Parisian Macarons

Cardamom Lemon with Buttercream Frosting and Chocolate with Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache

I have never eaten a french maracon, before today that is. All the bakeries in the Slope like Trois Pommes and Almondine have these exquisitely colored cookies, although that noun seems too ignoble for macarons, but I always give in to the chocolate eclair. As a result I was a macaron virgin until today, which apparently is very gauche in the cooking blog circles I now run in. There is an entire community out there in the blogosphere dedicated to perfecting macarons.

They diagnose your mistakes based on the symptoms of your lopsided, bubbly, or footless cookies and post pictures of their beautiful masterpieces. Based on the technicality and fragility of the recipes, one would think they are performing a hemispherectomy (which is exactly what it sounds like). But you're not, right? They're just cookies that happen to be a bit snobby.

After all they are Parisian. I was certainly timid when I sat down to view all my tutorials and down four different recipes but my confidence grew with help from Bravetart's recipe which assured me that I did not need to age my egg-whites or use dehydrated egg-white powder to stiffen my meringue.

I was nearly certain that my macarons (not to be confused with coconut macaroons) would fail miserably, but when I peaked into the oven and saw that they were developing perfectly ruffled feet (the little ring around the cookie), I squealed and ran into my dad's room screaming, "Daddy, daddy, my macarons grew feet!" He was on a serious conference call and stopped, pausing the entire meeting, to compliment my achievement. I think he was wondering why I didn't claim to be dying, since that's the only bona fide reason to interrupt him. I thought it was just as important and he did too after tasting them.

To begin you need almond meal, which according to all of these blogs, is rather easy to find. I however searched two grocery stores and couldn't find it so instead I made my own. I purchased about 150 grams of almonds, which I then put in the food processor off and on for ten minutes, until it was a fairly fine powder. It is very important to weigh all of your ingredients on a scale rather than rely on volumetric measurements.

Unlike in lab where we have digital scales that you can re-calibrate based on the weight of your weighing boat, I had to subtract the weight of my bowl from the final weight to make sure that all my measurements were specific enough to satisfy the macaron judges, whom I felt were most certainly watching me. I measured out 115 grams of almond meal and 230 grams of powdered confectioner's sugar into the food processor together and ground the mixture for a minute at a time.

Then I sifted the mixture through a strainer into a bowl and ground the parts that did not go through. I reground those afterwards until nearly all of the mixture was fine enough to pass through a sieve. I set that aside and in my mixing bowl I added 144 grams of egg-whites (aged for about 30 minutes not that that did anything but increase my chances of contracting salmonella poisoning), 72 grams of sugar and 1/2 tsp of salt and beat on a low speed (4 on a kitchen aid) for 3 minutes, on 7 for 3 minutes, on 8 for three minutes and then I paused to add my flavor.

I might also add that I split my ingredients in half: part for the chocolate macarons and part for the cardamom lemon ones. So for my first batch I added ground cardamom seed (I used a spoon after I broke open the pods to crush them), 1/2 tsp of lemon extract to the meringue, and some yellow food gel to color the cookies. I mixed it for one last time according to Bravetart's recipe on my mixer's highest speed for a minute or so.

Then I folded in the almond/confectioner's sugar mix with a rubber spatula. You must fold it so that everything mixes (this could take a minute or so) and make sure you press against the sides to burst any bubbles the egg-whites might be holding on to. I then cut off the tip of a ziplock bag and added my batter to it and squirted 1.5 inch circles of batter onto wax paper covered cookie tins (I recommend silicone mats instead because the wax paper stuck a lot to my cookies).

Tap the trays a few times to expel the air bubbles. Set your oven to 300 degrees and put them in for 18 minutes. Let them cool for 20 minutes or so and be careful not to break the very fragile tops when you pick them up. Each macaron uses two cookies like an oreo with frosting or some sort of filling in the middle. To complement my cardamom lemon shells, I made buttercream frosting out of Irish butter (just eyeball this), confectioner's sugar and a dash of brandy.

