Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Daring bakers and macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Like most of the daring bakers, I've been meaning to tackle macarons. I've tried them once, they didnt go so well, so I was happy to experiment again.

This could be the holy grail of pastry, I've been trying to work out why, and I think it could be the variation in ingredients, and the importance of the consistency of the batter. The almond meal could be more finely ground or less, and the egg whites could be more or less aged and can vary in size. Of course the technique is also very tricky, whipping the egg whites to a soft peak, not too hard, then carefully folding the nut meal and powdered sugar in.

I'm going to blame this on the fact that my macarons were a little runny. I think I needed more nut flour. Also, I didnt use my common sense and I piped them too close together. The macarons also stuck to the silpat, so it was difficult to release them. I've heard you can put water underneath the silpat to help to release the cookies.

As you can see, my macarons are woefully thin too, although they did seem to develop the 'feet'. One day I'll spend a week perfecting them, but I just dont seem to have the time to commit to it.

A happy accident happened, I realised I didnt have enough almond meal, so I ground up some hazelnuts to mix in, and then filled the macarons with nutella. Delicious!!!

Please check on amy's blog for the recipe!




6 comments:

SweetThingsTO said...

I like your photos! I haven't dared to try to make macarons yet....

anna said...

They look yummy no matter what! I've never had them work out on a Silpat - they stick and spread a lot. This recipe was also flat out wrong in so many ways. Just ridiculously bad. Try again with a different, more sensical one and you'll be 100% successful!!

Mary said...

Hi Jenny -
We attended the foodie event at Suite and Tender together last night, I'm sorry I didn't really get to meet and talk with you but I wanted to drop a line and say hi! I think I'll dig your blog, I love baking, too! Take care.

Alice Q. Foodie said...

This almost makes me wish I'd stayed in the Daring Bakers longer! I've been meaning to give these a try forever, but I suspect the experience will be frustrating so I keep putting it off. Yours look great!

Rylan said...

I really need to try this. I always find macarons so hard to make. Thanks for sharing!

caninecologne said...

hi jw! i love macarons but i won't even attempt to make them. too complicated for me!