What's Up Doc?

Summer Flick was the theme for this month's Mac Tweet challenge and our favorite movie is the inspiration for our macaron this month. 

My all-time favorite movie is what the movie industry terms a screwball comedy. 

It's What's Up Doc?, starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neil, made in 1972 and set in San Francisco  A remake of the old classic, Bringing up Baby, I think What's up Doc? is much more entertaining.  It will have you laughing so hard you'll cry.
Here's the You tube link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ncFob_dF0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ncFob_dF0
Howard Bannister (played by Ryan O’Neal) travels to San Fransisco with his fiance to compete for a musicology research grant, when he runs into a wild, unpredictable college drop out, Judy (Barbra Streisand),who brings "havoc and chaos everywhere she goes." Howard, Judy, wealthy Mrs. Van Hoskins and reporter Mr. Smith - the latter two who are staying at the same hotel as Howard - all have the identical red plaid overnight bag respectively carrying Howard's igneous rocks, Judy's clothes, Mrs. Van Hoskins jewels and top secret government documents, the latter two which are eyed by others who are trying to get their hands on the contents.  Howard is of course depending on these rocks in his plaid bag  to win him the grant.  Add to this a case of mistaken luggage, a jewel theft, and some government spies, and several plot twists. You must see this movie.  It is side-splitting hilarity. 

My initial response was to try and make carrot macarons, but then I thought about these...Pop Rocks candy.  Igneous rocks.....Pop Rocks.  Of course.

Have you ever eaten Pop Rocks candy? They are small pieces of hard candy that pop in your mouth when they get wet (think Rice Krispie candy), they snap and crackle and pop in your mouth.

 I bought some strawberry Pop Rocks.  I had some dried strawberries from Just Tomatoes.  They make dehydrated fruit and veggies.  I whizzed the dried strawberries up in my blender; mixed 3 Tablespoons of dried strawberry dust into the almond meal, piped them and sprinkled more Pop Rocks

 on the tops, which of course melted.   I got little feet.  Not my best feet, but I was baking at 5800 ft. above sea level so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.  I need to work on the feet a little more here at the homestead and maybe tweek this recipe just a bit to accomodate the dried fruit dust.

I sprinkled more Pop Rocks on the inside bottoms and drizzled them with bittersweet chocolate to keep them from coming in contact with the wetter filling.  I let the chocolate harden and them made a filling with cream cheese, vanilla, and more strawberry dust.  Just in case we didn't have enough strawberry flavor, I cut very thin slices of fresh strawberry rounds and sandwiched them between the chocolate and cream cheese.

Boy were these good!  A little messy to eat because of the fresh strawberry slice, but we loved the banana macaron I made a while back so I thought,"Why not strawberry?"  These were a hit with the family.  They have so much flavor and the little drizzle of chocolate and the cream cheese filling helps cut the sweetness.  I might have added a little bit of red coloring but I forgot to bring it with me.  Be sure to get these slowly.  Let them melt in your mouth.  The Pop Rocks begin to pop and dance on your tongue, which is a nice little surprise.

These were the most fun macarons I have made to date.  Thanks Deeba and Jamie, for another great challenge.

POP on over to Mac Tweets  on August 20th and see what inspiration the other members came up with this month.

UPDATE:  These were one of the best tasting macarons I have made to date, however,.........
They did not hold up well.  The strawberry slice is too moist.  The day after, they still tasted great, but they were messy.  The drier banana worked better, but the strawberry can't be beat for taste.

MacTweets California Dreamin" (Mama and Papa style)

When I was younger than I am now (much younger) there was a singing group that I listened to on my transistor radio.  Of course my mother made me listen with my ear phones as this music was just noise, according to her.  Yes, I am old, but I was in third grade then.  The Mamas and the Papas were a quartet and I don't think that they were the best musically but I loved them.  They wore Tie-dye clothes (the hippie era of course) and they lived in California; beautiful sunny California.  The land of lemon trees, palms, the ocean, and of course, Disneyland.  California represented all that was fun and exciting.  If you were really lucky you went there for summer vacation.

My inspiration song is the Mamas and the Papas California Dreamin'.

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day


I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California Dreamin'
On a winter's day

I made Tie-dye macarons and filled them with my home-made lemon curd.  (On a side note:  I used frozen curd which I posted about in a previous post.  It defrosted great.  There was no loss of flavor, texture, or body.).

My family loved these.  They are by far the most crazy and eye-catching macarons I've made.  The lemon curd filling is a burst of summer.  I think any former hippie or fan of 60's music would be proud to eat these.

Anyway, they were fun to make.  These are happy macarons.

