchini until fork tender, but not brown.

We chopped up some tomatoes and pitted and halved nicoise olives (they're at the bottom of the bowl, that's why you can't see them.)

Then, we browned some butter and sage in a pan, and tossed the gnocchi in to brown. I love how they puff up when they are hot.

After that, all that needed to be done was toss the zucchini, tomatoes, olives and gnocchi together in the pan to heat through and voila!

This with a great white wine (or beer) makes for a great summer dinner! The gnocchi is time consuming to make, but is worth it. I doubt you can find something as good store bought. Oh, and use the good European style butter with this dish, makes a huge difference.

Next up... noodles with pork broth and vegetables? I'm actually a little sick of zucchini and squash right now (I can't believe it, I'd eat the stuff every day if I could but this year, whooo I'm done for the moment.)

Reception

2010-08-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Now that the reception is three weeks past, I am finally ready to talk about it! Really, it was a long day. Got up, started getting everything organized - picked up the herbs and flowers for the table decorations, cut up the peppers and cucumbers, got the tables set up and decorated, before we knew it it was 4pm and guests were arriving! I was a bit of a disaster, stressed out, not feeling ready. If I didn't have to worry about being the hostess, I don't think it would have been as big of a deal. In the end, it was worth it - everyone had a smile on their face and the food was great! (Sorry there aren't pics of the entire buffet before people got to it - just the way the day went! I didn't want to say to guests "no, you can't eat yet because the photographer is taking pictures of the food...")

The menu:

Starters:
Chunky Artichoke Pesto with Pecorino on Crisp Brick Oven Bread
Thai Vegetable Summer Rolls with Sweet Chili Dip
Spinach & Potato Samosas with Apricot Chutney
Pamela's Pico de Gallo Salsa with New Mexico Green Chiles and Heirloom Tomatoes
Pamela's Peach Salsa with New Mexico Green Chiles
Farmer's Market Crudites with Julie's Gorgonzola Dip and Julie's Onion Dip

Entree:
Smoked Free-Range Organic Pig
Pam Shaw's Smoked Free-Range Organic Chicken
Jason's Kansas City BBQ Sauce (featuring Koster-Schindler Maple Syrup)
Jason's Carolina Mustard Sauce (featuring Koster-Schindler Maple Syrup)
Mixed Baby Field Greens with Marinated Baby Tomatoes & 5-Herb Vinaigrette
Salad of Mixed Baby Lettuces with Blue Cheese, Haricot Verts & Sherry Vinaigrette
Cucumber Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette, Chives & Chopped Dill
Grilled Seasonal Green Market Vegetables with Aged Balsamic
Red Bliss Potato Salad with Shallots, Fine Herbs, & Pommery Mustard
Naturally Delicious Macaroni Salad
Pam Shaw's Famous Baked Beans (featuring Koster-Schindler Maple Syrup)
Pamela's Cabbage Slaw
Fresh Mozzarella & Tomato with Basil with Julie's Balsamic Vinaigrette

Dessert:
Seasonal Fruit
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Carrot Cake with Currants & Cream Cheese Frosting

All ingredients have been locally sourced where possible. We would like to acknowledge John Boy Ubaldo, who has raised our heritage breed pig and chickens in a very happy environment, running free on his farm from their time of birth up in Cambridge, NY. The crudites, salsa and slaw's main ingredients come from the farmstands at the Union Square Farmer's Market in NYC. The plates, utensils and napkins are made from sustainable sources and are 100% compostable.

We had Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewing Co., Stella Artois and Yuengling Light; Silver Palm Cabernet Sauvingon, and Domaine de Rablais Sauvignon Blanc; along with an apricot orange spiced ice tea. I wish we would have had more Liberty Ale, everyone raved about it, which of course I am happy about since it is my favorite beer!

ha ha ha

2010-07-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

So you know how I said that that I was making crudites for 96 people? My sister, a caterer, chef, and awesomest person ever, said I made enough for 400 people. Yep. 400 people.

8 bunches of radishes
4 bunches of celery
too many bunches of carrots, about 12
12 cucumbers
7 quarts of baby tomatoes
24 EACH of red, yellow and orange bell peppers
2 heads of cauliflower
2 heads broccoli

I had also gotten 3 lbs of beans from the farmer's market, but they got lost in the melee of groceries and rotted. Poor beans. I hate throwing food away, at least they were composted... I guess.

