Macaron Dominance

I'm gonna call it.  I am officially declaring myself to be the Queen of Macarons.  All others must bow down before me.  And I am certain that there is absolutely no way that I will ever be struck down for my hubris.  Ever.



X-mas (It is my policy to only refer to it as X-mas.) is a magical time.  A time of joy and cheer.  And apparently a time for cookie parties.  What is a cookie party?  A cookie party is a wondrous event at which gaggles of young to middle-aged ladies gather to exchange cookies.  Everyone brings a different type of cookie and everyone goes home with an assortment of whatever was brought.  This year, I was invited to two separate cookie parties, which required the creation of a total of 9-dozen cookies.  That is 108 cookies for those of you who unable to do maths.  And that is a shit-ton of cookies for those of you who are unable to do visualization of quantities of things.



Riding high on my previous victory over the macaron, I decided to produce two types of macarons for these events, both infused with sufficiently X-mas-y flavors.  Hmm...  The quantity of hyphens in the word 'X-mas-y' is making me rethink my commitment to the term X-mas.  Regardless, we soldier on.  The two flavors I chose were cinnamon/nutmeg and cranberry.  I modified a basic buttercream frosting recipe by adding a teaspoon of both cinnamon and nutmeg for the former and a quarter-cup of cranberry jelly for the latter.  This left me with most of a can of cranberry jelly which I ate with a spoon for dinner one night.  What?  That isn't sad at all.  I just love cranberry jelly. 



Determined not to spend $13 on a pound of almond flour again, I resorted to ordering my almond flour from Amazon for approximately $4 less per pound.  Normally, I would balk at the idea of obtaining grocery items from the faceless internet, but my frugality overrode my squeamishness.  Also, it's flour.  Unless it gets bugs it doesn't really go bad, right?



Fortunately, unlike the film Titanic, my flour-acquisition came in on time and under budget.  Also unlike the film Titanic, it's really good flour.



For the cinnamon/nutmeg flavored macarons, I used the basic macaron recipe and dusted the tops with nutmeg before throwing them in the oven.  For the cranberry ones, I added a few drops of red food coloring.  Interestingly, the addition of even a few drops of food coloring caused the batter to be significantly runnier.  Both images above and below are of pre-baked macaron shells.



This image was taken mere seconds before I accidentally jostled the cooling racks with my elbow, sending delicate macaron shells flying everywhere.  Shattered shells all over my kitchen floor.  Quelle horreur.  Luckily, I habitually over-bake and there were enough salvage-able shells left over for me to meet my party-imposed cookie quota.



Following the Bostini episode, I have become a firm adherent to the ways of the Dollar General.  A quick trip to the store yielded a cheap yet serviceable serving tray for my macarons.  Delightful!



The zillion macarons I made were both beautiful and tasty as all hell.  And elbow-jostling aside, the process was relatively without hassle.  Following this victory, I am prepared to accept the title of Queen of Macarons.  Kneel before Zod!

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

 

Just to give you an idea of how far behind I am in posting these things, Roue's birthday was in November.  I made this Devil's Food cake for Roue's birthday.  It is now February.  I am a lazy bum!  Huzzah!




The ganache for this cake was theoretically simple, as all ganaches are, but it was unique in that it featured caramel as a major player.  Also, I am terrified of caramel.

First of all, I'm always worried that I haven't got the sugar temperature exactly right and as a result my caramel will turn out too light or too dark.  Second of all, it is scary as hell when you pour cream directly onto boiling sugar and it foams up and spatters like crazy all over the place.  I have a real fear of getting burned by cooking-spatter.  Seriously, do not ever ask me to deep-fry a thing.  I will have a panic attack.



As you can see below, I got a little impatient and - as predicted - my caramel ended up far lighter than I would have liked.



Although it's not as though the color matters much when you mix it in with dark chocolate to make a ganache.




And while the ganache sets, it is time to work on ze cake.