Check out the Mac Tweets blog to see what the other members made this month.  I'm also submitting this to Two for Tuesdays and Tasty Tuesday so link back to them too.

Jungle Macs

The MacTweets Macaron challenge this month was Adventure.   I don't have much of that in my life currently.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my life.  I really do, but I am on the tail-end of parenting.  The most adventure I've had lately is the drama of trying to attend every end-of-the-school-year function.  Deeba and Jamie wrote a great post using the jungle, Tarzan, Jane, and Cheeta pictures.


This is my "Cheeta".  He is the sock monkey from Itty-Bitty Toys by Susan B. Anderson that I just happened to have been knitting for a awhile.  I finished knitting him today.  I rushed home from the knitting session and put together my macs (again the adventure was trying to get them finished on time). 

I've been experimenting with different nut flours.  This time I used peanut.  What monkey doesn't like peanuts? And bananas, and coconut?  And these macs just screamed out for a little chocolate ganache; the best jungles should all be stocked with chocolate, in my humble opinion.


 I laid out half of my macs and put vanilla Italian meringue butter cream on them, and sprinkled some flaked coconut and chopped peanuts on top.  The second half of the macs were covered with ganache and a thin slice of fresh banana.  When you "smoosh" (that's a technical term) the two sides together, make sure that the fillings totally enclose the banana slices or they will turn brown.

 Just refrigerate the macs for a few days and then devour them.  You'll want to - I promise.  THESE ARE GOOD!  Not the average mac, but so tasty and flavorful and the banana is the hidden surprise.  Now that's adventurous, right?

Don't forget to enter the CSN give-away on the previous post.

An Orange for Frankie

The Mac Attack challenge is time was to make a macaron with our favorite childhood book as inspiration.
While this book wasn't written when I was a child, I love it as an adult.  I used this book as my inspiration for Chocolate Marmalade Macarons.

An Orange for Frankie, the children's picture book written by Patricia Polacco, is another beautiful book by this wonderful writer and illustrator.

 This book tells the true story of the author's great uncle, who lived during the Great depression of the 1930's in America. Every Christmas his father made the long journey into the city to bring home one precious orange for each family member which sat on the fireplace mantel until it was peeled and eaten after Christmas Eve supper.

Laduree Macarons (slightly damaged from air travel)

Our darling 3rd daughter stepped off the plane today from London after cancelled travel plans for us and for her.  We worried about how long she would be stranded in London.  A week later, our patience paid off and she is finally home after a semester abroad.  She thoughtfully chose gifts for everyone.  The Customs agent must have wondered if she was a sweets/cookie representative for Harrod's Department store.  She brought gifts for everyone; a can of tennis balls from Wimbledon, scarfs, shoes, bags, silver charms,

hot sauce from Nando's, a large assortment of British candy, Ben's cookies, and for me; reproduction fat quarters from the current Victoria and Albert Museum Quilt exhibit; and my very favorite gift...

a whole box of Laduree macarons from Harrod's. 

A Tale of Two Macarons

Bright yellow daffodils, the first flowers to make a showing in my part of the world.  Spring here is usually snow, snow, and if we are lucky, some rain.  The daffodils bright green shoots appear through the small drifts of snow and I hope they survive the last few flurries of frost and flakes.  They are followed by the tulips (everyones' favorite), much brighter flowers, but not as hardy.  So Spring to me means yellow daffodils.  Glorious, bright, and hardy yellow daffodils which brave the cold to herald better things to come.

The obvious yellow flavor profile?   Lemon, of course, but with a twist. So for this Mac Tweets, we give you...Two Macs, same recipe!

I've been experiementing with ways to get flavor into mac shells without changing the chemistry of the recipe.  Vanilla sugar now goes into every shell I make instead of plain castor or granulated sugar.  It adds a wonderful flavor.  How to get lemon flavoring that tastes like lemon without watering down the egg whites?  Hmm...Let's see.

I decided to use lemon juice powder.  You can get it here.

I have tried several recipes, but I like this one that I found on Deeba's post best.
I adapted this recipe further by:

• Substituted vanilla sugar for the castor sugar
• Added 1 tsp. of meringue powder per egg white (this helps stablilize my meringue)
• Added 1 tsp. freeze dried lemon juice to the shells  

Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. 

These were full of lemon flavor.  Italian buttercream filling laced with lemon juice and zest.   These were well liked  gobbled up by the taste testers (my friends and family, of course).

