For months now I've been dying to try my hand at making macarons (NOT macaroons!), those delicate yet toothsome, notoriously finicky, sublime little meringue sandwiches. I'd been hesitating because whipping egg whites to stiff peaks by hand...well, sucks. This weekend, however, I finally scored a hand mixer from my blessed friend Aki (助かったよ～！).
I used La Tartine Gourmande's Matcha/Chocolate recipe, subbing toasted ground sesame for wattle seeds. The sesame was a bit overwhelming - or maybe there wasn't enough matcha - but still quite a nice flavor. Despite the prevalent obession/paranoia (read the comments or google "macarons"), they were actually pretty easy. Unsurprisingly, most of the variability came via my weirdass Japanese microwave/oven/toaster. It turned into something of an empirical study, but I'm happy to say it CAN be done!
The first batch:
Nearly perfect. I piped them out a little wide and too close together, but I got the little "feet" and no peaks on top! Because I don't care for food coloring, they baked golden instead of "matcha" green. The only real issue here was that they were hard to separate from the parchment, so I think the bottoms were just a bit undercooked. To bake, I had set the parchment atop the ceramic plate that goes in my microwave/oven, and put them both in together. That plate is ultimately not the best conductor of heat in such a small space, but I don't have anything else that fits in the microwave. Here's the finished first batch next to the patiently waiting (slowly sinking) second batch.
For the next batch going in, I decided to put them on the still-hot plate and pop them directly into the oven while it came back up to temperature. The little microwave/oven heats up fast, so I didn't think it'd be a big deal...
Tops cracked and no "feet." They look like cookies! They were still incredibly tasty, though, and they separated easily from the parchment. I like the clean removal, but I think the overall cooking time was too long, and letting them come to temperature with the oven caused too much "oven spring."
Third batch was started on a cold plate, inserted into the fully preheated oven, for a slightly shorter time than the first batch.
Got the feet back, but this time they were even harder to remove! They almost ended up hollow because half the insides wanted to stick to the parchment. Oh well, I think the key is hot plate, hot oven, shorter cooking time (or lowered temperature halfway). More experimenting to come.
The important thing is that they are all fucking delicious. My brain likes to think of them as low-fat (hey, egg whites and sugar and just a teensy bit of ganache!), so I find myself popping them like chips. I've been kind of on a baking high recently (also made ciabatta, Mia has pictures!), and it's rooted in the gluttony that binds together my life. I love eating, and I love buying more food stock than I could ever eat. Now, I'm left with under 2 months to finish off masses of bread flour, all-purpose flour, pasta, rice, sugar...
On that note, I recently got my first Engrish shirt for a mere $10. It's about damn time, and it's pretty fabulous:
But possibly the brand is even more fabulous:
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