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Successful macarons!!!!!!!
Were they perfect? As you can tell, no, no they were not. But they were legit macarons, with feet and everything! I'm so excited.
I was planning to try making macarons again this weekend, but was feeling kind of overwhelmed by the idea after perusing my macaron cookbooks. It's a pretty "simple" process, but everything has to go right at every stage, and I wasn't sure I was up for the kind of energy that would take. (Last night, a coworker had a 40th birthday party at a roller rink. I haven't put on roller skates since I was, I don't know, six. I was never very good at it, but when I was little I still enjoyed it. As an adult, it was scary! I couldn't balance right, and felt out of control most of the time. I only took one lap around the rink, and to and from the bar/food area, and my back today is KILLING me. All the other roller skaters made it look so easy! Anyway, I did have a bottle of cider that was really delicious. It barely tasted alcoholic. I think I'll keep it around the house! It was Angry Orchard... I don't know which flavor I had, but I would assume the regular Crisp Apple.)
I fell asleep on the couch after perusing the macaron books, with Jaime on top of me. I woke to my mom watching Kids Baking Championship on Food Network, which was re-airing the macaron episode! I took that as a sign.
The recipe I used was the French macaron recipe from I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita. I liked the recipe because it did not require many different kinds of sugars (just powdered and granulated, whereas other macaron recipes I've seen also require superfine), it was most similar to what I'd tried before so I had familiarity with it, and it was also most similar to what the kids made on the show. She also shares a recipe that uses Italian meringue, but I've tried that method and it seems unnecessarily fussy to me, what with having to make a hot syrup and what not.
I was a little nervous because I wasn't using really fine almond flour -- I was using the kind from Trader Joe's, which seems a little coarser than Bob's Red Mill. However, I'd seen a blog post from a seasoned macaron maker about tests she did with both, and how they turned out basically the same, only TJ's almond flour is about a third the cost of Bob's. The TJ flour does have colored flecks of almond in it, though, so if you want a really smooth macaron without that, you'd def have to use a different brand that is with blanched almonds.
My main concern was the fact that the powdered sugar I was using, also from TJ's, had starch in it. It was tapioca starch instead of corn starch, which Ogita warns away from, but they behave in the same way, so I didn't think I was "safe." However, I didn't have any other kind of powdered sugar, and moreover I don't know of ANY powdered sugar that doesn't have some kind of starch in it. The only thing I'd be able to do, if that were an issue, would be to make my own powdered sugar, which would be yet another step in a challenging process, or go hunting for it in specialty markets/online. So I decided to forge ahead, and if I failed again, so be it.
I think the biggest difference between this time and last time was that I had a better idea of what the batter was supposed to be like. Ogita's description and accompanying photographs are fairly clear, so I noticed a definite difference in my batter. Previously, it wasn't clear to me WHEN the batter was done. I'd always read that macaron batter was extremely delicate, that you had to really fold in your dry ingredients so as not to deflate the meringue. And the winning batter of the Kids Baking Championship seemed to bear that out; Matthew's batter was so thick that he could hold the bowl upside down over his head and it would stay suspended in the bowl. I can't remember now exactly when he did that; I thought it was when the batter was finished. However, the only time my mixture was that thick was when the egg whites were in glossy, stiff peaks. Once I added the dry ingredients, and went through the steps that Ogita describes to incorporate them, my batter was pretty runny. BUT it looked/felt just like what she described, so I didn't feel too alarmed.
One of the parts that didn't go well was the coloring. I bet you can't tell, but the macarons were supposed to be purple. >.> Ogita did mention that a lot of food coloring would be required, because they also lighten up while baking, but she doesn't mention a) exactly how much coloring to use; or b) exactly when to add it to the batter. I used 3 drops of red and 3 drops of blue, and added it just after adding the granulated sugar. I could tell then that the color was extremely light, but I didn't dare use more. I'd also heard/read from several sources that macaron batter was so temperamental that adding too much liquid food coloring could alter and ruin your batter.
I had to wait more than an hour for the macarons to be dry enough to bake... even then, some of them were not perfectly dry to the point where my finger came away clean when touching them. At my old house this wouldn't have been a problem, as it was much draftier there! I did turn them midway through to encourage even baking. I was sooooooooooo excited when I turned on the oven light and saw the feet forming perfectly. SO EXCITED. You don't even know.
