Macaron improvement, thanks to Syrup & Tang

So I only managed to get a photo of the very worst, for a self-deprecating tweet. The rest were slightly better.

It has been some weeks since my last confession post. There has been horribly cold weather, troubling economic and social developments near and far, kimchi and brie sandwiches, and newly discovered knitting.

There has been illness, much work, yet another failed batch of macarons, and a rejuvenating couple of days off to go to some sessions at the Melbourne Film Festival. It was after a gloomy-and-thus-right-up-my-alley Romanian film about infidelity and marriage breakdown that I hung out with Steeles at Brunetti’s and had one of their macarons, then another. 

With the brightly coloured little delights plus the rejuvenation, new enthusiasm sprung in my heart. And when I stumbled across an incredible site that night called Syrup & Tang, in which a brilliant food writer provides detail like no other seen anywhere, I was running not walking to separate those eggs and get some white maturation going. 

I like someone whose level of obsession makes mine seem the epitome of easygoing, nay, slack. And he’s right here in Melbourne, and is also somewhat scathing about the macaron efforts he’s found around these parts. I never knew there were so many – and this post was three years ago. I started making them before I went to Paris last year, and had never actually eaten one before; I've only noticed them on last year's Masterchef and gradually appearing around Melbourne in the last few months. But then, I don't get out much.

Among the gems of wisdom on offer at Syrup & Tang is a table that gives the proportions of almond meal and sugar per grams of egg white. This is about a hundred times better than trying to follow a recipe set out in numbers of eggwhites, or even weight of egg white; this formula frees one to use any amount of white one happens to have sitting about.

And there are comparison trouble-shooting photos. Among them I found the dead ringers for my failed, flattened attempts so far; gentle reader, it seems I am guilty of over-mixing as well as over-thinking and over-working. 

On offer are the two distinct techniques for macaron-making: French and Italian. I tried the simpler but less reliable French method first for the purple lavender ones, in which all the eggwhite (aged for 4 days in this case) is beaten at once. They were much better than any others so far, without the wild spreading after piping them out.

They even developed little feet, although the feet reduced slightly in size as they cooled. 

And then they tended to leave their guts on the silicon – too sticky inside, probably undercooked, although the edge ones had faintly browned surfaces. 

I stuck them in the fridge for a few days until I got around to trying the Italian method for the yellow lemon ones, which involves sugar syrup and beating only half the eggwhite (aged for 8 days now) – more like the Dorie Greenspan recipe. Even better! They were well-shaped and domed, and barely spread at all. 

They had feet! 

I still had problems with the sticky innards, and the trick of mostening the underside of the baking paper didn’t help...

 ...but I tried the final noted solution to this, of bunging the whole tray of macarons into the freezer for a while. They popped off like a charm.

I made up a ganache with 200g white chocolate, 200g cream and the fine zest of a lemon, and refrigerated it overnight for more solidity before using it to sandwich the macarons, but it was still too runny. It made the macarons too soft; they had to be eaten with the head held back, and the chin and fingers washed afterwards. Not good. 

Still. Closer. And these posts on the subject, amounting to essays, have been the find of the year. How can I possibly repay Syrup & Tang?

Devil’s Food White-Out Cake

For the first time in recent memory, I thought I’d found something pretty good-looking, albeit with a vague Franco Cozzo aesthetic. And it was no less pleasing in the eating – I never knew that whole dark choc-chips in cake could be such a viable thing.

This is the very same layer cake that graces the cover of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking, with a few tonings-down. I kept just the two layers rather than attempting to slice them lengthways in half.

This was mainly because I decided not to follow Dorie into crumbling one of the halves to stick all over the marshmallowy meringue-like icing – it made it look too much like a curly pelt to me. But marshmallow icing – now what could be done with that? I get to use my blowtorch all too little since I moved on from creme brulee every night, so out it came and what fun I had.

This is a great, rich, fudgy cake to have in the stable. There’s a plethora of other ways it could be dressed up. It’s reason enough to buy Baking, with the other 299 recipes as a bonus, but the recipe can be found all over the internet like a fabulous, badly kept secret.

