More French Macarons

As I mentioned earlier in the week, we just got home from spending 10 days in Hawaii with my parents, my brothers and their spouses/girlfriend, and my in-laws. It was fabulous. I wanted to bring along some treat to share with everyone, and given that I have a ton of almond flour to go through, I made some more macarons. I ended up making two different flavors of macaron - margarita and purple sweet potato.

First up - margarita! I don't know why, but suddenly the idea of mixing alcohol with French macarons seemed like an ingenius idea to me. It ended up pretty good, but I think I could have taken it a bit farther than I did. I started with the regular shell recipe, but colored the meringue a bright green.

The color mellowed a bit as I mixed it with the almond flour and they piped out a nice lime green color - perfect! While they were resting, I sprinkled some kosher salt on half of them. Next time, I would probably salt all of them.

Once they were done baking, I got working on the filling. I used a standard Swiss meringe buttercream. The first step was to cook the egg whites and sugar.

The mix for ages until the mixture cools.

At that point it forms a gorgeous meringue.

Then deflate the meringue with butter to make the buttercream.

Once the standard recipe was done I grated the zest of a sudachi, a citrus fruit that is similar to a lime into the buttercream. Then I added some of the juice. Finally I put in a healthy helping of tequila. I think I could have added more than what I did, but I started to get nervous.

Finally I piped the buttercream onto the bottoms and covered with the salted macaron. These were all boxed up and ready for the airplane.

Next were the purple sweet potato macarons. I did a standard shell, leaving the color natural. For the filling I used the same recipe from the sweet potato snackies I made for K a few months ago. After steaming the potatao, I mixed it with cream, milk, butter, sugar, and an egg yolk.

Then I mashed all of that together.

And let the liquid cook out of it until it seemed a good consistency.

Instead of piping it on, I formed little balls just as I had done for the ichigo daifuku French macaron fillings.

 

I flattened them out a bit and then sandwiched them between two of the macaron shells.

They looked a bit bland, however, so I painted on a design using luster dust mixed with vodka.

I tried a few designs and asked K which he preferred the most. He decided that the "sword one" (??)should be the winner.

 

My oldest brother's mother-in-law lives next door to the house we rented in Hawaii. It was absolutely perfect. Our house had a pool, so it was the main hang out. After my brother and his wife, we were the first to arrive. We got to the house and K immediately got in the pool with my sister-in-law. It was cloudy and I really wanted a snack, so I busted out the macarons. They were a hit! The margarita ones were really good. Unfortunately, the sweet potato ones got all crumbled on the plane ride. I think maybe the excess moisture in the filling made them soft. That combined with our luggage being transferred to three different planes didn't leave them in their original state. That being said, the taste was still really good - you just needed a fork to eat them from the tupperware. When I took the macarons out to the pool, it was a tad cloudy. It got nice and sunny, however, and I forgot they were outside. By the time I had remembered, the buttercream in the margarita ones had melted quite a bit. It was a bit of a bummer, but I threw them in the fridge to harden up and they were good as new by the time my parents arrived. Perfect!

Ichigo Daifuku Macarons

Many of you know this already, but Y is getting transferred to the States for a few years, so of course K, T and I are all going along for the ride. It is all kind of sudden, as in we found out last week and we will leave next month. Since we are leaving, I am trying to both not buy things we don't need and also use everything that we have. Good strategy, right?

That being said, however, I was really craving ichigo daifuku - strawberry and sweet bean filled mochi. Yum. It is one of my favorite things. My rice maker can make mochi, perfect! But I didn't have any mochi rice. It is only sold in 5kg bags and there is no way I am going to go through 5kg of mochi rice in such a short time. What I do have a lot of in this house, however, is almond flour. Instead of mochi, I decided I would make ichigo daifuku macarons.

I use Cecile Canone's recipe and I swear by it. If you want to make macarons, I highly recommend her book! You start by combining powdered sugar and almond flour. In a separate bowl, whip up a meringue.

