Macarons are French for macaroons, but for anyone who pictures the piped coconut macaroons from Passover, prepare to be amazed. Macarons come in every flavor imaginable, but I'm going to make a classic favorite: chocolate.
These cookies are amazingly light and fluffy like a meringue, but chewy and crunchy at the same time. They get all these amazing textures from eggs, specifically whipped egg whites. In french bakeries, they leave the eggs out for days at a time for optimum whipping. Personally, growing up in a household that is relatively health-conscious, I only leave them out enough to be room temperature. Once the eggs are aged, as they call it, whip them until they are frothy.
Then, add cream of tartar and sugar, and whip until they have firm peaks. Pretty much as a rule when baking, add sugar or flour or other ingredients in large amounts in sections. Usually 3 is about right, but too much at a time leads to lumps, flattened eggs, or explosions of flour in your face. And let me tell you, flour does not come out of clothes as easily as you would think.
With a sifter (I should sell those by the name of nifty sifty), combine almond flour, cocoa powder, and a pinch of salt. Almond flour is ground up almonds, so it is easy to get chunks. When you are a classic high-brow french pastry chef, chunks and lumps = bad. Then add all of this (in sections of course) to the eggs, folding gently. Add vanilla extract. Folding is another word for mixing, except you need to be super careful. Don't beat the air out of the eggs you just spent 5 minutes whipping.
Then get a pastry bag, fold over the top, fill it, and pipe the batter into small rounds on a foil-lined baking sheet. These are sandwich cookies, so try to make an even number. If you don't, you will be forced to eat one without a mate. Boo hoo. Bake them for about 7 minutes and be careful. You can burn them pretty easily -- trust me.
Once they come out, let them cool completely and frost half of your cookies with the filling of your choice. I'm using Nutella basically be cause I am in love with it, but you could use a ganache or store-bought frosting. I'll go over ganaches in a later post, but it is eleven o'clock and I don't feel like making ganache right now. Once you frost, pair each cookie with a similarly sized naked cookie. This is always the hard part for me. You might want to pair them up before icing to make this process easier.
There are a few things that were different about this experience than other times. First, my other recipe didn't use cream of tartar. I think such a small amount couldn't affect the outcome very much. Also, I usually don't cook this late. Getting into bed at 1:00 after baking is a little ridiculous. I am embarrassed to say this, but a lot of the time, I burn my poor macs. So this time I checked on them and poked them and was not very nice at all. I must admit that I usually don't get batter on my shirt (maybe a post about aprons soon?). The cookies usually don't stick to my pan. I usually don't forget ingredients like vanilla. In the end, the biggest issue was that I used a different brand of almond flour. The granules were too big to make a perfect macaron. I will blend it up in the food processor to make a more flour-y product.
They will be better next time.
xoxo,
allie