Poppyseed and ricotta cake with lemon curd

This variation on Italian ricotta cheesecake from the Pickled Sisters Cafe is possibly the most excessively-ingrediented cake I’ve ever made, even counting The Most AMAZING Buttermilk Chocolate Cake EVER.  Alida Irwin should take note of this recipe for when her chooks are laying wildly and she has a thousand eggs to use up. Adding the final ingredient of 400g lemon curd to the mixer bowl (of no mean size) threatened to take the batter over the top of the beater. I had concerns about it all fitting in the 24cm tin that’s the closest I have to the recommended size. It went in – just – and thankfully there was no raising agent to worry about, although it did puff right up to the very edge.

It needed almost two hours in the oven. It also needed a knife dipped in warm water to slice it with, rather than a blunt serrated knife that left more of its innards piled up with every slice. It was very crumbly, and refrigerating didn’t seem to help that.

It does seem I’ve lost any remote knack I ever had for making sweet things that are also easy on the eye. But this was so lemony and lightly moist with all that ricotta and cream cheese and the nine eggs and the lemon cream accompaniment and the slight grittiness of the poppy seeds that all was forgiven. Just as well, as it fell into three pieces as I tried to shift it from springform base to serving plate, and it had to be wodged together and liberally covered in sifted icing sugar which covers a multitude of sins, as I always say, but wasn’t quite up to that crack in the centre.

Macawrong II

No. These are not mine, they are made by someone much clever than me and I have stolen the picture from a photo library because I suck at macaroning.

And again to the actual subject of my blog, despite its tangents into biscuits and slices and such. It happens – I have a brainwave about a combination of flavours, forget the pain caused by the last macawrong, do a lot of online research into an alternative recipe and method that might just work this time, and schlepp over to Brunwick to buy another lot of almond meal at the inestimable Royal Nut Company.

This time wasn’t the time it worked.

This time, I found a recipe in the LA Times by none other than my favourite Dorie Greenspan, supported by an article she’d written with interesting notes about Pierre Hermé.

It was quite different to recipes I’d tried in the past, involving beating only half the eggwhites, then adding a sugar syrup heated to 125C to them, then just mixing the unbeaten remainder to the almond-and-icing sugar mix before adding the meringue and stirring.

Another interesting variation was layering the laden baking sheet on top of a spare one, and sliding the doubled setup into the oven.

And yet another was baking the macarons for 4 minutes at the preheated 180C, then quickly opening and closing the oven, and repeating.

What could go wrong with a recipe based on one by the man who ‘spent years studying the intricacies of macarons’? Mind you, I feel I’ve done the same by now, and that’s not working out so well.

I converted Dorie’s ingredients thusly, and figured out exactly what her ½ cup/4 eggwhites should weigh.

150g almond meal

150g icing sugar

½ US cup eggwhites (120g, or about 4)

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

150g white sugar

3 tablespoons water

Dorie didn’t say so much about what ‘mix well’ meant, so with my BodyPump-exhausted arms I counted one hundred melanges in French, or at least to fifty twice over so as to avoid the numbers getting all complicated (quatre-vingt-dix-sept – why did I take up learning this language?), due to something David Lebovitz said about them in his macaron post.There is such a bewildering array of approaches out there, and research that can be done and stones turned. Perhaps I overstirred for this recipe?

The only other variation was not adding the food colouring until I’d mixed well and then halved the mixture to add the different colours and flavours, and I can’t see how this could have affected anything.

I was trying for a magma-like consistency, but I’ve never really been close enough to magma to know what that is. I knew it wasn’t good when it flowed from the piping bag without any squeezing from me, and proceeded to spread flatly as pancake batter across the fibreglass sheet.

Here’s another thing. The first tray was totally flat. The second and third, for all their failings, developed little feet! Under the same conditions. Why bother being scientific when the universe is such a bitch?

Even the ones that developed little feet were impossible to remove from the fibreglass sheet in one piece, which is something I’ve only ever experienced back when I was using baking paper. They had to be scraped off, and I stuffed angry handfuls of them in my mouth until I felt ill and soaked the rest off in the sink and watched all that eggwhite and almond meal and carefully sifted icing sugar going down the drain. 