I'm still waiting on pictures from the photographer from all our food, suffice it to say it was more than enough! Unfortunately, because of the insane heat of the day the only salvageable crudites left at the end of the party at 5am (that's right, 5am) was the celery and the carrots! Everything else was... fizzy, including the remainder of my salsas which wasn't so bad because not much was left in the grand scheme of things. But, I spent two days working on this stuff (one full work day if I wasn't interrupted with other party preparations.)

What a party! Will post pics of the food soon - am still waiting for them from the photographer...

Oh, and I got a macaron book as a wedding present, I can't wait to get back into it after the summer ends...

Reception to-do list

2010-07-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

My wedding reception is technically this weekend, so I'm making a list (and checking it twice) for all of the things I'm going to have to get for the few things that I am making for our 96 person guest list. Here are my working totals so far:

Crudites for 96 people:
Radishes (2pp = 100)
Celery (2pp = 192)
Carrots (2pp = 192)
Cucumber (1/4pp = 24)
Baby tomatoes (3pp = 192)
Green bell peppers (1/4pp = 24)
Red bell peppers (1/4pp = 24)
Yellow bell peppers (1/4pp = 24)
Orange bell peppers (1/4pp = 24)
Cauliflower (1/16 pp = 6 heads) - get 2
Haricot vert/string beans (4pp = 384)
Snap peas if available – split tout en tout
(my sister, thank the heavens, is making the two dips for the crudites: home-made onion, and gorgonzola)

Peach Salsa 2qt:
Peaches - 2 1qt baskets
Red onion - 2
Cilantro – 1 bunch
Limes
Hot green chile - 1-2 frozen

Cabbage Salad 4-6qt:
Red cabbage - 1
Green cabbage – 2 (9 lbs of cabbage total)
Onion – 2 red/sweet
Scallion – 1 bunch
Carrot – 1 bunch
Cilantro – 1 bunch
Lime
Red chile powder
Vinegar (white wine or cider)
Jicama (?)

Tomato Salsa:
Tomatoes – 4 1qt containers
Red onion - 2
Garlic – 1 head
Cilantro – 1 bunch
Lime
Hot green chile – 1-2 frozen from NM

4 pretzels
6 white corn chips
2 blue corn chips
8 Giant marshmallows
8 Graham crackers
6-12 Hershey’s bars
10-12 bags potato buns

I am very excited that I will be able to get most of the produce at the farmer's market tomorrow morning. Hopefully we won't have to do any extra running around for produce! Will take lots of pictures to post!

peas and carrots

2010-07-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Lobster has been bountiful and cheap in recent weeks, whilst I was angry for missing Citarella's awesome deal of $4.99/lb lobsters a few weeks ago, I didn't miss Fairway's $5.99/lb deal this week. Husband was sent to Fairway to get lobsters and we are embarking on making our first dish from The French Laundry cookbook. Don't worry, this won't turn into a let's blog and cook from a cookbook blog! Besides, Carol Blymire did a lovely job with her TFL blog. I've been wanting to make this particular dish, Peas and Carrots, ever since we've had the cookbook.

I got home yesterday to an overwhelming lobster smell - husband had already cooked the lobsters and was reducing the glace. This is what the glace looked like when it was finally reduced:

Luckily we live in Brooklyn, and we go to the Union Square farmer's market every weekend; we were able to get all but the marscapone (and the lobsters) at the farmer's market. What a lovely way to live, I wish everyone was able to head to a great farmer's market to get their food. It does not feel like a weekend without heading to the farmer's market, I see the same people every weekend, get to chit chat with the farmers/stand people, and ogle the gorgeous produce. I was good this week, I always want to bring home a little bit of everything! Here's some of the fabulous produce we got today (plus husband's tomatoes and crackers from Fairway.)

In addition to making the peas and carrots this weekend, we are in the process of figuring out which white wine to have for our reception/BBQ in a few weeks. The first white we wanted, we couldn't get, the second white is sold out, so we now have 6 more wines to try to pair with roast/smoked pork. Poor us! Now, we are going to make a roast pork loin for dinner on Sunday to try to help with the decision. So much cooking!

I made another blueberry tart, it is blueberry season and my blueberry rationing from last season from the freezer was a little too strict. But, we are now officially out of frozen blueberries, which is pretty much a travesty in my family. Thank goodness blueberries will be ready for picking next weekend! My parents have a good sized row of blueberry bushes that we pick from every year. For as long as I can remember we've had blueberries.

Okay, back to the peas and carrots!