Many years ago I purchased some air-cushioned sheets for cookies, which I really did not like.  The cookies do not get that golden-brown bottom with the cushioned sheets. Those sheets have lanquished in the back of my cabinet, unused for years until I hauled them out yesterday. I'm so glad I didn't get rid of them.  They were great for baking the macs.  I found that I needed to adjust the oven temperatures and baking times for them.  They perform very differently than the heavy aluminum sheets that I normally use.  My mac's feet collapsed a bit because I underbaked them and had to put them back in for an extra minute. They were still wonderully crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside so those cookie sheets have come out of retirement.  Read on further in this post to see what I did to remedy the baking time dilemma.

I was telling Cristie (The Table Runner blog) about my adventures with the shell flavoring and baking times and she kindly agreed to come over to bake her macs using my new old cookie sheets and the same recipe, so that we could experiment with baking times for the Cushion-Aire cookie sheets.  

Cristie's adaptation of the recipe:

• Substituted vanilla sugar for the castor sugar
• Used the same Italian Buttercream but mixed in her homemade lemon curd
• Put another layer of curd under the Italian buttercream
• Added meringue powder to the recipe

Here is a short tutorial on how to make macarons.

Whip your whites to stiff but shiny peaks. Then so you don't deflate the whites with the weight of the sugar, add it slowly and gradually.  Continue to whip the whites until the peaks are stiff but still glossy.  Don't overbeat or your whites will break and you will get cracked mac tops.  I test the stiffness of my peaks by turning the bowl upside down.  SLOWLY, of course.  If the whites don't slide, they are stiff enough.  If they do start to slide,  STOP AND WHIP THEM SOME MORE.
See...they don't slide out of the upside down bowl.  What you don't see is Cristie on the floor taking the photo.  Brave of her considering that if the peaks weren't just right it was her head they would slide on.  Isn't it great to have a blogging partner? 

Now you can add food color to the top of your whites.  Don't blend it in just yet.  We will do that as we fold in the dry ingredients.

I first add about 1/3 of the dry ingredients.  Add them to the side of the bowl and fold in boldly.  Don't whip, just fold like you mean it.  Add the rest of the dry ingredients in two separate additions onto the side of the bowl.  Now fold more gently.  Sweep the spatula under the mixture and fold it up over the top.  Mix in the dry ingredients just until blended.  When the dry ingredients are blended, stop and flick some of the mixture over and let it settle.  The peak should disappear within 10 seconds, if not fold a few more turns and test again.  When the peak disappears within the 10 seconds the macaronage is achieved.  The flick above didn't settle (as you can see) so I gave it a few more folds. You can also do this on a plate if you wish, but I just do it within my mixing bowl.  Many chefs describe the texture of the mixture as "Lava-Like" when it falls from the spoon.  You will be able to feel the macaronage loosen as you fold it, and after a few batches it will be easier for you to tell when it is ready.

 Time to pipe them out.

I push my bag down inside my piping tip so the batter won't run out before I've finished filling the bag and I set it inside a tall glass.  Fill with the batter and push it into the bottom, twist the bag, and pipe it like this...

or like this.  Rap the cookie sheets gently on the counter to set the macs and to release any air bubbles, bringing them to the top.  If you are decorating your tops do it to half of the macs now while they are still wet or the garnish will not stay on once the macs are baked off.

Let the sheets set on the counter until the tops feel dry to the touch.  Depending on the humidity in your kitchen, this should take between 15 minutes and 1 hour.  Just touch the top gently with your finger.  This "dry top" is what makes the ruffled feet.  The moisture inside the macs creates steam and the tops raise making the ruffle.  I let my macs rest about 30 minutes before baking.

Bake until they are just set.  In my oven this takes about 13 minutes at 320 Degrees for the Cushion-Aire sheets.  Experiment with your oven and cookie sheets.  Times will vary.  If like me, you like your macs soft and chewy inside don't overbake them.  They will continue to bake as they cool.  Remove them and cool on racks.  Fill with your choice of fillings.  Be creative now!

We baked Cristie's macs at a higher heat and for several minutes longer than I had baked my earlier batch on the Cushion-aire sheets.  Cristie's came out just perfectly.  Problem solved.  Crunchy outer shells and perfect chewy, soft centers.

Yahoo!  Perfect feet.  No peaks.  Success with Cristie's Macs.

The biggest difference between using regular heavy, professional cookie sheets and the Cushion-Aire sheets was that there was not one single lopsided mac.  NOT ONE.  I really recommend using sheets similar to these or using the stacked sheet technique.  It really worked much better.

Same recipe  (personalized and adapted of course).
Same technique.
Same conditions and tools.
Two perfect but different Macs.

These look like Springtime Macarons to me.

