I’ve decided last week that I want to try to bake something everyweek to both get better at baking and just for fun. I don’t bake too much, even though I enjoy it, because I don’t have an outlet for the baked goods. Sadly, I am not a huge fan of eating them, mainly because most will give me heartburn or because I try to eat a more Paleo diet. That is not to say I will refuse baked goods; I simply need some milk on the side. A really tall glass of milk. However, now I realize I can just feed these things to my coworkers!
This week I decided to try my hand at some macarons. I’ve only made them once, and that was back in 2010 while I was in France. Most of that was still a lot of hand holding by the chef, so I don’t know if I should even consider it. In any case, this was the first time I did everything, from beginning to end.
I followed one of my favorite food-how-to people from Food Wishes. His videos are awesome, go check them out. His recipe for the macarons would be a better place for you to go if you want to try this, as I do not have as much experience as this guy, but feel free to read on to see a layman’s attempt.
Ingredients:
![2013 05 19 18.09.40 150x150 Macarons are Difficult]( "Macarons are Difficult")
Drys:
100 gram powdered sugar
50 grams almond meal aka almond flour (the finer the better)
25 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
Eggs:
2 large room temperature egg whites
65 grams granulated sugar
Chocolate ganache:
1/3 cup hot heavy cream
4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
pinch of salt
Mixing:
The first thing I did was sift all of the drys together and mix them into a nice, airy, chocolate mix. This will later be poured into the eggs; half at first then the other half once the first is all mixed in there.
![2013 05 19 18.14.49 150x150 Macarons are Difficult]( "Macarons are Difficult")
The eggs were a bit tricky, I had only done this once or twice before and I was way out of practice. The first thing to remember is to have the eggs at room temperature, that way they will take in more air when you beat them. The next is to be careful when separating the whites from the yolks. A few times I dropped the yolk in and it broke and I had to start over. So after about 5 or 6 eggs I was getting a nice frothy mixture going. When it is still frothy and semi-clear (not foamy and white) you want to add the first 1/3 or 1/2 of your sugar. The slower the better, but I was getting frustrated with eggs. And continue to mix on high with a mixer. Keep mixing and slowly adding sugar until it is a glossy foam that holds a peak. That is, when you pull out the whisk it will have a little point on it, and if you flip the bowl upside-down the mixture should not move. This took me a while to get, and I feel I over mixed it, so keep checking periodically.
![2013 05 19 20.13.47 150x150 Macarons are Difficult]( "Macarons are Difficult")
Once you have a nice firm mixture add in about half of the chocolate mix and fold it in with a spatula. Rolling the mixture around the edge and coming up as to avoid loosing the air you so desperately put into those egg whites.
After you mix in all of the dry mix you can then put the batter into a plastic bag (or one of those fancy squeeze things chefs use) and cut the corner. You want this cut to be very very small. I made mine about 1cm diagonal, and that seemed too big. You want this small because when you are squeezing it out, you want the tip pressed to the wax paper. On Food Wishes he does a spiral, but corrects himself and mentions this method, which I remember from way back when.
Baking:
You want to put these guys in a 350F oven for about 12 min. I had 2 trays so I rotated them at 6 min. For some reason they were really smokey, so keep that in mind. (That, or I should clean my oven…) Let them cool once you take them out.
Sauce:
So I messed up here, and misread the amount of cream to put in. Anyway now I have this really thick chocolate sauce for ice cream I suppose. Anyway, this is fairly easy once you learn to read.
Voilà, there you have some nice macarons. Hopefully yours are not as ugly as mine.