So, we reduced the carrot juice, and I apparently put in too much butter for the emulsified sauce (it was supposed to have 6oz and I used 12oz - guess that means we are going to reduce more carrot/ginger juice today for me to get the sauce correct!) I was wondering why the sauce was so yellow and not very orange! Then, at 2am I woke up and though, aha! I used too much butter! I don't know why it didn't register when I was reading the recipe...

I made a dozen crepes, two of which were not suitable for their intended purpose:

I made the pea shoot salad which was gorgeous on its own, and husband filled the crepes, and popped them in the oven to heat through:

When they were heated through, husband plated everything, of course we forgot the carrot powder that took an hour to make in the microwave! I still don't understand why the powder couldn't have been made in the food dehydrator, would have had a better taste in the end I think. We still have four lobster filled crepes left that haven't been baked, so will be sure to use the carrot powder then.

What bliss! So delicious! We usually chatter during dinner, but this dinner - oh no! Perfection - even with too much butter in the sauce! I can't imagine what it would be like to have this dish at The French Laundry! We complimented the dish with a bottle of Pouilly-Fume. So good. It was a great treat. The lobster was the perfect texture, the crepes were so delicate, the sauce was velvety and the pea shoots added just enough crunch and "green" that everything was perfectly balanced.

I must admit, after getting married and eating out every night for over a week straight, I am kind of restauranted out - still! We've gone out a few times since then and I have been either ho-hum or disappointed when we all is said and done. I'd rather be cooking all day on my weekend and have a meal like this then go out and have alright food.

Next up: a roast loin of pork, with potato salad, and green beans - and lots of white wine to help us decide on the pairing for the reception in a few weeks!

Baking - two ways

2010-06-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

I swear we are having August heat here in NY in June, but maybe my Midwestern husband's sensibilities have finally meshed with mine - I used to love the summer heat now all I want is a nice cold apartment and a day that's just warm enough to wear a t-shirt and shorts. Biking is now my favorite form of transportation, has been for well over a year now, this time of year is tough with the heat - it does save me from suffering the sauna also known as the subway. I guess I can't complain too much.

Not only am I baking outside, I had to bake yesterday inside! I was instructed to make muffins, gluten free, egg free muffins. Sounds a little gross, but they are tasty in that "healthy" kind of way. My husband says that if I say they taste healthy it means that they taste gross, but I feel good after I eat these so there you go. You decide and let me know if you end up making these, and if they taste good, healthy, or just plain gross. They're made with pumpkin puree, yogurt, nuts, raisins, spices, milk, and fava/garbanzo bean flour.

Here's the recipe(!):

1 3/4 c flour (garbanzo and fava bean)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Scant 3/4 c sugar (with 2 spoonfuls of loose brown sugar as part of the 3/4c) - can use as little as 1/2c sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
15oz can pureed pumpkin (you can use as little as 1 1/4 c)
2 Tablespoons plain yogurt
1/2 c milk
1/2 c Vegetable oil
2 TB melted butter
3/4 c Thompson raisins
3/4 c sultan raisins
3/4 c pecans, chopped
3/4 c walnuts, chopped
Sprinkling of vanilla powder or extract

Makes 12 muffins
Preheat oven to 350F
Put papers in muffin tins

In a separate bowl, whisk together wet ingredients, sugar and spices
Incorporate the flour, baking powder and salt
Mix raisins and nuts, let rest for 5 minutes
Fill muffins cups until overflowing
Bake for 35mins, rotating tin halfway through baking

Macaron Hiatus

2010-06-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've been on a bit of a macaron hiatus. I swear I have a good excuse! I got married, am planning a reception for over a hundred people, and am dealing with a top floor apartment in which my kitchen is consistently 90 degrees in the summer. So, macarons aren't doing quite well in the high heat (the last batch went totally wrong) and I've decided to take a break until the summer ends. Who wants to be inside baking when it is so hot out?! Not I, well, I totally would but I become so grumpy all the pleasure gets sucked out of the experience which I suppose would make for some interesting writing, but I'm going to spare my husband the pain.

You wanna know what happened to the last two batches of macarons? The ones where I decided it was too hot to bake them for the next couple months? Here's the scene: it is two days before I am getting married, 90F or more in my apartment, and I am frantically trying to make macarons for wedding favors. Sounds like a good idea right? Wrong. I mean, they were edible, but previous batches had been far better as far as texture is concerned. Summer, I have learned, is not the time to be making these things - at least not in my apartment! The shells were a half millimeter thick, there was a 2-3 mm space between the shell and the cookie, and they were so misshapen! They were round when I piped them out but they became more and more misshapen in the heat of the apartment. At least when the batter is overmixed, you know it because they are misshapen right away!

