passion fruit chocolate.

Today I am developing my own recipe for passion fruit chocolate macarons. Since a trip to Hawaii, my family has been in love with the "deliciously sour" distinctive flavor of passion fruit. It would be perfectly accented by the creamy nuttiness of dark chocolate.

To start out, beat the eggs and sugar as usual, but instead of vanilla extract, add a teaspoon of passion fruit concentrate. I got mine from my dad's friend who has a restaurant, but I am sure you can get it online. The directions say to add sugar and water, but there is already enough sugar, and we don't want to dilute the flavor in the batter. We will also add a small bit of red and yellow food coloring.

Then add almond flour and powdered sugar as usual. The adorable measuring cups are courtesy of my sister. Also, we got a new sifter! Mix the ingredients and do the macaronnage. Then pipe the batter onto baking sheets line with parchment or silpats. The batter was a little runny, but breaking them apart should not be a problem. With a small strainer, dust cocoa powder on the cookies before they dry.

As always, heat the oven to 375 and bake the macarons for 15 minutes once they have developed a crust. They look pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself. I tried to make a chocolate passion fruit ganache, but it was difficult and frustrating. I will work on the recipe before posting it here.

xoxo,

allie

crazyholidaypartytime.

So today I am making macarons for a french club party on thursday. It is a good idea to make them in advance to let the flavors meld and everything softens up a bit. Then this weekend I am making macarons for my friends as gifts. Lots and lots of macarons making, but plenty of opportunity for experimenting! My main issue with the basic batter recipe is that they sort of collapse and are hollow and unattractive on the tops. They still taste great, but we are on a quest for the perfect macaron. So I am going to try the recipe for chocolate macs, only without the chocolate. They seem to turn out better. Alors, here it goes!

First, of course, whip the egg whites. After watching videos of french people do this on youtube, I learned something potentially very important. The eggs should be a stiff foamy mass, then, while mixing in the other ingredients, you sort of smoosh the air out of them. They call it macaronage. Also, before adding dry ingredients, I added 1/4 tsp. each of chocolate extract and vanilla extract and whipped them together. They will be sort of white chocolate-y. I have a ton of leftover white chocolate glaze from a while ago that will be perfect.

Here are the eggs before,

And here is the batter just mixed...

And with the macaronage.

Note how smooth it is and how it "flows like lava".

Here is the tray of piped macarons while they set and prepare for baking. I am quite proud that they are pretty much even and only two of them ran together! Hooray for practicemakesperfect! Another issue I have had previously is a weird shaped crust. They look sort of like plastic wrap or something. There is a good example in the last post. To try to avoid that, this time I put them in the oven as soon as they all had any sort of film on top. They were shiny and round. Let's see how they turned out.

They started to brown on top, so I turned the tray. I think in the end, they all turned out golden brown. They look like marshmallows toasting. Yum! I put them too close and more of them ran stuck together as they baked. Once they come out I can easily pull them apart. The recipe says to cook for 15-18 minutes, which is the longest time I have ever read. I am stopping mine at about 13 minutes. Seriously, every minute counts. I used that glaze again and, thinking I could use it like regular ganache, piled it on. it quickly melted and dripped all over the place. I will use that one as my personal taste test. This recipe seems to be perfect. I am near tears of joy.

Oh mygosh so good! Go make these right now.

Everyone needs to enjoy this magic.

xoxo,

allie

la suprema

Today, my dad and I stopped into La Suprema, our local giant mexican bakery. They have pretty much everything you can imagine. Cakes, chocolates, crazy flans... the list goes on and on. The first time I went there, I piled my basket with almond croissants, palmiers, and-- wait! Those are classic french pastries! I walked toward the checkout counter and saw before me...... macarons! It turns out that this place has a ton of french baked goods with their names in spanish. Neato! I resisted the macarons that first time, but today, we walked straight towards the plate of macs, who sat like jewels on the platter. We got chocolate, pistachio, caramel, and strawberry. We brought them home to eat so I could take pictures of them for you. As you can see, they were smooth with eggshell-like outsides. They had beautiful feet.

My parents watched me as I took a bite of the pistachio one. CRUNCH. Wow, I was not expecting that. It was like, way crunchy. Perhaps stale? The filling was nowhere to be found. We passed its remains around the table and each let out a sigh of disappointment. Maybe the strawberry would be better. CRUNCH. Yeah, um, no. Less flavor. Come to think of it, that may have been raspberry. I couldn't tell. The caramel one's only virtue was the filling. It was dulce de leche. The nuttiness of condensed milk is distinctive and delicious. The chocolate one definitely had the most flavor. The cross-section here shows the texture. Dense. Personally, I prefer them a little.. hollower? The filling seemed like straight-up melted chocolate which had formed into a solid bar of chocolate in the middle of my solid cookie.

All of that ranting aside, La Suprema is a great bakery. I highly recommend everything there except the macarons. The tres leches is to die for. They have something called flan impossible: a layer of flan, a layer of chocolate cake. But what can I say? It is a mexican bakery.

xoxo,

allie