Day 4: No more cookie mistakes

Today I was ready to take on a challenge. I was prepared to create something that is all about visuals, and of course some taste too. I decided to bake, arguably, the pinnacle of French pastry: The Macaron. 

Quick Clarification: 

A macaron is pastry with a base of almond flour (I told you it was a popular ingredient), and egg whites, sandwiched with a jam, chocolate or other type of filling.

A macaroon also has a base of egg whites, but is a coconut flavored cookie, often dipped in chocolate, and popular during holidays. 

Although they are very different, the names often get mixed up, with many Americans calling macarons macaroons and vice versa. 

Macarons are beautiful. They are elegant and dainty and shiny and basically perfect. They have a glossy smooth shell, with delicately developed feet (the little rough part on the bottom), and a rich filling to tie it all together. 

There is some debate about the origin of the macaron, but most people would agree it actually came from Italy. I know what you're thinking. I thought this was a French baking course! Well, French and Italian pastry baking is very deeply intertwined, mostly due to the marriage of Catherine de Medici (of Italy), to Henry II of France in 1533. When Catherine moved to France she brought her pastry chefs with her, and they carried with them many pastries including the macaron. It wasn’t until they reached France that they gained the popularity they have today. 

Originally macarons were served without fillings, and they were just flat cracked cookies. This version can still be found in the city of Nancy, France, which is where macarons first became popular. In Nancy, two Benedictine nuns made them in bulk and sold them to pay for asylum during the French revolution in the 1790’s. It was not until the 1930s that they were served sandwiched with a filling. 

As macarons have gained popularity around the world, numerous new flavors have been invented and there are still a variety of techniques used. The two principle methods found are the Italian method and the French method. In the Italian method the egg whites are cooked with a hot simple syrup, then whipped to form meringues, while in the French method, the egg whites are combined with plain sugar. While both result in tasty macarons, the Italian yields them sweeter and taller, while the French method has a milder taste and they are more flat. On top of these differing methods, there are different flavors depending on where in the world they are made. In different regions of France they use honey, fruit or almond paste for flavoring, while in Japan they are often found green tea flavored. In Japan they are created with peanut flour instead of almond flour and have been used in fashion and cosmetics because of their aesthetically pleasing look. In the U.S., flavors were experimented with including mint chocolate chip, peanut butter and jelly, snickers, pistachio and many, many more. Now you can find almost any flavor of macaron, which contributes to their growing popularity and experimentation. 

Even with so many flavors to choose from, they are almost always tasty and always beautiful. Macarons have grown popular on social media, because of their look and wide variety of colors. 

I’ll admit it, I’m a little intimidated by macarons. I have attempted making them twice before (once with the Italian method and once with the French) and neither time were they successful. I ended up with cracked shells and overspread macarons and it just ended up being a whole mess. Today I used the French method (obviously) and was very determined to succeed. 

I began by whipping my egg whites and vanilla, making sure they formed stiff peaks before adding my food coloring and then combining it with an almond flour and powdered sugar mixture. This combination step is called macronage and requires lots of precision. Overmixing it will release too much air from the batter and cause flat and cracked macarons, while undermixing will cause lumpy and hollow macarons. Honestly, they are a lot like goldilocks. They need just the right amount of mixing, just the right amount of flour and sugar, and all it takes is one small mix up and they will be destroyed. 

After what I deemed was a sufficient amount of mixing (and hopefully not too much) I piped them into circles and let them dry. The drying step is important, and also one that I think can be difficult in Houston. The more humidity in the air, the longer it takes the macarons to dry, but too much drying causes them to deflate, and too little can stop the signature feet from developing. Did I mention they were like goldilocks?  

Nevertheless, after an hour of patiently waiting, my macarons went in the oven. Waiting for them to bake was slightly excruciating, but not quite as bad as taking them out of the oven. If there's one thing I’ve learned about baking, it's that the tables can turn very quickly, especially when something is removed from the oven. Like yesterday, for example, with the deflation of my Paris-Brest. I was concerned I may have a similar result and my macarons would crack as soon as I removed them from the oven due to the rapid change in temperature, but they didn’t! 

After letting them cool I delicately moved them to a cooling rack. This step was interesting, because for some of them they were easily removed from the baking sheet, but for others the middle stuck to the sheet and made them difficult to transport. Eventually though, I succeeded, and it was time for assembly! 

I quickly made a vanilla buttercream frosting, which in my opinion is the perfect pairing to a macaron because it's simple, classy, goes with basically anything, and is always delicious. Finally, the moment of truth came, and I piped the frosting onto my macaron shells. I was so, so pleased with the result! Most of them ended up beautiful, and just like you see in pictures. This made me so proud, I guess the third try really is a charm. The purple shell with the bright white frosting made a beautiful sight and I was very proud of my macarons. Although a few of them ended up hollow (probably due to being removed from the oven too soon) they still tasted phenomenal and for the most part looked great too! Now that I have had a successful batch of macarons, it makes me much more motivated to try to make these again and continue improving and experimenting with the endless array of colors and flavors. Overall I would say today was a huge success and some of my pictures might even have a resemblance to what you would see in a French patisserie.