 

If I remember correctly (And why would I?  It was like three months ago.), these layers came out very dense and fluffy but felt a bit fragile when I de-panned them.



And I do remember correctly that the ganache was disconcertingly runny.  It kind of oozed down the sides of the cake the entire time I worked with it and didn't stop oozing until it was eaten.



I sometimes get comments on the little patterns that I make in the frosting on the top of my cakes.  Really, it's as simple as running the frosting knife or spatula or whatever over the top in an arc a few times.  It is obscenely simple.  But hey, it looks pretty right?  And it tasted awesome!  Very dense and very rich but not too sweet.  I consider this one a win all around.

Oh yeah, and Roue liked it too.

Peppermint Macarons

Imbued with a feeling of triumph following my near defeat and subsequent victory over the macaron featured in my last post, I set out to try my hand at new and exciting variations on the theme.  This time around, I decided to go pink for my shells with a dark-chocolate ganache and a splash of peppermint flavor for the filling.  I even decided to try decorating the shells with a sprinkle of crushed peppermint candies.



I seem to be incapable of baking anything without encountering a HORRIBLE MISTAKE, and the candies were just one such mistake.  Being a total idiot, I forgot that peppermint candies are made of sugar and thus will melt when they get to a temperature that is sufficiently high to also cook a macaron shell.  The result:  weird.



For all subsequent batches, I decided that it would be best to go candy-less.



And it was a pretty good decision to make.  In the end, not a single one of the non-candied shells cracked and they all looked amazing.



Candy-shells on bottom, non-candy-shells on top.



For the filling, I used a ganache recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes and added a little creme de menthe to the mix.  Why?  Because I have a giant flipping bottle of creme de menthe sitting around my house and when the hell am I ever going to use creme de menthe for anything?



I need a new camera.  This one...  This one is the absolute worst.



I also need to learn to move my stupid knife block out of frame if I'm trying to capture a half-way decent image.



This time, I did take the macarons in to the office to share since I felt really bad about eating them all last time.  They went over very well with everyone there.  And please note, no cracked shells and feet all around.  I am on my way to declaring myself Queen of Macarons.

Macarons... The Beginning

A few months ago, I started paying attention to various baking blogs and I kept seeing these delicate little sandwich cookies pop up.  After reading a fair amount of the posts on the subject over at Bonbini!, I decided to try and get in on that mess.  I was pretty intimidated by the idea since almost every blog I read mentioned how difficult these things were to make.  And I agree:  Macarons are damn hard work.  Since the macarons posted on that site were so amazing and since the writer teaches classes on how to make macarons in her house, I decided to use her basic macaron recipe for my first try.



Almond flour?  Who the hell uses almond flour?  Apparently people who want to make macarons use almond flour.  I couldn't find the stuff at my local Safeway, so I trudged over to my local crunchy organic grocery store and they just happened to have a bag.  A bag which cost $13.  For one pound of flour.  Not cool guys.  Not cool.

Of course, I bought the flour regardless.



The following three pictures are an example of what should not happen if you try to make macarons.

Runny batter:



Which spreads:



And makes a horrible, misshapen mess.



So obviously, I had either done something wrong or the method I was using was not the best.  I had followed the directions from the recipe to the letter, even taking the time to weigh my egg whites (which I pretty much never do).  The shells were thin and brittle.  They fell to pieces when I touched them.  I filled the ones which didn't shatter upon contact with some of the strawberry jam that was left over from making the Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Cake but those literally dissolved within twenty minutes.  And they didn't exactly taste good either. 

So it was to the trash with these and back to the internet with me to try and figure out what I had done wrong.  I consulted a plethora of blogs to try and find my missing step.  This entry in Magpies Recipes was very useful so that I could see the process, but it didn't have a recipe attached.  The Creative Abubot entry on macarons really helped me see what things should have looked like as I went along.  Tartelette contains a vast amount of fascinating serving ideas and recipe variations.  In the end, I decided to use a version of the basic recipe featured in this post on Heaven in a Wild Flower which I modified a little bit on my own.




