Ingredients and Equipment

Here are the main ingredients I used when making the chocolate french macarons. If you get into this you will find so many instructions about what not to use and how to age your egg whites including leaving them in the refrigerator for a few days and then unwrapped in a bowl outside of the refrigerator for another couple of days. But I used egg whites from a container, and just put the correct amount in a bowl on the counter and let them come up to room temperature. The container of egg whites is 100% eggs whites, so no additives. I really hate throwing away the egg yokes if you use a whole egg and I don't need to make any more desserts then I am already making. It's hard to diet when you have to sample everything you cook.

The powdered sugar is organic and therefore has no corn starch in it. I didn't know nonorganic powdered sugar had corn starch until I started reading books about making macarons. I also use Bob's Red Mill Almond Meal, which is just ground almonds. I grind the amount I want to use again, but that is a lot easier than starting with whole raw almonds. I use regular sugar for beating with the egg whites. I've heard a rumor that you need beet sugar but I have just used Domino's and it works well.

Now for the equipment. I tried three times with a disposable pastry bag and I'm not too good at it yet. Then I found a metal pastry tube that is easier for me to handle. After two times of putting the batter in the top, watching it drip out the bottom, and thinking someone should have designed covers for the tips, I realized that I could unscrew the bottom completely and turn the whole thing upside down while filling. That works well and is not so messy. Click here for more information about this pastry tube.Wilton Dessert Decorator Pro

One chef has said not to bother to make these at home because they are just too complicated. We'll see. I'm not giving up. I did try to make pistachio macarons and they were nothing like the ones in Paris. They weren't good enough to share so I had to eat all of them. I'm going to do my best to fit in an opportunity to make the chocolate ganache ones again for Easter. Next blog entry I'll post all of David Lebovitz' recipe so you don't have to search his website.

Charming

Here are several from the fifth batch. I think these even look a little better than the first attempt did. I'm going to try to do this again soon. Maybe I can even make them more uniform in size, smaller is better, and maybe I will end up with more than 22 cookies. I brought most of them to a friend's for dinner last week and left all but two, knowing how proud my trainer would be that I left all that sugar behind, no pun intended. I keep thinking pistachio.

Fifth Time's the Charm

This past weekend I made chocolate macarons with chocolate filling, again using David Lebovitz' recipe. I like this filling better than the chocolate, prune, cognac filling. It's made with heavy cream, light corn syrup, semisweet chocolate, and butter. I baked them on parchment paper on good quality cookie sheets and only put one sheet in the oven at a time. The heat in my oven isn't even enough to risk baking two at the same time. And I managed to make 22 cookies in about an hour. This may not sound like much of an achievement but I haven't yet detailed what happened when I tried to make vanilla macarons. I'll save that for another day.

These macarons were really good! The center was soft and moist and the outside had a thin shell of meringue just like they are supposed to be. Wow. The filling was delicious. These were really good - I think I just said that.

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First Attempt Completed

Here they are. Looking a little messy but tasting pretty good. The recipe for the filling is on David Lebovitz's website and it is just 15 pitted prunes, 2.5 oz finely chopped milk chocolate and two tablespoons of cognac. I chopped the prunes in my food processor and they are a bit sticky and chunky. But after adding in the melted chocolate and the cognac it all smooths out. After the filling has cooled and the meringue cookies are completely cool, just add the filling to the flat side of one cookie and put another cookie on top.

The meringue cookies have ground almonds in them instead of flour. I used raw almonds and ground them in my coffee grinder. My food processor is somewhere between 25 and 30 years old and doesn't quite seem to have the power to grind up the almonds.

Since this first batch I have made macarons four more times. I have started using Bob's Red Mill Almond Meal/Flour and even though it is ground, I still grind it again in the coffee grinder. I have also learned that it is best to use organic powdered sugar because it does not contain cornstarch.