Mix it together adding more powdered sugar until it doesn't taste like straight butter, but rather like delicious frosting. I put a tsp or so on each cookie and then gently pressed them together. My chocolate macarons were not as successful as the cardamom ones simply because I added too much cocoa powder, which made the batter much too stiff.

Instead of cardamom powder (25 grams) and lemon extract, I added 25 grams of cocoa powder (I recommend less). My filling was bittersweet chocolate ganache. Boil 1 cup of heavy cream and then add it to a bowl of 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate so that the chocolate melts.

Stir continuously. In the meantime I softened 4 tbs of butter and pressed it around my plate with a rubber spatula. Once the cream and chocolate mixture has cooled a bit, stir in the butter until everything is mixed together and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes or so.

The chocolate macarons turned out a bit lumpy and chewy, but still delicious, however, the cardamom lemon macarons were amazing. I am so excited to experiment with different combinations of flavors and to not perfect but improve my macaron skills. The possibilities are endless.

Lemon Danish

Sunday mornings at grandma and grandpa's house in Fresh Meadows always consisted of two elements: jazz and lemon danishes from the Cake Box. Gretel, the baker, would make fresh pastries in the morning and my grandfather would bring my mother a jelly doughnut, my father a piece of pecan pie and for me well a lemon danish. That is until Gretel moved upstate to be closer to her family and in protest, all the bakers of America boycotted the lemon danish.

A few years ago, I found a nice version at the 'French' chain, "Au Bon Pain", which has since deteriorated primarily because they stopped making lemon danishes and resorted to apricot, cheese and cherry ones. No place else in New York City seems to make them and so Sunday mornings at grandma and grandpa's house now consist of jazz and cherry almond cream danishes. I scoop the cherries out with a spoon because in addition to my prejudice against raisins, I don't like Maraschino cherries either.

I did however come upon them in one of the oddest of places: Nerd Camp at the Johns Hopkins University. Every morning I could look forward to a banana and a lemon danish from the Fresh Foods Cafe referred to as the FFC by JHU kids. Each morning I would rush to the pastry cart and locate the lone lemon danish, which even in a pile of its own was unpopular. I rescued it. That is of course one of the reasons I chose Hopkins after all! No, ok, it was the neuroscience but the danishes definitely help.

In my Freshman Seminar class last semester (our version of a college english class), when we began "Hamlet", my professor decided to have us draw Hamlet because his age and physical appearance is never explicitly referred to by Shakespeare. I drew a hipster (I do go to school on the Lower East Side after all) wearing iPod buds and listening to Bob Dylan, who happened to be reading "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by Tom Stoppard and eating a lemon danish. I thought that was ruther clevah.

Since I am on break I had enough time to dedicate to the arduous process of danish making. I started yesterday and finished this morning, mostly because my first batch did not work out very well, although my second more than made up for it. The trick to danishes, not that I am a seasoned pastry chef, is butter.  I took 1 cup of softened unsalted butter (I used Breakstone but Irish butter might be better) and creamed it with 1/3 cup of flour.

I flattened it lightly with my rolling pin (the mixture is mostly butter so it's not a dough like consistency at all) and put it the fridge. Next up I added 1 packet of dry yeast to 1 1/2 cups of flour and mixed it. In a pot I warmed up (just so it's warm not hot) 1 1/4 cups of milk, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of salt and then added it to the flour/yeast mixture. I added 1/2 tsp of almond and lemon extract and 1 egg and whisked it all together. Gradually I poured in 2 1/2 cups of flour to this mixture and knead. I left this dough to rise for a few hours but all you need is one.

When my dough had risen to nearly double its original size, I split it into two equal parts and took out one of the butter/flour sheets from earlier. I rolled one of the dough halves into a square and placed the butter sheet onto it and folded it over, then I pressed around the edges to enclose it within the dough. Then I rolled the dough out into a long rectangle and folded it into thirds. Roll again and fold it in thirds but this time put it in the fridge for 30 minutes and repeat with the second half. When I removed it from the fridge I repeated this process two more times and then put it in the fridge again for 10 minutes.

