macarons on my mind

I’ve been meaning to make and blog about French macarons for quite a while now but as with most of my cooking, I really have to be in the mood in order to do it well. How do I feel about making them after spending two days in the kitchen? They are not hard but can be a little finicky. I actually feel that macarons, like croissants and other laminated dough products, are one of those things that are worth buying. You make it once or twice to say that you can make your own. (And there’s a satisfaction about not letting the macaron get the best of you. Macaron, I’ll show you who’s the boss.)

Macarons can be made using endless “biscuit” and filling combinations. I think the most famous is probably the ispahan flavor by Pierre Hermé. It is a masterful and ingenious combination of three complementary flavors: rose, raspberry and lychee. (I’ll do a separate post dissecting and Americanizing the ispahan macaron recipe.)

I did a lot of reading and went with Not So Humble Pie’s very detailed instructions. She spent over 80 hours in the kitchen mastering the macaron and used a scatter plot to compare the various recipes before posting her technique. I really like the way she works. The macaron is about technique so her recipe may not work for you. I repeated the recipe several times and I got something a little different each time. I'm not perfect after all =(

Read More

Black & White Cookie Project Part I

I’m working on perfecting the famous Black and White cookie. The first recipe I'm trying out is for the NYC version. This is not the upstate new York version. The upstate New York version is called the half moon (sometimes also called black and white) and I will blog about it at a later time. They are two distinctly different versions and each have their own dedicated fans. I’ve had both versions and since I am not from New York, I cannot say I have any loyalty to either version. I like them both.

I'm starting off with a recipe from Glaser’s Bake Shop. The recipe was published in the May 13, 1998 issue of the New York Times. Glaser's is a small family-own bakery and the recipe has been passed down for generations. I followed Glaser's recipe for the cookie base but I adapted the icing from Gourmet because my coworker wanted me to troubleshoot the Gourmet magazine recipe she has been using. She wanted me to help her “fix” the weird flavor. She said the lemon flavor was off and the icing tasted chalky. I found many of the icing recipes on the internet very similar to each other. They consisted of powdered sugar, water and light corn syrup. Variations included lemon juice and/or vanilla. Some recipes used cocoa powder and others used baking chocolate.

Read More