My second attempt at the batter for the shells looked more promising right from the start.  I abandoned the idea of weighing my egg whites partially because I am a lazy bum but mostly because three egg whites come out to just about 100g every single time.



I also decided to invest in some new bakeware before attempting this again.  My old cookie sheets had been with me through two moves had seen a total of three different states, and didn't exactly survive the last move unscathed, so I didn't feel too bad about letting them go.  Based on the advice of the above-mentioned blogs, I also decided to spring for a silicone baking mat.



Alton Brown has had a lot of influence on the way I bake.  His book, I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking, is an amazing jumping-off point for any inexperienced baker who wants to learn how to do things better.  I'm also a fan of his rejection of the idea that one needs to buy a million specialized gadgets in order to cook properly.  It is for this reason that I absolutely refuse to use a pastry bag.  Instead, I use his method of simply clipping a corner out of a freezer bag.  It's just as effective and I don't have to wash a plastic freezer bag.



A quick 30-minute rest on the counter and a trip through the oven later, and my first batch of shells came out of the oven absolutely perfect.  None of the shells were cracked and they even feet!  I was - understandably - delighted.



Unfortunately, my second batch was not as perfect as the first.  They still had feet, but nearly all of the shells were marked by cracks.



Not allowing myself to be deterred, I continued to bake.



In the end, I had 80 shells, approximately 50% of which were cracked or otherwise unusable.  But these were far more structurally sound than my first attempt, so I forged ahead with filling them.



Since I wanted to keep it simple, and I didn't want to spend any time making a filling, I just used a desert spoon to fill each of these with a bit of Nutella.



And the results were fabulous.



I'm really glad I cleaned my fingernails before taking these pictures.



In case you hadn't gotten it by now, I want to reiterate that macarons take a lot of damn work.  The basics of mixing and baking aside, you have to regulate the oven temperature almost constantly.  And piping all those shells ain't exactly a walk in the park either.  But the rewards are fantastic.  The shells are a little crunchy and have a candy-like sweetness, the inside is surprisingly chewy, and the whole thing melts in your mouth.  I also discovered that these keep very well in the refrigerator.  They don't get stale or soggy even after several days.  In fact, these were so good that I ended up eating them all myself.  Because I am a selfish jerk!  Maybe I'll share the next batch.

Maybe.

The Great Fruit Cake Adventure

And finally we come to The Great Fruit Cake Adventure:  An Epic Tale of Epic Epicness.  This post is going to be a little long because this is without a doubt the most time-consuming edible thing I have ever made.  My marathon experiences with homemade Chinese dumplings and cream puffs seem weak in comparison, and I had an anxiety attack my first time making cream puffs.



My very first mistake (of many) was that I took one look at how much it cost to buy glacéed fruit online and decided that it would be more economical to make my own.  And so, in early September, I bought many pounds of oranges and lemons for this process. 



Now I was raised to never waste any food - EVER - and the idea of using only the peels from all of this fruit made a part of me die on the inside.  Not to worry dear friends, I ended up juicing the leftover fruit and using it in other things.  Having fresh lemon juice on hand has ended up being really helpful.



The process of making glacéed fruit involves boiling the fruit in sugar-water and then gradually adding more and more sugar to the water over the course of several days.  This causes the fruit to absorb the sugar and release its natural liquid, resulting in a pretty much non-perishable fruit candy.  That sounded pretty authoritative right?  Well it's all bullshit because I have no idea what I'm talking about.  But I do know that orange peels are strangely pretty to look at.



I did some cherries as well, but there were far fewer pictures of the cherries since they were considerably not-as-pretty.



So this is all of the fruit after about three weeks of being slowly glacéed.  The whole process was what I would describe as completely unpleasant.  There were trays of fruit sitting around my tiny apartment for nearly a month, resulting in something of a logistical nightmare whenever I had to use the kitchen.  Things would have also gone much faster if I had owned a food dehydrator, but I do not, and so the drained fruit had to air-dry for days, which was even more of a nightmare. This was taken in October.