Using a spatula, combine the two until the mixture is smooth and delicious looking.

Pipe them out and let them rest for a while. Finally bake them up.

Once they are baked you can add pretty much any filling and they are nearly guaranteed to be delicious. For mine, I obviously wanted sweet bean and strawberries. I started by rolling little balls of sweet bean.

Then I flattened each ball into a disk and put one on both the top and bottom macaron. Then I cut up a strawberry, put it in the middle and made a little sandwich. I made them "to order" as I was afraid the strawberry would get weird if I left it cut for too long.

I'm not going to lie, I LOVE macarons. I have made them numerous times at this point, but these are easily my favorite. They satisfied my craving, but then I just wanted to eat more of them. Between Y, K and I, these were gone pretty quickly. K devoured them, kid doesn't mess around with macarons - according to him, they are his favorite cookie. I'm raising a smart kid, yo!

Bear Macarons

I have no idea why or how, but I came up with an idea to make bear-shaped macarons. I've seen heart-shaped ones, but never bears and I don't know why! They turned out so stinking cute!! Could other animals work as well?!

I originally planned on doing these for the baby shower, but decided that one type of macaron would be enough. To be honest, I was also kind of worried they would flop and given the lack of time I had, I didn't want to risk it. Instead, I figured I'd give them to Brandon after the baby is born, knowing that even if they turned out as mutants, she would 1) get a good laugh out of it and 2) appreciate the effort regardless.

I started with my tried and true recipe from Cecile Cannone's book. Since Brandon's baby is a boy, I thought blue bears would be appropriate.

Once the batter was all mixed up, I got to piping. I was a bit worried about how to get a bear shape, but I just went ahead and did it. I started with the left ear, piping just a tiny bit and then dragging the tip over to do the right ear. Then I picked it up and piped a standard circle.

Some of the bears had a bit of a cone head. I think it was from the ears pushing down on the face and then leaving no where for the batter to flow, except for up, between the ears. I was really bummed, but just kept on piping.

They baked quite nicely, and held the shape which is what I was most worried about. A few of them, like the bottom center one in the above photo turned a bit blobby, but they can't all be perfect, right?

Plus when they are all lined up like that, few of them are really perfect. But, most are close enough.

I was also stoked that they got a little foot on them. Always important in a good macaron. That being said, while they are in the oven, the foot is huge! Then they always fall a bit when they cool. Bummer.

I figured it would be too difficult to make sure the front and back ears matched up perfectly, so decided against even trying. Instead I piped standard circles for the back. The ears are pretty tiny, so I didn't think they would fall off - and they didn't.

 

The next step was to fill them. I went with a coconut ganache (also from the book, but tweaked a bit beacause I thought it might be too runny and added more chocolate) because it is always delicious and also keeps it's shape a bit more than buttercream. Additionally, I think I had made coconut ganache macarons before, and seem to remember both Brandon and her husband liking them, although this is a memory from K's first birthday party, so it may be off.

 



I loved how they looked all filled and put together, but could not wait to get their faces on!

Uhhh, yum.

I melted a tiny bit of milk chocolate and put it into a piping bag with a small round tip (#2, I think). The first part I piped was their snout (is that the right word?!?). Then I let them dry for an hour or two. I really wanted the nose to stick up from the snout, so I wanted to make sure it was fully dry first.

Then I melted some dark chocolate and used an even smaller tip (#1) to pipe dots for the nose and eyes. After the first few, I played around a bit making some with really round noses and others with more oval noses. I can't decide which one I like better. I love them both!

Eeeek! I love how they look like a tiny army of little blue bears when they are all lined up like that. Seriously, I am in love with these!!!!

The unfortunate bit is that they don't look cute at all once you bite into them. In fact, they look kind of sad.

