Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Daring Baker's Challenge: Macarons and the Case of the Missing Feet!

I couldn't have been more excited about a Daring Baker's challenge - imagine having just come back from Paris and sampling the world's finest macarons, only to find out that you yourself are being challenged to produce the same pastry!

Alas, the macarons were not to be. I tried to follow all the advice out there: I aged the egg whites 24 hours, I tapped the baking sheets, I let the unbaked cookies dry out. But the end result was simply not a macaron. A fine almond cookie, sure, but there were no feet! If you scroll down to the other posts below on macarons, the feet are the ruffly edge on the bottom of the macaron cookie. At any rate, at least I tried (and will try again!) and got a good caramel sauce recipe out of the deal.

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 as the challenge recipe.

This batter looked promising: smooth, shiny. What could go wrong? HA!

Alas: these are just glorified almond cookies. Light and airy - but no feet! Arggghhhh.
Still, the caramel was delectable. Not a total loss.


For all things macaron, including recipes, I suggest going to Tartlette's blog. I used her Salty Caramel Sauce, which is the filling for her Pecan Pie Macaron. My shells were unflavored. I think I overfolded my batter. And I will have to experiment more with my oven, which uses gas mark numbers rather than actual temperatures. Live and learn!

4 comments:

Wic said...

oh they look delicious and who needs feed when one can have your filling.

Vera said...

They do look cute even without feet!

janjan said...

You are too kind! I'm a perfectionist, so I'll have to have another go at this.

sharonw said...

They are so pretty though you don't even miss the feet!