I hope you'll link to Cristie's blog to look at her posting of our afternoon.  Two Macs, Two Views.  Twice as Good.  Also check out what the other bakers are doing over at Mac Tweets.

More Macarons

Today I made more macarons.  Purple ones to be exact.  I changed the oven temperature as per some suggestions that I found.  I shouldn't have!  The old adage, "If it works, don't fix it", certainly applies.  I tried turning up the heat in my oven as was suggested to get better "feet".  It didn't work so well.  My macarons got too much color and they didn't rise as well.  I'm going back to the first recipe.

Remember this?  It's the vanilla sugar I made with the scraped bean from my Dutch Apple tart?  This is the granulated sugar I used in this batch.  Another layer of flavor!  I may never make another macaron without vanilla sugar.  The shell tastes so much better!!!!!

I loved the first batch of orange marmalade macarons which had such great flavor.  So it's another flavor of jam for the filling.  I made my own syrup and jam last summer with cherries from this orchard, but I had a jar of their commercial jam already opened in my fridge so I used it.

I also made a big batch of Italian buttercream for another layer of flavor.  The recipe made a HUGE amount so I froze the leftover buttercream in smaller portions for later use.  I love this buttercream; it's fluffy and smooth and the perfect foil for the jam.

So here they are.....Macarons.  I love this flavor combination.  My shells have been better, but I learn something new each time I make them.  Most importantly, I'm getting comfortable with the macronage.

I think I'll package these up prettily and share.

  

Raspberry Macs

We stopped into Les Madeleines today.  Their coconut macaron was delicious.  And how cute is this?  She calls them buttons.  They aren't much bigger than a button.  Maybe if I scale mine down a bit, they'll go farther.

So today I made Batch # 2.  I used Helen's (Tartelette) recipe this morning.  I like it equally as well as the first recipe that I tried.

I still have that batch of chocolate ganache in the fridge so today I added raspberry flavoring to it and also to the shells. I tinted them pink for Valentine's Day, and they tasted good.  I would make this variation again.

Some of my shells were still a bit lop-sided but they got their "feet".  I am going to keep experimenting until I get them just right.   How do you say perfect in French????

Macarons for Rachel

This is our 3rd daughter Rachel, who is a sophomore at university.  Right now she is on a semester abroad in Notting Hill in London.  One of the first things she discovered there was Laduree, inside Harrods department store.  For those of you (like me) who don't know; Laduree is a Parisian patisserie that is famous for their macarons.  Rachel was tipped off about Laduree by a friend who went to school in London last year, and now Rachel loves their macarons.

I make macaroons, not macarons.  Macaroons are cookies made from shredded coconut held together by meringue. Macarons are a whole other genre.  They are a French creation made of meringue and almond flour; no coconut involved.  They are also said to be very temperamental and difficult to make but I was determined to try.  I was quite sure I had never eaten a French macaron so I set out to find some to taste.  The are several pastry shops in my city that make real macarons.  I bought several from different places and tried them so I would know what I was supposed to emulate.  I hate to say it, but I was disappointed.  They were dry and slightly tasteless and really boring.  They had no flavor to speak of.  I couldn't figure out what Rachel was so enamored of, but I was determined to try and make some of my own.  I did a lot of research and then went on-line and ordered a book about making macarons.  After waiting for a month for the book to come, I got tired of waiting.  I talked to my friend Cristie (http://www.thetablerunner.com/2010/02/mac-vanentines.html) whom I knew had made successful macarons and I had seen a recipe on Deeba's blog (http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2010/01/milled-nut-flour-macarons-with-dark.html) and decided to start with that.  As it turns out, this was the same recipe that Cristie had success with.  Today I made my first French macarons.  It won't be my last batch!  Now I know why people love macarons.  They are simply delicious and unique. 

How I made them:

First you froth the egg whites, and then beat in the granulated sugar.  When your meringue is whipped to firm

peaks, you slowly and

gradually fold in the flour mixture

When it is just the right consistency (described as lava-like), you pipe it out in circles and bake.

Let them cool and fill with whatever you wish.

I used some of my homemade citrus marmalade and some leftover ganache from the cupcakes I made earlier this week.

All of the macarons were not perfect looking. Some were slightly lopsided.   But I got "feet" (the ruffly- looking bottom of the cookie), and the outer shell was crunchy, while the inside was nice and chewy.  I was quite happy with them.

 And...we all loved the way that they tasted.  Most importantly, I had fun making them and will continue to try other combinations until I get them perfect (or until Rachel comes home).  I have until the first of May to practice. Although I won't fool anyone who has eaten a macaron from Laduree, I know Rachel will appreciate the effort.