As promised, here is a picture of the lovely little box of macarons from La Maison du Chocolate in Manhattan. That day, I also got a ton of chocolates, and a bar of chocolate. I just love their chocolate, so rich and creamy.

As for me, you don't need to see more pictures of completed macarons, though I will start doing step by step photographs of what I make soon. I get in the moment, zone out, then think when all is said and done that maybe I should have taken a picture of each step!

Prior to the wedding, I did make stuff such as the below cake: it is a Pierre Herme recipe (from when he was at Fauchon) called Passy. (Sorry the picture is a bit fuzzy.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it isn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination, and I took many liberties with the recipe: the genoise cake, the lack of giaconda, the strawberries piled high, the lack of mint strainage... I plan on making something like this again, when I do, I will post the recipe.

Recently? I made pork tamales with red chile sauce, New Mexico style, and a jicama melon salad. No pics because we ate everything!

Until next time...

A Macaron Kind of Day

2010-05-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

It has been a Macaron of a day!

What a beautiful day here in New York! I had the joy of walking around, semi-aimlessly for over three hours. I was able to head to NY Cake for a good long browse, picked up an offset spatula (how I didn't have one of those already I don't know!), a couple of 4.5cm tall ring molds, a new 9" cake pan, some pastry bags, all that good stuff! I'm very excited.

Why, you may ask? I was very bad at Kitchen Arts and Letters and got Pierre Herme's La Patisserie book.

Wow.

What a book! I dreamt of making cakes, macarons, all sorts of goodies last night. For someone who thinks she doesn't have that much of a sweet tooth, I certainly have figured out what I like best! Luckily, Pierre Herme has graciously included several recipes of his more popular macaron recipes. Though, my dreams were not lofty, they consisted of me not getting anything made. I hope that this is not a sign of times to come.

Oh yes, back to the macarons. After NY Cake, I headed with my fiance to Madeleine Patisserie for an almond croissant, coffee and of course macarons! I got the pink champagne and rose, fiance got caramel fleur de sel and pistachio/grand marnier. His were more flavorful than mine based on his reactions. Mine were... alright. The texture of the filling and the macaron shells were lovely. Fiance said that the filling of the caramel one was far too rich. Hmmm... interesting. For $2.50 apiece we should be blown away. (Sorry for the lack of pictures, we ate them before I could get the camera out!)

Later in the day we were even worse! We stopped by La Maison du Chocolat, who is supposed to have wonderful macarons. We'll see about this one! We have a box of 6 (for $15!) sitting waiting for us to demolish. I am still in shock with how much macarons cost in stores. Shock. Anyway, will report on how they were, with pictures, soon!

Speaking of Day Dreaming...

2010-05-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

That dessert? Is a ginormous macaron. It is the Ispahan flavor (rose, litchee and raspberry.) Pierre Herme makes big ones too. Mmmmm... Maybe I'll get super ambitious and make it next week.

well... shoot

2010-05-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Another weekend, two batches of macarons later and I am still befuddled with hollow shells! The first batch I made was a complete disaster. I overmixed the batter and thought "I'm overmixing this" while mixing... I should have listened to myself! What a waste. I baked them anyway, but they are not worthy.

The second batch was straight up vanilla, recipe from this book. It wasn't any different than what I had done before, though it is written in French and I do not speak French! Translating elements of the recipe/instructions was interesting. I baked the macarons at 150C for about 13 mins, let them cool overnight. I also let them rest on the counter for about an hour before baking. The thing is, my macarons are very sticky in the middle, have that hollow space and I feel like something isn't right.

Look at the photo of what a macaron ideally looks like : click here

Mine don't look like that at all.

My gut says it is my oven and that I will have no perfect macarons because I am working with a cheapo rental apartment "Magic Chef." On the other hand, I am convinced I will be able to get this sorted with some tinkering. I put my handy dandy electric probe thermometer in the oven to see what was going on during the baking process and it was... interesting.

I set the oven to 150C
Prior to placing sheets in oven: 165C
Open door a crack, let cool to 150C
Closed door, let temp settle at 150C
Put sheet pans in at 150C
Closed door quickly, set timer for 13mins
Temp dropped to 110C!
Oven clicked on then slowly raised to 134C for about 5 mins
Oven finally reached 150C at the 13 min mark
My oven thermometer (one of those hanging, coil ones) said the oven temperature was at 350F not 300F!