As I've written about before, I've had trouble with my oven... when I first moved in, it was too low in temp; now it might be slightly too high. I know this because things brown more quickly than they should, while not being cooked enough inside. The same thing happened with the macarons... I baked them for 16 1/2 minutes and they were slightly browned on top. However, once they cooled, some of them, especially the ones in the middle, stuck to the parchment, which meant they were not cooked enough. Yet if I'd kept them in there longer, they would have been way too brown on top. I either need to re-adjust my oven temp, or do what Ogita suggests if this very scenario occurs: Cover the macarons with tin foil and bake 2-3 min more. Only I would probably have to do that at the 13-14 min mark, to prevent any browning on top from occurring at all.
Some of the macarons also had pointy tops. I'm not sure what causes those or what I can do to prevent them. Some of them went down on their own while drying; others just stayed. It definitely looks better without them, and is easier to stack also, but in terms of everything that can go wrong with macarons, it's a comparatively minor issue.
As for the filling -- ah, the filling! I had told myself not to waste my time with making the filling until the macarons were out of the oven, so that I could be sure that they turned out well before wasting time and ingredients on a filling, but apparently some part of me must have felt very confident because I made it anyway. The frustrating thing was that I could not find a recipe in my macaron books for a plain hazelnut filling, and I had purchased hazelnuts in preparation to make that kind of filling. Ogita didn't even have one, and the others were hazelnut combinations with things I didn't have, like chestnut. So I was like eff it! And just came up with my own combination. I decided to make Buttercream #2 in Ogita's book, because it uses egg yolks instead of a whole egg... which, why NOT do that? You're already using the egg whites in the macaron batter, so you have extra yolks lying around anyway! For Buttercream #1 she gives a bunch of flavor additive ideas, and I'm not sure why those are only suggested for the #1 buttercream. I figured #2 couldn't be THAT different. I saw her suggestion to make a cherry flavor by adding kirsch (a cherry brandy), which I happened to have on hand (last time I used it was in a cheese fondue). I also ground some salted, roasted pecans with my mortar and pestle, and came up with a cherry pecan buttercream. And you know what? It was frickin' DELICIOUS. I swear, watching Chopped! is really making me a better home cook by making me think of ingredients in weird but cool ways. I made the buttercream by hand rather than an electric mixer as Ogita does. It was easy, actually, because there wasn't a massive amount of it. Also! I should mention that the recipe calls for 2 yolks, but I had 3 from the macaron batter, so I just used all of them. I figured the only difference it would make in a buttercream would be to thicken it up even more and more easily, so why not. In fact, the custard part came together extremely quickly because there was so much yolk. :D In the summertime, the yolks might be better used in an ice cream, in which case Buttercream #1 it is.
I definitely need to work on piping a consistent amount of filling into each macaron. Some seemed to have too much; others too little. I couldn't find my pastry bag, so I used Ziploc bags with the widest round tip I had, but I think the opening was still too narrow, which might have contributed to the peaks when piping the macaron batter. With the buttercream I didn't use a tip at all; I just snipped the corner off the bag and piped directly from that. I also learned that I shouldn't pipe in a swirl to fill out the macaron outline; the best way to get the flat-top look was to just start at the center and stay there while squeezing out batter, and let the batter spread itself out. And speaking of the outline... I didn't try to do that by eye (I really suck at eyeballing measurements) or pencil in circles on the parchment ahead of time. I bought this silicone baking mat that came pre-printed with macaron outlines, and was thrilled with the results. The circles were the perfect macaron size. I placed a sheet of parchment over it, and the parchment is pretty see through, so the mat was a great template. Maybe one day I'll try using the mat itself to bake on, but this time, I didn't want to risk it. Parchment paper is tried and true for baked goods (and I wouldn't have to clean the mat afterward). You can see that even with using a template, my macarons were not consistently the same size. >< I hope I get better at that kind of thing when I have more practice under my belt.
Anyway, after allllllllllllll that, I had some pretty good macarons as a result. Looks wise, they could definitely be better, but I'll work on that. The texture and taste were perfect! Crisp shell on the outside, with a chewy, inside. The cherry pecan buttercream was a great complement to the almond flavor of the shells. Tasting little bits of the buttercream, I was surprised that you couldn't taste any alcohol at all; that changed when eating an entire cookie. :)) You can definitely feel the spiciness of the brandy when you take a big bite of macaron, so it's not appropriate for kids, lol.
