Daring Bakers October Challenge: I am De Feeted (Recipe: Macarons)

On my blog it is important to me that I share my successes and failures. I am a home cook and baker who is self taught and learns as she goes. If I only posted my successes it would imply everything I make comes out as expected which is certainly not the case. You know where I am going with this right? Chock this attempt at macarons up as a failure. Not as bad as my butter cream episode as these were at least edible, but geez these challenges are really starting to hurt my ego. I better ace next month's challenge or I may just cry! It is a tough thing to balance as a part of me wants to just jump in and figure it out myself while the other part wants to read up and learn as much as I can before I attempt the challenge. I think I need to find the happy medium.

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 (can be found here) as the challenge recipe.

When some people think of macaroons (notice the extra "o") they think coconut. We are talking European macarons here and they are comprised of ground almonds, sugar, and egg whites. They are usually presented sandwiched together with incredible fillings. This is where the creative ones can go wild.

I would say I am not usually a "filled" cookie person so that is one reason why I had not jumped on the macaron band wagon earlier. I have never had a true French macaron which also makes it a little challenging as I only know what it should and should not be by what people tell me, not by taste. When this month's challenge came up I was not overly excited, but what the heck. The purpose of being a Daring Baker is to expand beyond my comfort zone. I started to get a little nervous though reading about those who had already done the challenge and the problems they were running into. Some were on their third, fourth, or fifth batch. Yikes! Looking back now, if I had not waited until the last weekend I maybe would have tried these again. I may have to, though, in the coming weeks attempt again as I want feet on my macaroons! Is that asking for too much? You see, a key attribute of French macarons are the "feet". Having feet on macaroons is sort of like winning the lottery. If you want to see what they are supposed to look like take a look on Tastespotting. I had a hard time finding, though, an explanation of what is going on to create the feet. I did find a post on Off the Bone which seemed to describe it well assuming it is factual! I make no attempt to wordsmith. Go here and read it. I know nothing about this blog, but it is all I could find as to what causes feet on macarons.

I must say I did start off my challenge as a Daring Baker. I did not feel like buying a bag of almond flour that I would probably never use again, so Miss Daring here made her own almond like flour. I ground 4 ounces of hazelnuts and 4 ounces of macadamia nuts with one cup (plus a little extra) of powdered sugar. The recommendation was that if combining nuts use 50% almonds as they have less oil. My flour was not wet, but maybe I should have dried it overnight. Though I did not follow the recommendation for 50% almonds, I am convinced that was not the demise of my feetless macaroons. This combination of flavors along with orange zest, gave my failure a truly delectable taste. To the point I ate three in a row. They were nutty with a hint or orange and had a crunch that ended with a chewiness. The batter was runny, but they did not stick to my silpat. They were just feetless flat cookies with too much air that tasted very good.

I do believe the problem was that I did not beat the egg whites enough, but then over mixed when I added the dry ingredients. I am mad at myself for that. I know better! Could it also have been my egg whites were not aged enough? Not to sure about that. This was not my first time working with egg whites, though. Once you have worked with egg whites, you just know when they are right. You can have egg whites that form peaks, but if you don't have the shiny/glossy look you will be doomed. Looking back mine had so called peaks, but they certainly were not shiny. Was it that sometimes I get a little nervous during these challenges and guess that just because I did not see any reference to shiny or glossy in the instructions I became inexperienced? I know I am acting like I am on a Food Network Challenge, but seriously even though I am in the privacy of my own kitchen the pressure is still on! I must admit I was also a little rushed as I was planning on making my first roast for dinner and since I was using a Cook's Illustrated recipe thoughts of comments Christopher Kimball recently made were filling my head too. Check back later for the roast recipe. It was a total success!

If you made it this far in my post you see I did not even include a picture at the top. I ALWAYS have a picture at the top. Since I felt de-feeted (get my funny joke?!) I just could not come up with a filling for these large creatures. A filling would have turned them into the size of a whoopie pie and let me tell you I make a damn good whoopie pie and I did not want to create any confusion!

For any of you bakers out there, please take a look at my photos and let me know if my conclusion of what went wrong is correct. Also, can anyone add any insight on why some recipes call for "drying" the macarons while others do not?

To follow is the recipe. Are you up for a challenge?

Be sure to check out the other Daring Baker's blogs across the world to see how they did on their month's Challenge!

Macarons
Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern
(Printable Recipe)

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami's note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons. Kat's note: My yield was also much smaller.