Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives

The spring and summer of ‘08 was when it all started.  I was a newbie feeling my way around the blogosphere and I kept encountering these colorful, little rounds of sandwich cookies with feet.  OK, I knew what they were, but I was fascinated by the popularity of these sweeties, and also quite fascinated with the myriad of discussions pertaining to these babies and the challenges that came with executing them perfectly.  Smooth, even shells and FEET were apparently crucial to achieving the ultimate beauty of a French macaroon aka macaron, and people seemed to tear their hair out over it.  Soon, I was to become one of those people.

Now, I know summer isn’t the best time to tackle macarons, because I spent two months or more, on and off, trying to execute these darling, little cookies, and come summer, the humidity left me with flat-chested bitches with lopsided feet (One thing I must admit, I always got feet, no matter how ugly they were).  My kitchen was strewn with baking sheet after baking sheet, different colored little mounds of drying macaron batter, along with failed attempt after attempt, containers of aging egg whites lined up like soldiers, and streaks of tant pour tant (the finely ground amalgamation of almond meal/flour and confectioner’s sugar) across the floor, marred by perfect kitty paw prints.  I had egg white in my hair, my fingers were every color of the rainbow, and disposable pastry bags were the main component of my garbage can.  After that fiasco, I thought to myself, “NEVER AGAIN..these are a major pain in the ass!!  I’ll just buy them, and kudos to those bloggers who mastered them, because dammmn, they are mega-bitchy cookies – cookies in a permanent state of PMS!”  You can see some of my VERY mediocre results (and bad photos) starting HERE.  I’m only sending you there because of the cool flavors. ;D

Well, well, well..wouldn’t you know it, this month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge just so happened to be macarons.  Now I had no choice, I had to do lunch with the bitch…and dinner, and breakfast and..umm, well, she had to live wth me for a while..even though she left one hell of a mess the last time she stayed over.  ARGH!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S of Baking without Fear. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.  Thanks, Ami!

I decided to start with Pierre Hermes’ famous Ispahan macaron.  Am I freakin’ crazy?  After all I went through that fateful summer, was I really going to attempt to construct the Grand Dame of macarons when there was a good chance my shells wouldn’t turn out?  Yep, because as most of you know or have realized by now..I can never keep things simple.  Well, in the case of Mizzz Ispahan, I was going to actually make it simple – hard to believe, huh?  I decided to ditch the raspberry gelee center and use raspberry jelly instead – as in the stuff in the jar.  Why not?  Does it really have to be a perfect cube of perfectly set raspberry gelee?  It tastes the same for chrissake..so that’s Lisa’s attempt at simplifying her life via taking shortcuts, STEP ONE.  STEP TWO, I do not want any rose essence, rose oil, rose water, rose anything in my baked goods.  Why, you ask?  Because rose tastes likes a baby smells.  So does lavender (scented grandma), violet and all other flower essences that many love to add to baked goods, to me anyway.  Leave the flowers for looking at, smelling, and guilty husbands, thank you – just keep them out of my mouth.  Alright, now we’re getting somewhere. 

The Ispahan in front was made using Claudia’s recipe/method.  The small ones in back, Helen’s.  Notice the difference?  Flat with bad feet, to puffed with nice feet.

Thing is, I’ve seen so many different versions of the lovely, but mighty Ispahan, that I wasn’t sure which road to take.  I decided to go with Trissa’s (of Trissalicious) Ispahan, and well, it’s written as Pierre Hermes’ recipe, so, why not?  Plus, her Ispahan looked so gorgeous, I couldn’t resist, even though I knew mine wouldn’t come close. 

Trissa’s filling is a lychee-white chocolate -rose ganache.  Others I have seen call for a rose-lychee buttercream..and yet another, a raspberry-rose buttercream.  Well, WHICH IS IT?  I didn’t think deep thought was appropriate here, considering I needed to just focus on how I wanted to make this beeeotch of a cookie.  I love white chocolate..love lychee – subtract the damn rose scented whatever, and I’m all set.  I treated some fresh raspberries with pectin, then dried them in my oven for about 10 hours, grinding them into a powder when they were completely dry.  Perfect topping for my soon to be imperfect Ispahan.

Remember when I said I was going to make things simple for once?  Scratch that.  I ended up making several flavors, leaving most everything to the last minute.  Fooled you all, didn’t I?  Actually, I fooled myself too.  Here are the macarons I decided to make..

• Ispahan, as mentioned above
• Lemon-thyme shells with a Swiss meringue filling
• Pumpkin
• Chocolate shells with vanilla swirls, dots, stripes and squiggles on top (wasn’t quite sure if it would work, but it did!) – filled with white chocolate ganache.
• Vanilla shells with chocolate swirls, dots, stripes and squiggles on top, some filled with chocolate ganache, some filled with Nutella.
• Chocolate shells with cocoa nibs, filled with cocoa nib spiked buttercream
• 100% Vanilla.  Vanilla sugar and beans in the shells, vanilla bean buttercream filling – topped with vanilla sugar.  I’m definitely a vanilla gal to the highest degree.

Why does it seem like this entry is missing something..OH, that’s right, I haven’t whined about a problem yet.  Here was the problem….the recipe Ami provided, by Claudia Fleming, did not result in an aesthetically pleasing macaron for me.  I used her recipe for most of my Ispahans – which was a mistake, since those were the ones I really wanted to turn out lovely (Hey, what did I know?  However, I wasn’t going to make another batch of large pink shells, so that was that).  The method she uses requires oven drying, then baking in lieu of air drying then baking.  I really tried..tried everything, but I kept pulling out sheet after sheet of uneven feet, and shells that flattened in certain areas once cooled.  No idea what I did wrong, but I truly believe it’s the recipe or method, because I chose to use Helen’s (of Tartelette) recipe for all the other macaron flavors, and they turned out gorgeous!!  Smooth, silky shells, beautiful, perfect feet..chewy on the inside, delicately crispy on the outside etc.  Why didn’t I use Helen’s recipe in the Summer of ‘08?  Well, factoring in the humidity, those probably wouldn’t have turned out either, so I won’t bash myself in the head over it.

Even though I went overboard as usual and once again ended up with egg white and tant pour tant in my hair, colorful fingers, sheets of piped macarons drying all over my kitchen, this time it was well worth it.  Miss Macaron, you have an open invitation to stay at my place any time you’d like, and you can thank Helen for that.  I’m even considering doing Macaron a Month entries at this rate.  So many cool flavor combos to explore!

Macarons – Claudia Fleming
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami’s note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons.

Pumpkin Filling
2 oz room temperature cream cheese
2 oz mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup canned or fresh cooked and pureed pumpkin
2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

DIRECTIONS:
1. In a bowl, beat together both cheeses.  Add pumpkin, the sugar and spice.  Mix until smooth and uniform.  Chill for about an hour or so.

2.  Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip, then pipe onto every other macaron shell (tinted with powdered or gel orange food color) and sandwich with another macaron shell.

Major Lisa Tip:  I found I ended up with much smoother shells and more even feet when I let the tant pour tants sit out, uncovered overnight to dry, as opposed to folding it into the beaten egg whites right after grinding.  It definitely has to do with the oils in the almonds, and the moisture content.  I HIGHLY recommend preparing your tant pour tants the night before macaron making, colored or not.

Check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for some more amazing macarons by my fellow Daring Bakers!