As I said above, I hate wasting food, and so all of the fruit-flavored sugar syrup that was left over after drying the fruit really sent me into total freak-out mode.  Fortunately, I had a few of those cheapo squeeze bottles sitting around, ready to take the syrup.  I've mixing the cherry syrup in drinks, making my own cherry coke and cherry-flavored milk.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the orange syrup yet.



Those three huge bags of oranges and lemons from above?  Well they eventually broke down into this tiny jar of candied citrus peel.  It's surprisingly tasty and retained a lot of its fruit flavor.  Unfortunately, I destroyed my hand using a knife to chop these pieces up before realizing at the last possible second that it would be so much easier to use my kitchen scissors.  If this entire process has proved anything, it has proved that I am dumb.  So dumb.



The fruit was joined in a jar by some wonderful raisins and rum for about a week.



And finally, in mid-October, the day of cooking arrived.  I obviously was completely unprepared for the ridiculous amount of nuts that this recipe calls for.  Four cups of pecans and two cups of walnuts.  That is completely nuts.

Hahahaha.

Get it?

Nuts!

Hahahaha.





If anything, my sad attempt at humor reflects how completely unhinged I had become at this point.  I was toasting two pounds of nuts and getting ready to throw them into a cake.



Like with most cakes, the basic ingredients weren't too out of the ordinary.  Flour, brown sugar, eggs, etc.  It's the fruit and the nuts that made this so intensely difficult and the rum which made it horrible.



It may be difficult to tell in this picture, but the completed batter for this cake came almost to the top of my 5-quart mixing bowl.  And that bowl was heavy by the time I was done.  It must have weighed at least ten pounds.  I somehow managed to stagger over to the baking pans and slop this horrible mixture into them.



I have to say, this looks pretty gross before baking.  But many of my cakes haven't looked like they would win any awards pre-baking so that didn't concern me too much.



And after baking they actually didn't look too bad.  Perhaps they could have used a little more festive color, but there's nothing to complain about with these loaves.



And it was at this point that the loaves got wrapped in cheesecloth, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil for a two-month rest in the cupboard.



Now eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I made a horrible mistake at the beginning of the baking process.  Namely, my choice of rum for this project was questionable at best and super-dumb at worst.  The Kraken?  Really?  I chose a strong dark spiced rum for my cakes?  And I emptied the bottle?  What was I thinking?  Well hindsight is 20-20 my friends, and while I love the Kraken in drinks and on its own, and I've used it in small quantities in baked goods before, it was the completely wrong choice for this project.  When I finally unwrapped the first cake to taste it two months later, all I could taste or smell was rum.  The cake tasted like someone had taken a dirty sponge, soaked it in rum, and then squeezed it into my mouth and it was not good.

So as of December, the cakes remained tightly wrapped and stored away in my pantry like some kind of secret shame; hidden but unable to be forgotten.

As a prologue to this adventure:  A few days ago (early February), I suddenly remembered that I had these horrible bricks in my pantry.  I decided to unwrap one and see if anything had changed.  As many people know, fruit cake is typically aged for anywhere from six months to several years and the aging changes the flavors.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the flavor of the rum had subsided a bit.  It was still there, but not nearly as overpowering as it had been.



When people complain about fruit cake they usually complain about how it's hard, dry, flavorless, and any number of other things.  In fact, this cake was actually pretty good.  It was exceptionally moist and tender, and it certainly wasn't lacking in flavor.  The only problem is, because of the massive quantity of stuff in there, the cake is ridiculously crumbly.  There is no way to cut this thing into serve-able pieces.  It just falls apart into tasty chunks.

All in all, this could have been a good cake, but I pretty much ruined it by being dumb.  If there is a next time, there is a pretty large list of things that I will be doing differently.

Meanwhile, it's February and I still have one and a half loaves of fruit cake in my pantry.  Fruit cake anyone?