W.E.I.R.D.

If this is the case, that my digital thermometer is correct, I am so screwed. What will I be able to do to remedy this situation? I am going to have to play around with the temperature settings to see if I can find the dial's sweet spot.

My guess is that the oven is at the right temperature when I put the cookies in, but because the temperature falls so fast and then takes forever to recover that my cookies are not baking properly. With other baked items it isn't as important because I can adjust timing, etc. but because the macarons are so delicate everything affects them.

Perhaps the Italian Meringue method may be better suited since it is sturdier. But then, why would the chocolate macarons come out so well? Hmmm...

They aren't macarons but...

2010-05-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

... it is something!

Since my bridal shower was last weekend, I was blessed with a plethora of gifts from friends and family. This week, we celebrated by using our new wine glasses, placemats, wine carafe, and plates by making a nicer dinner. Jason made venison with onions and herbs, I made fiddlehead ferns, polenta with morels, and then a saute of bluefoot, trumpet and oyster mushrooms. Then, we had some of the leftover cake from the shower (the vanilla cake with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream) with some blackberries.

We're bad, we eat at the coffee table instead of the dinner table! Don't mind the toilet in the background, we live in a tiny apartment. Next time I'll remember to close the door!

Hoping to make macarons this weekend, we'll see!

A week's lack of macaron making...

2010-05-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

Lo, I have not made a macaron in over a week, and I am starting to feel withdrawal - maybe I'm going through sugar withdrawal. Anyway, I stopped by Bouchon Bakery (again) for a macaron. Just to make sure, I don't know what I needed reassuring about but it was something. Perhaps it was to reassure me that macarons are going to be my dessert. I had a mango lassi macaron, it was just like a mango lassi but in macaron form. I didn't get much almond again, to each their own. The buttercream was to die for. It was so good. Nothing like a good buttercream!

Speaking of good buttercream, I had a lovely surprise bridal shower yesterday. "Oh geez" was my reaction. The cake was a lovely vanilla flavor with a lemon custard between the two layers and a vanilla buttercream on the outside. It was fantastic. I always say I'm not one for desserts, but I think I should preface it with any old dessert. It a dessert is well made, good ingredients, lots of love, I'm all for it. Bernard and Sarah know what they are doing! Yummy cake, yummy food, and the wonderful company of friends and family.

Hopefully I'll get around do making more macarons this week, I have a container of egg whites ready to go!

Day Dreaming

2010-04-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, I've been daydreaming of going here on my honeymoon. That's right. I have been daydreaming about taking a macaron making/baking class in Paris on my honeymoon, without my husband. Ideally this would happen mid-March this way we could be in Paris for Macaron Day! Who wouldn't want to get a bunch of macarons for one Euro? I suppose people who don't like macarons, but I don't know those people...

While I would not learn how to make this dessert at the Stage, I would learn all the ins and outs of macaron making according to Pierre Herme. I think I get a little certificate too.

What will my husband be doing? He wants to take a charcuterie class! What a combination we are...

So sweet... Caramel Macarons

2010-04-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Not only are these Bouchon Bakery Caramel Macarons so sweet, my fiance was kind enough to say that my macarons are prettier! They are not, but I appreciate the sentiment anyway.

Oh geez. This is the first Thomas Keller food we've ever had (that we haven't made ourselves that is.) The macaron is really good. My fiance was saying "oh, I could eat seven of these!" He didn't gush like that about mine... hmpf.

I thought it was a tad too sweet, but perhaps it is the strong caramel flavor which I am not used to? I mean, if someone brought one, I most certainly would not turn it down!

Having the macaron made me realize I have indeed been overbaking mine, now I know for sure! Can't wait to make the next batch!

2010-04-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

First things first, I had a fabulous meal at Dressler in Brooklyn. I am on cloud nine, not only have I not been out to a restaurant with fantastic food since the end of December (!) due to all of my wedding planning, but because we had dinner with awesome friends. If this post seems a bit scattered, it is because I am still floating from dinner last night. If you are in, near, visiting NYC - go to Dressler. Just do it, you won't be sorry.

On to the macarons!

A little back history for this week's macaron-expedition: last night's dinner was at Dressler, we didn't think it was going to work out because the babysitter bailed on our friends. As luck would have it, they found another babysitter at the last hour so we got to go to Dressler! I thought we were having dinner at our friend's place -a very good trade for Dressler I might add as they are both wonderful cooks, and one of them is a French chef. I figured we would bring dessert and decided I'd be completely insane and make macarons on a Friday night, with no advanced planning. Smart, very smart.