Were they perfect? As you can tell, no, no they were not. But they were legit macarons, with feet and everything! I'm so excited.
I was planning to try making macarons again this weekend, but was feeling kind of overwhelmed by the idea after perusing my macaron cookbooks. It's a pretty "simple" process, but everything has to go right at every stage, and I wasn't sure I was up for the kind of energy that would take. (Last night, a coworker had a 40th birthday party at a roller rink. I haven't put on roller skates since I was, I don't know, six. I was never very good at it, but when I was little I still enjoyed it. As an adult, it was scary! I couldn't balance right, and felt out of control most of the time. I only took one lap around the rink, and to and from the bar/food area, and my back today is KILLING me. All the other roller skaters made it look so easy! Anyway, I did have a bottle of cider that was really delicious. It barely tasted alcoholic. I think I'll keep it around the house! It was Angry Orchard... I don't know which flavor I had, but I would assume the regular Crisp Apple.)
I fell asleep on the couch after perusing the macaron books, with Jaime on top of me. I woke to my mom watching Kids Baking Championship on Food Network, which was re-airing the macaron episode! I took that as a sign.
The recipe I used was the French macaron recipe from I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita. I liked the recipe because it did not require many different kinds of sugars (just powdered and granulated, whereas other macaron recipes I've seen also require superfine), it was most similar to what I'd tried before so I had familiarity with it, and it was also most similar to what the kids made on the show. She also shares a recipe that uses Italian meringue, but I've tried that method and it seems unnecessarily fussy to me, what with having to make a hot syrup and what not.
I was a little nervous because I wasn't using really fine almond flour -- I was using the kind from Trader Joe's, which seems a little coarser than Bob's Red Mill. However, I'd seen a blog post from a seasoned macaron maker about tests she did with both, and how they turned out basically the same, only TJ's almond flour is about a third the cost of Bob's. The TJ flour does have colored flecks of almond in it, though, so if you want a really smooth macaron without that, you'd def have to use a different brand that is with blanched almonds.
My main concern was the fact that the powdered sugar I was using, also from TJ's, had starch in it. It was tapioca starch instead of corn starch, which Ogita warns away from, but they behave in the same way, so I didn't think I was "safe." However, I didn't have any other kind of powdered sugar, and moreover I don't know of ANY powdered sugar that doesn't have some kind of starch in it. The only thing I'd be able to do, if that were an issue, would be to make my own powdered sugar, which would be yet another step in a challenging process, or go hunting for it in specialty markets/online. So I decided to forge ahead, and if I failed again, so be it.
I think the biggest difference between this time and last time was that I had a better idea of what the batter was supposed to be like. Ogita's description and accompanying photographs are fairly clear, so I noticed a definite difference in my batter. Previously, it wasn't clear to me WHEN the batter was done. I'd always read that macaron batter was extremely delicate, that you had to really fold in your dry ingredients so as not to deflate the meringue. And the winning batter of the Kids Baking Championship seemed to bear that out; Matthew's batter was so thick that he could hold the bowl upside down over his head and it would stay suspended in the bowl. I can't remember now exactly when he did that; I thought it was when the batter was finished. However, the only time my mixture was that thick was when the egg whites were in glossy, stiff peaks. Once I added the dry ingredients, and went through the steps that Ogita describes to incorporate them, my batter was pretty runny. BUT it looked/felt just like what she described, so I didn't feel too alarmed.
One of the parts that didn't go well was the coloring. I bet you can't tell, but the macarons were supposed to be purple. >.> Ogita did mention that a lot of food coloring would be required, because they also lighten up while baking, but she doesn't mention a) exactly how much coloring to use; or b) exactly when to add it to the batter. I used 3 drops of red and 3 drops of blue, and added it just after adding the granulated sugar. I could tell then that the color was extremely light, but I didn't dare use more. I'd also heard/read from several sources that macaron batter was so temperamental that adding too much liquid food coloring could alter and ruin your batter.
I had to wait more than an hour for the macarons to be dry enough to bake... even then, some of them were not perfectly dry to the point where my finger came away clean when touching them. At my old house this wouldn't have been a problem, as it was much draftier there! I did turn them midway through to encourage even baking. I was sooooooooooo excited when I turned on the oven light and saw the feet forming perfectly. SO EXCITED. You don't even know.
