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.
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