Now it is time to shape the dough into danish pastry like structures. The most common structure I used was the flower, which I found a tutorial for on youtube. You cut the dough into strips (the width depends on your taste but I had three-four inch strips) and then into squares. Roll out each square and then fold into a triangle and make two cuts one on either side. Unfold it and you should have little arrow tips on either vertex. Fold it into a triangle the other way and make the same cuts. Then unfold and draw up two ends and press together until they stick and then draw up the other two ends and do the same. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcT8c5lNUM

You can add the filling before you do this or after depending on what you're using. I chose to fill afterwards since I didn't want my lemon curd cooked in the oven! Bake your pastries at 450 F for 8 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown, make sure they don't burn. Depending on size this should yield about 18 pastries according to my recipe from allrecipes.com.

To make the lemon curd filling I used "Tea and Sympathy's" recipe, which calls for 1/4 cup of butter melted in a double boiler. Then I added 1 cup of sugar and stirred until I had a smooth texture. I added four eggs and the juice and zest of three lemons. Stir every few minutes until the consistency is thick (25-30 minutes). Once it is thick enough, put it in the refrigerator for about an 1 hour or until it is cold. This thickens it even more.

I used an icing bag (or rather a ziplock with its tip cut off) to add the curd to each danish. I also made a glaze for the crust, which I added after they cooled off a bit, consisting of 3/4 cup of confectioner's sugar, 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/2 tsp lemon extract, 1/8 cup of melted butter and a bit of water to make it smooth. I drizzled the glaze onto the pastries Jackson Pollock style and asked my mom fourteen times if she liked them or not. She liked them the first twelve times but the last two were resounding no's (but not to my pastries). 

Flyless Graveyard

While the English are not known for food, a fact which is substantiated by sardines on toast and black pudding, I have taken a liking to countless elements of the unloved cuisine. The posh names that accompany other ethnic dishes are substituted by monikers like spotted dick and flies graveyard. Both are named after the currants embedded within, but as I might have mentioned I have an irrational aversion to dehydrated grapes and in the words of Eloise, I simply must must must avoid them at all costs!

Luckily, I had the opportunity to make what I dubbed flyless graveyards more commonly known as Eccles Cakes. What strikes me so about English fare is its ability to bring me into a nursery rhyme and tuck me in with bedtime stories about fairies and maidens. I am an unequivocal anglophile and as such I will continue to cook English puddings and cakes, pies and the like.

I first learned about Eccles Cakes in a cookbook I have called, "Breakfast, Lunch and Tea," from a patisserie in Paris called the Rose Cafe. Yesterday I had planned on making something more complex, challenging my newfound skills, but after teaching little figure skaters all afternoon and then studying for finals and writing an essay on Virginia Woolf and Sigmund Freud, all I had energy for were Eccles Cakes. To begin, simply take about 3/4 cup of unsalted butter and knead in about 2 cups of flour and a pinch of sugar.

Add 3 tablespoons of ice cold water and roll into a ball. Put that in the refrigerator for 10+ minutes and in the meantime make your Eccles' mixture. Take 5 1/2 ounces of brown sugar and add 1 ounce of melted unsalted butter. Mix this together completely with a spoon or a whisk. Then add 6 oz of currants, 1 zested lemon, a few shakes of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice and a dash of brandy or Grand Marnier. Mix this all together and make sure you smell it (just to see how good it smells).

Set that aside and take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out until it's about a 1/4 of an inch thick. Use a small bowl or large cup/mug (3-4 inch diameter) to cut out 12 circles. Then add a teaspoon of your mixture to the center of every circle, wet your finger with water and press down on the circumference of dough. Draw up all the sides and pinch them together, then roll into a ball. That is the bottom of your pastry. Brush the dough with egg white and make three horizontal slices (1/2 inch long) or a cross on the top. Set your oven to 375 F and cook for 10-12 minutes or until your cakes are tanned and slightly hard on the exterior.

