Les Macarons, Parte Deux

 

Last week, a co-worker and I decided to try a macaron-baking class at Sur La Table, a new kitchen store in the area.  I tried making macarons on my own before (and blogged about it here) getting only about 50% of the way there.  There is a TON of information about making them online, but for some reason most of it just seemed mystical and not really helpful to me (although it always really tried to do the opposite.)  So I thought perhaps a class was the way to go.  I'd get some guidance and some pointers, and come home with recipes, too!

The class was held after work.  In 3 hours, we made 3 kinds of macarons: hazelnut, regular almond, and raspberry.  The instructor was very confident and encouraging, but his advice was not always the most sound, so they only came out so-so. They tasted very good--don't get me wrong--but didn't look right at all.  (I thought I had a picture but I guess I don't.)   I decided to continue experimenting at home, and this weekend I got to it. 

First up was trying pistachio again.  I love pistachios, and I had an annoying little bit left rolling around in the cupboards.  So I grabbed and cleaned out my coffee grinder and ground them in there with a little powdered sugar, and then subbed that for part of the almond flour (I had storebought already ground almond flour.) I then followed the recipe we did at the store, taking care to make my batter a bit runnier.  I baked them all on one giant sheet, and I used parchment paper to bake them on (usually you use a Silpat, but I only have one and it is small).  Here's the result:

Pros:  nice "macaron-y" shape, with the little feet.
Cons: they spread out a little on piping, so they ended up touching (as you can see in the front).  Some of them also got a little too brown. I also got peaks, which I tried to get rid of, as I had been instructed in the class, by dabbing at them with a damp finger.  This just caused discoloration at best and little eruptions at worse, as you'll see in the next batch:

The second batch was the basic almond recipe, no other additives.  The ones we made at the store kind of looked like these:  fat and chunky, with peaks.  They look more like hamburgers than macarons.  I'm not sure what makes them chunky--they didn't seem to be piped any higher than the others--but the little bump at the top was from dabbing at a peak with a wet finger.  I discovered that doing that seemed to ruin the cookie's ability to dry properly.  I let them sit an hour and they all dried EXCEPT the one little spot on top.    That spot turned into that thing on the top of the cookie.

I also tried the instructor's edict to always, always, ALWAYS bake two pans at a time with this batch.  That didn't work so well for me either--one batch burned on the bottom, even though I rotated and switched pans half through, and I baked them for only 8 minutes rather than the 10-15 suggested.  So much for that.  Maybe with some other oven.

Finally, at 12:30 this morning, I put my final batch in the oven--a big stinking pan of hazelnut macarons.  And:

THEY CAME OUT NEAR PERFECT!  YAY!  I used the one pan, watched the bake time closely, folded the batter a little longer to get it runnier.

I filled all the cookies with Italian Meringue Buttercream:  chocolate and rosewater for the pistachio cookies, chocolate and strawberry for the almond cookies, and chocolate and vanilla for the hazelnut cookies.  Took them to work today and they went over quite well.  I'm pleased.  I still have a few kinks to work out but I think I am more on my way. 

Now:  anyone know what I can do with 16 lonely egg yolks?

TWD: Basic Marbled Loaf Cake

After an unexpected hiatus (including an expected extended trip to Paris)  and a flurry of sewing, I am back to baking this week with our pick by Carol.  The recipe for this cake (which I believe you'll find on her blog) is for a plain loaf cake, which you then flavor however you want.  I've registered here before that marble cake is one of my favorites, so I was all over it. I've also registered here that I love chocolate and mint together, so when I saw one of the suggestions was a chocolate-peppermint mix I was all over that, too.

The cake was very quick, straightforward and easy to mix together.

Not much to say about that. Just a standard butter cake in composition.  I had some Callebaut white blocks that have been sitting around forever, and some slightly bittersweet chips, so I used those for my chocolates.

I mixed half the batter with the bittersweet chocolate and half with the white.  I reached into the cabinet and discovered that my peppermint extract is actually peppermint oil.  Oh well.  I added it anyhow.

Then in a fit of perversity, I decided peppermint cake should be pink.

Then in another fit of perversity, I decided the flavors should not be very mixed.