I got home from work at 7.40pm on Friday, started grinding my almonds and confectioner's sugar together, whipped up some egg whites (pasteurized, carton-ed, organic egg whites), and got to work on the chocolate macarons.

Once those were piped and on sheet pans resting, I started working on the vanilla macarons. I had some vanilla castor sugar from a custard I made a couple months ago, so used that with the regular castor sugar for the meringue (a 1:1 ratio.) That was all the vanilla I used for the macaron shells, I also used 4 drops of yellow coloring - still no gel coloring- just to bump up the natural color the batter was to begin with. Everything went smoothly but I piped them way too small, I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't. I had a long day at work, so that's my excuse for today. Seriously, I knew I was making them too small, and well, they turned out crunchy. C'est la vie. Next time, I will do better. (Note: I was told that the smaller sized, one bite, macarons are quite common in France. Ha! I guess, unknowingly, I didn't do that terribly after all...)

Then, because I am totally insane, I made a batch of pistachio macarons. I love pistachio. I think it has something to do with my dad, I remember getting pistachio ice cream as a kid and eating it with him. I love the color of pistachios, the texture. They and almonds are on the top of my nut list. I used freshly ground pistachios. No food coloring, the super saturated colors that so many people are doing now freak me out. I think the color should reference the flavor, nothing more. Subdued is what I am going for, because I want you to remember the taste and texture of the macaron not the color! I might change my mind about all of this when I get better food coloring, but you never know.

I totally need to figure out my oven, the temperature swings too much, I am getting slight browning. ERRRRR. I vow to get this kink worked out.

Anyway, I had some ganache leftover from last week, just enough to fill the chocolate ones! Then I made the French buttercream with vanilla extract, and filled the pistachio and vanilla macarons. I didn't fill the macarons enough this time, I have tons of buttercream left. More filling next time.

Friday night's excursion yielded a lot of next times:

1. figure out oven temperature settings

2. figure out oven timing to coincide with the temperature settings

3. figure out why there is a huge gap between the shell and the cookie (it has something to do with the ratio of almonds to sugar to egg - recipe adjustment!)

4. improve piping skills for shape/size consistency, I am so not going to stencil circles on parchment paper - no way - I need to learn the hard way.

5. improve cookie to filling ratio

Next time, I hope to work on all of these, but I will be happy with the oven and cookie shell problem solving...

Buttercream:

3 egg yolks plus one egg white

2 sticks/ .5 lb butter - I used Plugra brand - unsalted

2/3 c granulated sugar - I used the castor sugar since it dissolves so fast

3 TB water

1TB vanilla extract

Cream butter in stand mixer
Whisk eggs together in a separate heat-proof bowl (I used my trusty pyrex bowl)
Combine sugar and water in a small sauce pan, bring to 230F-238F (I brought mine to 230F) - I did not stir once the sugar was dissolved in the water
Drizzle sugar syrup into eggs while whisking
Place bowl of egg-sugar mixture over a pan of water that is not quite simmering and, using a hand mixer or whisk, whip until mixture doubles in size and obtains a light yellow color (4-5mins)
Once time is up from whipping, place bowl in a larger bowl of ice water to cool to a tepid temperature - keep whipping - the mixture should ribbon, then fall slowly back into mixture.
Very slowly, once spoonful at a time, blend the butter and egg together
Once all of the egg is creamed into the butter, add 1TB of vanilla extract, blend thoroughly.
At this point, if your buttercream separates, you may add 1-2TB of softened butter to the mix - but, I placed a bowl of ice under the bowl of my stand mixer to keep everything cool and that worked out fine for me!
Place desired amount into pastry bag with a small tip, and fill those macarons! Put the rest in a container in the fridge for a few days, or freeze for a few months. I wish I could freeze it, but I don't have enough room in my freezer! Sigh, I'll just have to make more macarons!
Refrigerate overnight, they are truly better the next day, up to four days.

The unfilled shells can be frozen and then thawed in the fridge, or stored unfilled in a tightly fitting contain for up to one week. Definitely store them on their sides once filled, otherwise your beautiful shells will get crushed.

My biggest gripe is the space between the shell and the cookie, there are several reasons for this and I am going to try to figure out which one it is!

That's it for today!