As obsessive as I feel keeping on going with trying to perfect this, it's that I think I’ve hit on a pleasing flavour combination. The addition of lemon zest and lavender oil to the two portions lifted the shells from being something quite boring and tasteless on their own to very eatable, even without the variations on white chocolate ganache I had planned for them.

Amazing reading online about failed macarons, such as this marvellous and informative post by Not So Humble Pie and all her commenters. Some people stuff them up so badly the macarons chirp like birds as they cool! I felt better after reading that, although less good when I read that a description mirroring my result was due to a phenomenon known as broken meringue. Have I been breaking all my meringues all these years?

By some beginners luck, I once made these work – the second or third time I tried, and even the first few were a good 70% better than this. I get 10% more sucktastic at macarons every time.

I aim to attempt these again next weekend, and have separated the eggs to prove it. The whites will sit out on the bench all week, just like the chefs do it, however counter-intuitive and against all food-safety it may seem. Meanwhile, I’d love to go to this workshop that Dorie went to, in Paris, wouldn’t I just.

Georgia Pecan Bars

Another contender for the Ugly But Tasty Awards, adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies, pp108–9

Preheat oven to 180C and centre a rack in the oven. Line a 13x9” oblong slice pan, though I found this made a rather thin slice by Australian standards and I’d try a 7x9” if I did this again.

Crust

200g plain flour, sifted

½ teaspoon baking powder

100g dark muscovado sugar

120g unsalted butter, chopped up

¼ teaspoon salt [my addition]

Maida says to add the butter to the dry ingredients and cut in the butter with a pastry blender. I don’t have one of these utterly unfamiliar-looking objects, and neither does any eBay seller in Australia, so that’s too bad – into the Kitchenaid with it until it formed a rough crumbly mixture I could flatten firmly into the base of the pan and set aside.

Topping

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

50g dark muscovado sugar

¾ cup dark corn syrup (I used roughly equal parts golden syrup and raw agave nectar to approximate this)

3 tablespoons sifted plain flour

200g pecans (I used half walnuts once I found out I had too few pecans – yes, I should have checked first, and no, I didn’t – checking the Back Fridge is a very cold exercise at the moment and one readily neglected)

I also added a good handful of choc chips at the end because I felt like it and it seemed right. And I stand by that.

Beat the eggs to mix. Add vanilla, sugar, syrup and flour and beat until smooth.

Pour the topping over the waiting and uncooked crust, tilting to form an even layer. Scatter over the pecan pieces, with walnuts and choc chips in my case.

Bake for 40 minutes (an hour for me) or until the top is golden brown – which it already is, but I won’t quibble.

After about 20 minutes, carefully lift the slice out of the tin in its baking paper, and leave on a rack to cool completely before moving it to the fridge to chill for an hour before attempting to slice it up with a serrated bread knife.

Limburgse vlaai

It seems to be high rhubarb season in Alida Irwin and the Croissanteur’s charming and productive acres of garden. I staggered homewards last weekend under a bunch so generous and of such prodigious length that it couldn’t fit it in the fridge, so something had to be done to make it fit. I’m a fan of roasted rhubarb rather than stewed – it’s more colourful, more tart, more intense, and retains just enough of its former shape, and could not be easier. Here’s the word on roasting it.

Trim a bunch of rhubarb and cut into 5cm lengths (without being exact about it), and throw into baking dish with 100g raw sugar and a vanilla bean, maybe some orange or lemon peel. Cover with foil and put into a 200C oven for about 15 minutes before removing the foil, shaking the dish a bit and continuing to roast for another 5–10 minutes to reduce the syrup. The rhubarb will still look quite solid after this, but touching it with a fork will reveal that it’s meltingly soft.

Rhubarb thus roasted can sit in its fuchsia-red syrup in a container in the fridge for a few days until a fitting purpose arises for it, or until one’s Dutch colleague hears of it and suggests something that requires spelling out and googling. When no full recipes are to be had in English, well, it has to be fabricated according to The Tall Designer’s description and some Google Images. And when the traditional strawberries are unavailable for the traditional pairing with rhubarb, frozen raspberries must be dug out.

Who knows what a real Limburgse vlaai has in common with the custardy bread-pastried fruit pie I turned out? They look a bit flatter, for a start; I think there’s only one way I can really find out, though, and I need to save up first.