So I layered the batters and banged the cake, unswirled, into the oven.

I let it bake for the minimum suggested--an hour and 20 minutes.  It was crusty and very done by then.

I tried a piece before bed and brought some in my lunch to work today.

Verdict:  I dunno what the deal is, but my cake is dry as all get out.  I typically love "dry" "plain" cakes, but this one is throwing me.  I'm not sure if it baked too long, or if using 2% milk really made a huge difference (I doubt that, though;  I usually have that about the house so it's what I typically use)  The peppermint is nice and strong (though admittedly mint-flavored cake is a little weird) but though I am not a chocolate freak I think the chocolate needs upping, either from using a stronger chocolate and/or increasing the amount of chocolate batter.  I am gonna try it with some chocolate sauce and see if I am happier with it.

TWD: Lots of Ways Banana Cake

 HELLO SUMMER!!!

I was hesitant to make this one.  Banana cake?  Meh.  I figured it'd be another loaf or bundt cake that I'd try, generally like, but never finish eating.  It would take time away from my sewing!  Besides, the sewing was making me realize I hadn't actually done a decorated cake in a good while.  The last seriously decorated cake I did was a full year ago:

I wondered if I was going to lose all the skills I spent so much time building.  As much fun as TWD is, we rarely make anything decoratable.  Perhaps I'd make a cake for my upcoming birthday?...But I felt guilty, as I always do when I contemplate skipping a recipe.

So I read the recipe.  What is this?  A layer cake?  With any icing that I want?!  Oh now, that's different!  I can decorate this cake!  Finally!  Let's do this!

I made the cake pretty much according to the recipe.  I did run out of light brown sugar, so I added about 1/4 c of dark brown.  I also didn't want to open a can of coconut milk for a measly 1/2 cup, so I used whole milk instead.  Finally, I used my old standby method to prep the pans: grease sides (and I do mean grease;  I keep a small can of Crisco for just this purpose) and flour them, and line the bottom with parchment.

I was surprised that it took nearly 45 minutes to bake two 9 inch layers.  I was also surprised by how dark they were.  I was a little afraid they'd taste burned!

(I didn't get any pics--the camera battery decided to die on me.  Le Sigh.)  

Once the layers were done, on to decorating.  I had a big bowl 'o buttercream in the freezer, made when we did some egg yolk-heavy something or other a while back.  I took the design of the cake from the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook, one of my very favorites, and made the color palette a little lighter than theirs.  I piped out chocolate fireflies and moons and iced the cake in blue and green, piping on a green grassy border when I was done.  I was pretty happy with it in the end.  FUN!  Can we do another one soon?  Please oh please? Thank you bunches, Kimberly, for picking this one!

As far as the actual taste of the cake:  it's not bad.  Inoffensive.  It reminds me of an okay carrot cake, but with banana instead.  I mixed some of the buttercream with chopped pineapple and coconut for the filling (I like pina coladas, sue me)  and I like the addition.  I'm on my second piece now.  The first was too cold but this one is nice and room temperature-y.  I think I'm gonna have to think a bit about whether I like it enough to do again...

WWK (Wednesday with kate): Cookie Christmas Ornaments

I'm rebelling, y'all.  For the first time since joining the group, I didn't bake the TWD selection.  (Sorry MacDuff!  I loved your writeup!)  Yeah, yeah, I know it was a super easy one.  I even had everything I needed here at the house.  But...um...I had an irresistable craving for a Vanilla Buttermilk Cake, so I made that, and it was LOVELY.  It also meant I didn't need/wouldn't eat the cookies, plus they sounded like meringues and I do NOT like meringues.  I do plan to get right with Dorie this weekend and make next week's assignment, but for now...

What else did I do?  Well, in addition to the cake, and my first ever from scratch macaroni and cheese, I read and revised and decided this week not to go "home" for Christmas.  So I figured I should acquire a tree for myself.  I've done it before, and it can be an enormously time and money-consuming endeavor when you are starting with nothing.  Knowing I was only gonna have the stuff up briefly, and I'd be gone for at least 3 days, and not knowing whether I'd be reusing any of it next year, I wanted to go economical and simple.  So I got a little 4 foot, pre-lit fake tree, and I decided to reduce the number of ornaments I had to buy by making my own ornaments out of cookies. 

