Week Night Cherry Almond Macarons

Macaron success! I've made French macarons with varying degrees of success, and I think this time may have been the most successful so far. Around the holidays I bought Martha Stewart's holiday cookie magazine in line at the grocery store, specifically for the macaron recipe, since the others I'd tried so far had mostly let me down. :o(

Lucky for you her recipe is also on her website, so I'll share it with you here. :o) Plus a recipe I made for cherry almond buttercream. Yum.



In the past, I went out and bought almond flour. But having been burned by my last 3 batches, I didn't want to put the time or money into another shopping trip, so I ground up some slivered almonds in my blender, which is why you can see a bit of the almond skins here. Also...shame on me...I didn't sift my ground almonds and sugar. Shame! All they do it get stuck in my flour sifter and make it impossible to clean! Plus I could only grind the almonds so fine before they would start turning to almond butter instead. So I just whisked the powdered sugar and almonds together really well and went with that.

Before you go ahead with the recipe, I should note that while this was my best attempt, it wasn't perfect. I read somewhere that you should only put one tray of macrons in the oven at once (some say it doesn't matter, and maybe it didn't this time), so that is what I did. The first batch came out perfect! Look at those sexy macaron feet! (The little ruffle that pops up at the bottom.)



But the second and third batches turned into crazy, topsy-turvy, Dr. Suess macarons. Yikes!



OMG! My best guess is that perhaps the batter dried out slightly in the piping bag, then in addition I let them dry too long after getting piped on to the tray, and instead of rising, one side or the other stuck? Maybe? Also I misread the instructions for baking about heating the oven for 5 min to 375 between each batch before putting in the next tray. Instead I raised it to 375 each time and made sure it was 375, then lowered to 325, waited 5 min, then put a new tray in. Those are instructions used below since as I said, the first batch was lovely! Either way, no matter how they looked they still tasted good and weren't a cracked, burned mess like some others. So sad.

So keeping that in mind, here goes the recipe!

Cherry Almond Macarons

Vanilla Macaron Shells
Adapted from Martha Stewart

1 cup confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup almond flour (or finely ground almonds)
2 large egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Pulse confectioners' sugar and almond flour in a food processor until combined. Sift mixture 2 times. (Shame on me, I didn't sift, just whisked together)
   
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
   
3. Whisk whites with a mixer on medium speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar, and whisk until soft peaks form. Slowly add in the sugar.
   
4. Increase speed to high and after a few moments add the vanilla extract. Continue whisking until stiff peaks form.
   
5. Sift confectioners' sugar mixture over whites, and fold until mixture drips slowly, ribbon-like, from the spoon. Don't overwork.
6. Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain round tip, and pipe 3/4-inch rounds 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets, dragging pastry tip to the side of rounds rather than forming peaks.
   
7. Tap bottom of each sheet on work surface to release trapped air.
   
8. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes or until tops are dry to the touch.
   
9. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees 5 minutes before putting the macrons in the oven.
   
10. Bake 1 sheet at a time, rotating halfway through, until macarons are crisp and firm, about 10 minutes.
    
11. After each batch, increase oven temperature to 375 degrees then reduce to 325 degrees again 5 minutes before putting in a new tray.
12. Let macarons cool on sheets for 2 to 3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. (If macaroons stick, spray water underneath parchment on hot sheet. The steam will help release macaroons.)
13. Prepare filling below, and once completely cooled, pipe a bit of frosting onto one macaron shell then sandwich with a second shell.
14. Store in fridge in an air tight container

Cherry Almond Buttercream Frosting

1 6 oz jar maraschino cherries (Approx. 2 1/2 tablespoons pureed)
Approx. 1 tablespoon milk (more or less as needed)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 package powdered sugar (16 ounces)
1/2 cup butter, softened (1 stick)

1. Drain cherries and reserve juice.
2. Puree cherries in a blender.
3. Cream butter and slowly add confectioners sugar
4. Add pureed maraschino and almond extract
   
5. Add reserved juice from cherries and milk alternately to achieve desired texture.
   

Homemade Applebutter

I need to get back to blogging, and I need to get to posting some recipes. Usually, I follow recipes as I find them and add notes to my delicious page. I don't know the rules around posting adapted recipes, but I feel I did enough research to this homemade applebutter recipe to post here!


I wanted to make these apple butter macarons. So first step was I needed apple butter. I had gone apple picking and had some apples to use up. ;o) So Whisk Kid's recipe over here, calls for whole spices like cinnamon sticks, allspice berries...I didn't even know allspice came in a berry... So I did some googling and found substitutes.

Homemade Apple Butter

adapted from Whisk Kid

Yields about 2/3 cup

3 cups diced apples (I think mine were red delicious and rome or courtland?)
2 cups water
½ cups sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp honey

¾ tsp ground nutmeg

¾ tsp ground cloves

1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

Peel and dice the apples.