1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1/3 cup milk warmed in microwave for 20 seconds or so

1.75 cups plain flour

1 tablespoon raw sugar
1 teaspoon salt

60g butter, room temperature
1 egg

Sprinkle the yeast into the warm milk. While they get to know each other, mix the flour with the sugar and salt in the bowl of the mixer. When the milk looks slightly frothy, add it to the dough and mix for a minute with the dough hook. Add the egg and continue to knead until the dough comes together, then throw in not-too-hard chunks of butter.

It took about ten minutes to reach a point where it was all balling together and coming away from the sides of the bowl – for a while I thought it would never lose its buttery stickiness. Cover the bowl with cling film and place somewhere warmish to rise, such as atop the column heater.

Grease a pie dish, roll two-thirds of the dough into a circle on a floured surface – easier said than done, as it keeps shrinking itself again like slithery soft elastic – and pull and push it into the pie dish, more or less up the sides. Jab holes in the dough, cover with a tea towel and let rise again until puffy. Keep the other third of dough for rolling out and then deciding you’re not up to cutting into the traditional even strips and crisscrossing over the top, and dig out the all-too-rarely-used lattice cutter instead.

Meanwhile, make custard – I used the same basic recipe as for the quince custard cake:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons cornflour

500mL milk

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract or a vanilla bean

Whisk together the eggs, cornflour and milk in a saucepan, and then place over low–medium heat, continuing to whisk until thickened, 10–15 minutes. Take off the heat and whisk in the sugar and vanilla extract, or scrape in the bean.

Pour the cooling custard into the puffy dough case, cover with the rhubarb and raspberries, and drape the lattice-cut dough over the top, squidging it around the perimeter into oneness with the base dough.

Bake in a 200C oven for fifteen to twenty minutes until golden and oozing juice is caramelising around the lattice top. It looks as if it might be pretty good straight out of the oven, although TDT said it was eaten cold, so we did that today around the lunch table. Never before was Guinea Pig Thursday so aptly named. It was edible, not too bad at all, although I would like to know what Flemish spices or flavourings are used to round it out and take it further.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Ripples

Adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies, pp32–3

Chocolate dough

55g unsweetened chocolate*

120g unsalted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt

150g raw sugar

1 egg

150g sifted plain flour

Preheat oven to 170C and line two trays with baking paper.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave or a double boiler and leave to cool a bit.

Cream the butter; add vanilla, salt and sugar and beat well. Beat in the egg and then the melted chocolate. Reduce mixer speed and gradually add the flour just until combined. Roughly halve the dough and set aside in a couple of cereal bowls.

Peanut-butter dough

30g unsalted butter

¼ cup smooth peanut butter

100g brown sugar

2 tablespoons plain flour

Cream the butter with the peanut butter until smooth. Beat in sugar until well mixed. Add flour and mix until just combined.

Maida says to drop barely rounded teaspoonfuls of the chocolate dough on the trays, topped with the peanut-butter dough and then another layer of the chocolate. There was no way this cement-like dough was dropping anywhere, so I used fingers to shape then into something roughly circular and flat. The first lot of chocolate dough made the promised 30 biscuits, so I shaped the peanut-butter and remaining chocolate dough into roughly even logs and cut each of them into 30 even pieces to make sure it would all work out in the end. Even though Maida suggested only flattening them lightly at the very end of the process with a fork dipped in sugar, they were toppling towers of dough, so I flattened each layer – gentle I was not.

 Bake for 15 minutes, and not more – they did crisp up as they cooled, as Maida promised. But they were hardly the ‘rather thin, crisp, candylike cookie’ that had to be ‘handle[d] with care – these are fragile’ as they were described. Not at all thin, and crisp only around the edges. And the concentric circles as illustrated were far from the reality.

*I had some Trader Joe’s unsweetened chocolate in the house, which has never been the case before I went to the US in April and brought it back. I probably would have used a 70 percenter or so if I hadn’t had this. I tasted a bit out of curiosity – like taking a mouthful of bitterest Droste even for one who likes chocolate sufficiently dark to put hairs on the chest.