As I've written about before, I've had trouble with my oven... when I first moved in, it was too low in temp; now it might be slightly too high. I know this because things brown more quickly than they should, while not being cooked enough inside. The same thing happened with the macarons... I baked them for 16 1/2 minutes and they were slightly browned on top. However, once they cooled, some of them, especially the ones in the middle, stuck to the parchment, which meant they were not cooked enough. Yet if I'd kept them in there longer, they would have been way too brown on top. I either need to re-adjust my oven temp, or do what Ogita suggests if this very scenario occurs: Cover the macarons with tin foil and bake 2-3 min more. Only I would probably have to do that at the 13-14 min mark, to prevent any browning on top from occurring at all.
Some of the macarons also had pointy tops. I'm not sure what causes those or what I can do to prevent them. Some of them went down on their own while drying; others just stayed. It definitely looks better without them, and is easier to stack also, but in terms of everything that can go wrong with macarons, it's a comparatively minor issue.
As for the filling -- ah, the filling! I had told myself not to waste my time with making the filling until the macarons were out of the oven, so that I could be sure that they turned out well before wasting time and ingredients on a filling, but apparently some part of me must have felt very confident because I made it anyway. The frustrating thing was that I could not find a recipe in my macaron books for a plain hazelnut filling, and I had purchased hazelnuts in preparation to make that kind of filling. Ogita didn't even have one, and the others were hazelnut combinations with things I didn't have, like chestnut. So I was like eff it! And just came up with my own combination. I decided to make Buttercream #2 in Ogita's book, because it uses egg yolks instead of a whole egg... which, why NOT do that? You're already using the egg whites in the macaron batter, so you have extra yolks lying around anyway! For Buttercream #1 she gives a bunch of flavor additive ideas, and I'm not sure why those are only suggested for the #1 buttercream. I figured #2 couldn't be THAT different. I saw her suggestion to make a cherry flavor by adding kirsch (a cherry brandy), which I happened to have on hand (last time I used it was in a cheese fondue). I also ground some salted, roasted pecans with my mortar and pestle, and came up with a cherry pecan buttercream. And you know what? It was frickin' DELICIOUS. I swear, watching Chopped! is really making me a better home cook by making me think of ingredients in weird but cool ways. I made the buttercream by hand rather than an electric mixer as Ogita does. It was easy, actually, because there wasn't a massive amount of it. Also! I should mention that the recipe calls for 2 yolks, but I had 3 from the macaron batter, so I just used all of them. I figured the only difference it would make in a buttercream would be to thicken it up even more and more easily, so why not. In fact, the custard part came together extremely quickly because there was so much yolk. :D In the summertime, the yolks might be better used in an ice cream, in which case Buttercream #1 it is.
I definitely need to work on piping a consistent amount of filling into each macaron. Some seemed to have too much; others too little. I couldn't find my pastry bag, so I used Ziploc bags with the widest round tip I had, but I think the opening was still too narrow, which might have contributed to the peaks when piping the macaron batter. With the buttercream I didn't use a tip at all; I just snipped the corner off the bag and piped directly from that. I also learned that I shouldn't pipe in a swirl to fill out the macaron outline; the best way to get the flat-top look was to just start at the center and stay there while squeezing out batter, and let the batter spread itself out. And speaking of the outline... I didn't try to do that by eye (I really suck at eyeballing measurements) or pencil in circles on the parchment ahead of time. I bought this silicone baking mat that came pre-printed with macaron outlines, and was thrilled with the results. The circles were the perfect macaron size. I placed a sheet of parchment over it, and the parchment is pretty see through, so the mat was a great template. Maybe one day I'll try using the mat itself to bake on, but this time, I didn't want to risk it. Parchment paper is tried and true for baked goods (and I wouldn't have to clean the mat afterward). You can see that even with using a template, my macarons were not consistently the same size. >< I hope I get better at that kind of thing when I have more practice under my belt.
Anyway, after allllllllllllll that, I had some pretty good macarons as a result. Looks wise, they could definitely be better, but I'll work on that. The texture and taste were perfect! Crisp shell on the outside, with a chewy, inside. The cherry pecan buttercream was a great complement to the almond flavor of the shells. Tasting little bits of the buttercream, I was surprised that you couldn't taste any alcohol at all; that changed when eating an entire cookie. :)) You can definitely feel the spiciness of the brandy when you take a big bite of macaron, so it's not appropriate for kids, lol.