Place the prepared apples and remaining ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil (uncovered) over high heat, then reduce the heat and let simmer (also uncovered) until very soft, about 1 ½-2 hours. Be sure to mix every once in awhile, increasing the frequency with which you do so the longer the apples cook. Once very soft and caramelized, remove from heat and allow to cool briefly. Pour into a blender or food processor to puree. Store in the fridge.

It's fabulous, and smells delicious while cooking! My only change after the fact reflected in the recipe above was to omit the black pepper from the allspice substitute. Here is what I found on it:

One teaspoon ground allspice is equivalent to approximate 5 whole berries.
If you need a substitute for allspice combine equal parts of ground cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and black pepper.

Right...skip the black pepper, you'll taste it in the applebutter and rather prominently.

And in case you're wondering here's how the macarons turned out!


My macarons have been hit or miss, it seems the baking temps are way to high on all the recipes I've considered and I've consulted quite a few of them... I thought the cinnamon on top would add some significant cinnamon-y flavor, but it did not...and I added 4 tsps of apple butter to the buttercream, but could you taste it in the the end? No. Plus I burned one tray...how does that happen?

Anyway, happy apple buttering!

Fall baking round up

work has me stressed out, so haven't been keeping up with my little blogger or much baking/crafting for that matter. Flickr has been updated thought!

Here's some cool photos from the season!


Pumpkin muffins!


Apple cider mini donuts! Yes! I got a mini donut pan! <3
My first apple pie all by my big self. With apples we picked from the orchard.


Sexy apple pie slice with homemade ginger ice cream, without and ice cream maker. Still a success! Doesn't go as well with the apple pie as I thought but it's tasty. :oD


Homemade apple butter, would of been great except don't use black pepper in your all spice substitute, worst idea ever.


Vanilla and apple butter swiss meringue buttercream macaron. That's cinnamon on top, did it taste like apple cinnamon? No...just sugar. Still looking for a decent macaron recipe, baking instructions are all wrong for the ones I tried so far!


Ghost shaped Count Chocula cereal treats for a halloween party. They were awesome.

my first french macarons: pumpkin with cinnamon buttercream filling

I love mini desserts. I haven't known about french macarons for long but they're so damn cute I had to learn how to make them. in googling some recipes I saw another blogger mention this book, I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita which is apparently the macaron bible. Although I have a wishpot which is mostly books, I've sort of sworn off buying baking books or magazines, since there's ssssooooooooo many recipes online. But since my new obsession I decided to stop by Barnes and Noble to see if they had any macaron-ing books, and it was there!

I actually brought it home and read it. Like from cover to cover. I read a review on it later which said something about it originally being published in Japanese? Then translated...this was clearly translated. :o)

Anyway, on to the macarons!


I am pretty impressed they worked the first time around! It was not without incident though. In the book, she describes this method for making butter cream where you make syrup (I guess) by microwaving the hell out of sugar and water for 4 minutes!? This is crazy, I actually did it and burned the hell out of the sugar, surprise, and thought my measuring cup was not going to be salvaged. It was, but that's just a bad idea.

I stuck a bunch of sticky notes all over the pages as well, here are what some of them said, in case you're a first time macaron maker as well:

1. Seriously...just sift it (she says sift the almond meal and powdered sugar twice, i half assedly did it once...but it makes it much lighter and fluffier...so just sift it, once should do it...)
2. Cut the damn parchment so it's flat, otherwise macarons may run when piped
3. Don't pipe onto the same side as the circles are drawn on, it comes off on the macron, oops. Either flip parchment over or make a template on a new piece of paper that you remove after piping.
4. When getting ready to stir 15 or 20 (or whatever gets the job done, hello) times, add the food coloring at this point
5. When piping, don't swirl. pipe straight down until it spreads out and fills the circle
6. Really, make sure the oven racks are in the center, my bottom rack burned. And check em! Mine baked way faster than 15 minutes

Those are my macaron gems of wisdom for you.


But beware when good macarons go bad. Here's what happened to mine that were on the bottom rack and piped by swirling, it's hard to look at...


Yikes! Sad... this one is better. :o) They even baked up with the little "foot," without which they can't be called macarons apparently. They're (by "they" I guess I mean the French?) referring to the little crinkley baked up looking part at the bottom of the macaron.


Oh, by the way, to get the pumpkin flavor I used two teaspoons of pureed pumpkin added to the meringue. I have many many bags of pumpkin puree, as it is also the first year I've pureed my own pumpkins and Dave bought me 3. :o) We'll be having pumpkin treats until into the new year I think. :o)

Also here is the recipe I used for the cinnamon buttercream. Good, but super sweet, maybe too sweet? I made a note to try with less sugar next time. Dave confirmed the macrons over all had a nice pumpkin pie taste, so for my first time these were certainly a success. I've decided this winter will be the year of the macaron, so I have more macaron plans to come.

One more sexy macaron picture and the rest are on flickr.