 

All the more reason to eat them quickly, I suppose! An added bonus is that K seems to get sad when he eats the bears and has only asked for "mama's special cookies" on two occasions. Usually he would sit down and eat the whole batch if I would let him. 

Raspberry Macarons

In my last baby shower post, I've decided to focus on my favorite item I made - Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream Macarons. B has always had a fondness for raspberry, so I thought it'd be nice to somehow work some berries in to the mix. What better way than macarons?

I thought to be extra cute (and double the workload), I would do the top and bottom in different colors - green for the tops, pinkish for the bottoms - to kind of look like raspberries themselves.

I started with the pink bottoms. My little brother was around, so I told him he should watch me make the macarons since they are not that difficult, but have a bit of technique to them. We got about five steps in and said, "Yeah, I'm never going to make these." As a quick note, I use the book/recipe by Cecile Cannone and swear by it.

Anyway, step one is to mix your almond flour and powdered sugar.

Then you make a meringue and add your food coloring.

Then add the meringue to the dry and mix it up by hand. This is the part that requires a bit of technique. It's not at all difficult to do, but it may take a couple of tries to get the perfect consistency. Without the right consistency, the macarons can turn out to be a mess - they'll crack, they won't have the famous "pied" or they'll be flat little discs. That being said, they are still 100% edible, just not as beautiful. Once you get the consistency down, however, they are pretty foolproof. (That being said, I hadn't made them in 10 months and was a bit out of practice. Mine ended up just fine, but not perfect.) It's worth ruining a few batches to get it right.

Once they are mixed, you put the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large tip and pipe out a few circles. Since they are sandwich cookies, you want to have them all roughly the same size. I use a little circle pattern under my parchment.

Once they are piped, you have to slam the tray on the ground a few times (this got a laugh out of my brother), and let them dry out for about fifteen minutes. You should be able to lightly touch the surface without it pulling up onto your finger.

After they are nice and dried, you bake them for 14 minutes, let them cool on the sheet and (usually) they are ready for filling.

This time, however, I washed and dried all my bowls and got started on round 2 - the green tops.

Once all of those were done as well, I paired then up, put them in a Tupperware, and went to bed.

The next night, while my chocolate cake was baking, I whipped up the first batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I started with just vanilla and followed the usual steps - put egg whites and sugar in a double boiler, whisk until the eggs reach 160F, pull them off the heat and whip until the most delicious meringue you can imagine is ready and cooled. Then slowly add in your butter. Once it looks like frosting, add in the vanilla and mix until it's all combined.

Then I put a bunch of raspberries into the "cup" of my handmixer and mixed it into a puree. I added the puree to the buttercream little by little, worried that I would add too much, but I ended up adding all of it to get a really raspberry taste.

All of it went into a piping bag with a large tip and I piped and sandwiched away.

I was super tempted to eat one, but I held off.

I only made 20, and with eight people coming to the party I figured I only had a few to spare.

The night before the party, after dinner I thought each of the four of us could have one as dessert - it still left two per person at the party. As soon as I got the Tupperware out, K came running up to me, yelling out, "Ahhh!!! K want that!!!" I got four macarons out and put them on a plate to bring them to room temperature. It about killed K. I kept telling him that they were too cold and not delicious yet, but every three minutes he'd run to me and say, "mama, they're warm now. Let's eat!" I held him off for about 30 minutes, but I started to feel bad for him and put them in the microwave for 5 seconds.

I got the plate out and we counted the cookies, then the people - four and four. I told him that means one cookie for each person.

"How many cookies for mama?" "One!" "How many cookies for toto?" "One!"

"How many cookies for T (my brother)?" "One!"

"How many cookies for K?" "Two!!" "Uhhh, no."

These four were devoured in seconds. They didn't last too long on the day of the party either, but luckly there were a few leftovers for the boys to much on when they got home. They were all stoked, particularly given that Y tried to convince me not to even serve them at the party. I promised him a second batch sometime soon.