Next up: Bouchon's vanilla macarons (I spent the other part of today transcribing Thomas Keller's recipe into grams!)

Postscript: I am not going to post step by step instructions anymore. If the recipe varies from the step by step instructions previously posted, I will make notes regarding those changes. I mean, who needs to read the same steps over and over again? If I do something else that I feel would be a nice addition to the blog, I will of course post full instructions.

2010-04-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

A quick report:

Stopped by Dean and Deluca to pick up stuff for work, and noticed they had Mad Mac macarons. $2 a piece! (In case you couldn't tell, I was miffed by the price.) They are teeny tiny macarons, but I had to try one since I haven't had a Mad Mac one yet. I got the pistachio (since that is next on my list) and was supremely disappointed. It was so sugary sweet you couldn't taste the pistachio. I got a hint of almond but couldn't figure out if it was from the macaron shell or from the filling. Then I tasted the filling on its own and was even more disappointed, it didn't taste like anything. Or, if it did, I didn't pick up on it because my taste buds were numbed by the sugary-ness of the shell. The shell itself was dry. It wasn't slightly chewy or anything. Not that I'm an expert, but I would most certainly not get one from Mad Mac again. Now, had that $2 macaron yielded a smile, I would have been more than happy to hand over $2 again. Bummer it didn't turn out that way.

Next on the list of shops to try a macaron at: Bouchon Bakery. Haven't heard great things about the macarons there, but I'm going to try anyway because I have the utmost respect for Thomas Keller, and have yet to make a recipe of his that didn't work out on the first try. Funny I didn't get one at La Maison du Chocolat when I was there last week...

Tonight I am going to try, try, try to make pistachio and violet macarons (I totally am a glutton for punishment, I'll be cooking quite a bit at work today, then I'm going home to make two batches of macarons?!) I've got to! I'm going to a dinner tomorrow and I can't make them tomorrow morning! They wouldn't be the same. My bets are that if I do actually make the macarons tonight, I'll be crawling into bed around 1am, my head spinning from all of the sugary, almondy goodness.

Hopefully will have good news, and pictures, tomorrow or Sunday! Wish me luck!

Chocolate and Violet Macarons

2010-04-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

I never thought I "liked" baking until friends gave me a cookie jar and a silpat sheet for a housewarming present a few months ago. Apparently, I do lots of baking. What I don't do is cakes and bread, aside from the occasional angel food cake and chapati, so I never thought my cookies, pies, tarts, macarons were really baking. I've given in, I like baking almost as much as I like cooking...

I don't know what made me decide to start making macarons. I've never been to Paris, never had the legendary Laduree macarons, or anything like that. The only proper macaron I've ever had was at La Goulue here in NYC. After our meal, they sent out some cookies and macarons. I devoured every one of those macarons, with the most memorable being the violet and rose. For the past year I've been saying I wanted to make macarons, and for whatever reason last week was the start of a new obsession/project. I like my projects, silverpoint, embroidery, pies, I could go on and on. I don't plan on making macarons every week, I can't handle all that sugar! But, I do plan on posting whenever I make something really tasty.

My first try, last week, was, well, kinda bad. I mean, they tasted good and all but they didn't look right. I used the Italian meringue method for the first try, and the shells were very crunchy, no feet, very wet inside, and nothing like the above pictures. I didn't even photograph them because they weren't pretty enough, or "real" macarons for that matter. Don't get me wrong, I ate every single one of them.

So, this time, the French meringue method (which I now believe to be so much easier and will be my go to method from now on until I get sick of using the same old method and have to make my life infinitely more difficult, then I will try the Italian meringue method again.) Not too shabby for my second and third try at macarons.

I used two different recipes, the violet/berry macaron one and the chocolate one. I must admit, I swiped Christophe Morel's chocolate macaron recipe from his YouTube video so if you want that, just look it up. I don't want to completely plagiarize his recipe! However, the video is great even if you don't speak French-Canadian, just watching the method is all I needed to figure out what I did wrong the first try, that and talking to my chef-sister!

The violet recipe is tasty, not as violety as I would have liked, much more sugary than the chocolate macarons, and I couldn't find violet essence in my shopping this week, so resorted to crushed candied violet petals instead. The raspberry-strawberry-cassis buttercream filling was very tasty, but I needed to adjust my "room temperature" butter a bit - room temp. in my apartment is 62F, so I needed to warm up the butter a little more to prevent those ugly little chunks from forming. Live and learn.

Here's what I did for the violet-berry macarons, everything was pre-measured so all I had to do was add into appropriate bowls when necessary.