I am (I think) a pretty skilled sugar-cookie baker, but I've only made cookies for eating (and I think I make a kickbutt sugar cookie!)

objects are deliciouser than they appear

This would be an experiment.  The cookies to be nice and sturdy for decorating and hanging, but I don't want them to look clumsy and they don't need to taste good.  And the point is to do it on the cheap.  With the latter goals in mind, I didn't want to use my usual recipe, which is a little temperamental and calls for all kinds of expensive things to make them tasty.

Searching online I found mostly 3 different kinds of recipes:  recipes for regular edible cookies, pleasant but a waste of good ingredients;  cinnamon cookies, simple and inedible but I have none of the ingredients on hand.  The third recipe that I kept finding was for "salt dough" cookies, which sounded promising except that everyone expects you to decorate with acrylic paint, of which I have none.  I really wanted to do my decorations in sugar, which I have plenty of!

So I turned to my cookbooks until I found a suitably simple and home ingredient-friendly recipe.  I settled on Peggy Porschen's "Basic Sugar Cookie" recipe from Beautiful Cakes.  She frequently uses cookies as hanging decorations, so I knew it was sturdy enough to work.  The absence of baking powder told me they probably wouldn't poof and get out of shape, and the ingredient list is short: butter. sugar, flour, egg, flavoring.  I left out the flavoring and subbed shortening for the butter and the cookies came out perfectly, (if tasteless)!

Decorating.  I had limited time--I do have other work going on after all--so I decided to speed things up by using fondant bases for all the cookies instead of flooding them by hand with icing.

waiting for cookies to come out of the oven

For things I won't eat, I really like to use the basic Wilton fondant you can get at the craft store.  It is not the best-tasting commercial fondant AT ALL, but it's really a dream to work with. 

rolls out nice and smooth and is easy to pick up

also, probably the best texture for modeling/detail work!

I attached them to the cookies and added dragees where necessary.  Then I let them sit overnight to harden.

 

The next day, I decided to paint details on some of the cookies with luster dust.  I was also going to use some royal icing and do some piping, but I accidentally dumped out too much dust, so I figured that was A Sign that I needed to keep it simple, and just stuck to painting in gold and using dragees, edible glitter, and fondant to embellish.

Next day, I beribboned and photographed.  Now they are ready for the tree!  Here's a sample:

 

 

I really like how they turned out, and they were fun to do.

Now if I can only get my hands on some unbuttered microwave popcorn, I can finish this tree...

ornamentation

I called my blog "Ornamental" Confectionery, because in addition to general baking, I also like decorating cakes and cookies.  A decorating project can be a nice distraction--a very concrete and exact thing to focus on in contrast to the very abstract and fuzzy stuff I do as my Day Job.  I think that is what I really love about baking.  I'm not even that crazy about eating stuff (which is why I don't really read many "food" blogs).  I like making things, and I gravitate towards the largely unrelenting exactitude of baking.  In baking and decorating, it has to be right.  Your measurements and temperature of ingredients have to be correct.  When decorating, your icing needs to be the proper consistency; your cakes must be balanced just so, with this consistency of filling, in order to remain stable.

That's not to say there isn't some room for improvisation--especially in decorating, you have to make things up on the fly all the time--but you have to have a really good understanding of what will work and why before you can predict what will work. 

All that is to say:  I haven't really decorated anything in a looong while!  As I am winding down the Abstract Project To End All Abstract Projects, I'm thinking I need to come up with a reason to decorate soon.  TWD is already providing me with more baked goods than I can eat or dispose of--as of right now I have a serving of Cran-Apple Crisp, about two slices of chestnut cake, half the spice cookie dough, and mini cakes from this upcoming Tuesday's recipe in my fridge.  I fully expect the upcoming cookie doughs for December will also find homes in the freezer.  And most of the recipes aren't really conducive to decorating, at least not the kind I do, with lots of piping.

That said, watch this space.  I'll come up with something.  I think.