Macaron list of ingredients: (I am doing everything via weight for the macarons, but 1 egg white is approximately 30 grams in weight.)

90g egg whites
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
200 g powdered sugar (I used Domino)
110 g blanched whole almonds
one pinch of candied violet petals
30g castor sugar
1 TB crushed candied violet petals
purple food coloring

5 days before:
Separate 90 grams egg whites, place in fridge in a tightly covered container.

1 day before:
Remove whites from fridge, place in a cool, dry, dark place in kitchen.

Day of (can also be done day before):
Take almonds, powdered sugar and pinch of candied violet petals and run through food processor until a fine powder is achieved, sift through fine sieve, discard chunks of almond left behind (I saved mine and plan on using them in oatmeal or something), set sugar/almond mixture aside.

Day of:
Place eggs and lemon juice in your mixer, attach the whisk, and whip for about 30 seconds until foam begins to form. At this point add 10g of castor sugar (just take regular granulated sugar and run through food processor for 1-2 minutes.) Let whip for about 30 more seconds, add another 10g castor sugar, run for 30 seconds then add 10g castor sugar (at this point you will have added a total of 30g castor sugar.)

Turn mixer onto highest speed, let whip for 5 minutes. Seriously, 5 minutes.

When your five minutes are up, remove bowl from mixer, bang out the egg white foam from the whisk attachment and very gently fold your dry ingredients into the egg whites. Do this in thirds to maintain the egg white structure, it won't look like the two sets of ingredients will incorporate but they will. About halfway through folding the dry ingredients into the egg whites, I added about 8 drops of neon purple food coloring. (I don't have powdered or gel food coloring yet!) When your ingredients are folded together, take your rubber spatula, starting at the bottom of the bowl, fold in a semi-spiral motion until your mixture obtains a sheen and is smooth looking. (If you watch that Morel youtube video, you'll get a better lesson in "macaronnage".)

Once you obtain the proper texture from mixing, fill a pastry bag fitted with a 3/8" round/plain tip. Pipe small rounds onto a silpat or parchment paper lined sheetpan. Use the best sheet pans you have. (Note: I had a really awful time removing the macarons from the silpat sheets, so will stick with parchment paper until I can get the silpat working just right.) The rounds should be about 1.5" in diameter, leave about 3/4" between each round of macaron. They spread.

Once your sheet has been piped, lift the sheet up, bang the underside with the palm of your hand to flatten the tops out. Lightly sprinkle with your crushed violet petals, then set aside for about 12 minutes.

At this point, warm your oven to 300F. I'm lucky, I have an oven that doesn't care if I set the dial to 300F, the temperature is going to swing between 300F and 350F no matter what I do - I even have a giant chunk of slate in the bottom of my oven to even out the temperature! It is better with the rock in there, but not great. So, after the oven is preheated, I prop a wooden spoon handle in the door to proved airflow. Okay, so you are ready to bake! Place your sheet pans in the oven, close/prop the door shut and set your timer for 20 minutes.

Once your 20 minutes are up, the macarons should have feet and no cracks on the surface. If they do not have feet and have cracks, you did not mix your batter correctly.

Let the cookies cool just long enough for you to be able to handle them, for me it is about 1 minute. For you, it might be 2 or 3 minutes. Ever so gently, peel the macarons off of the paper. If they do not want to come off, you can try pouring some water under the parchment paper to release the macarons from the paper. I had to do this with a few of the chocolate ones, I think because I let them cool too much. That's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

I placed them on a cold cookie sheet (room temp, for my kitchen) and let them cool.

Now the buttercream... I had some strawberry buttercream leftover from last week's fiasco, so I used that (at room tempurature) but I added 1/4c powdered rasperries (what? no weight? sorry...) and 2TB creme de cassis to the mix. I mixed it on high speed for 5 minutes. Until it was smooth.

Then, I filled a pastry bag with the buttercream and piped it onto the cooled macaron shells. When you sandwich the shells together, the filling should just come to the edge of the shell, but not over. If it went over, you'll have a mess on your hands when you go to eat it. I placed the shells in a single layer in a container in the fridge, then let them set for 24 hrs. Frankly, I ate a bunch before putting them in the fridge. When I was ready to eat them, I took the container of of the fridge and let it set on the counter to warm for 30 minutes, covered.

Ooooh! SO tasty! Why don't they have tastovision, or smellovision yet?

Next up? Who knows! Pistachio?