You can eat Eccles Cakes for dessert as we did with a scoop of vanilla or lemon ice cream or for breakfast as I did this morning on my way to skating with a cup of hot cocoa. While the temperature was 17 F, the Eccles Cake warmed my soul...(not my toes however).

Operation Mincemeat

In 1943, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu of the Royal Navy concocted a plan at the behest of the British military to divert the Germans' attention away from Sicily so that the allies could successfully invade. Montagu and a fellow intelligence officer, Charles Cholmondeley, figured that if they had a body wash ashore carrying letters between highly ranked British officers specifying Britain's attack locations as Greece and Sardinia instead of Sicily, they could fool the Germans into exporting their troops, thus reducing the amount of casualties the allies suffered. They found a corpse, a Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael who had died of rat poisoning, whom the medical examiner believed could pass as a drowning victim, and called him Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. He was given an identity as moderately ranked officer who was flying elsewhere in Europe to deliver his top secret letters. The briefcase was strapped to a chain, which was attached to his trench-coat and personal documents were put in his pockets including a love letter, a solicitor's letter, ticket stubs and a receipt for his shirt. 

To ensure that the Germans who would eventually find him understood why these letters would not be delivered through normal channels, personal and sensitive letters were included among the formal documents. When the submarine HMS Seraph released his body into the sea near the coast of Spain, currents brought him ashore where he was found by a fisherman, who alerted the occupying Germans. The Germans sent the letters back to the British consulate, as was custom, and Montagu had his resident scientist determine whether or not they had been opened: they had. He sent a message to his superiors, "Mincemeat swallowed whole." Mincemeat was the name of this entire covert operation and after the Nazis averted their troops to Greece and Sardinia, the allies successfully attacked Sicily. I was inspired after watching the film, "The Man who Never was," about Operation Mincemeat, to embark on my own mission.

Although there were lower stakes than the free world, I took my mission very seriously. I began with 1 and 1/4 lbs cubes of steak, which our butcher, Staubitz Market, generously cut for me. In a large creuset pot, I poured 1 cup of apple juice (feel free to use cider when it's in season) and the steak and waited for it to boil, turning the meat every once in a while so it cooked evenly. Once it came to a boil, I let it simmer for 20 minutes to tenderize the meat. Then I took each piece out and cut it into smaller bits, and put it back into the pot. While the meat was tenderizing, I peeled, cored and sliced four pears (use apples if you prefer). I added the fruit to the pot after I recut the meat in addition to 1 and 1/3 cups white sugar, a handful of citrus peel (orange and lemon), 1/2 cup of butter, 1 16 ounce jar of sour cherry preserves, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. You can also add 2 and 1/2 cups of raisins and dried currants if you wish. I let this simmer, without the lid, for 90 minutes. This stage is supposed to radically thicken your mixture, although mine was left slightly liquidy. This turned out fine, but I would like to explore why it didn't thicken appropriately. 

At the very end of the 90 minutes, I added 1/4 of a 16 oz can of pitted sour cherries, without adding the liquid they are sitting in. Turn off the flame and here's the controversial part for me: store it in the refrigerator for a week (this may congeal it more) so that the flavor has time to ruminate (official definition of ruminate: think deeply about something/chew the cud). I however, as I may have mentioned in my chocolate cake post, have a lack of patience when it comes to my culinary creations (ok, maybe it's just a sweet tooth). In short, I didn't wait a week, I waited two minutes, although I found some credible sources that gave me the go ahead. I warn you before researching mincemeat too much, that there are fanatics, and they are odd, very very odd. Who knew there was an art to throwing in every spice known to human kind into a pot filled with beef and sugar? They did.

I then put my oven onto 350 F and poured the mixture into my pie crust and let it bake for 40 minutes. I recommend orthogonal cross-hatching for your top layer of crust (if you aren't studying for a linear algebra final and getting it mixed up with cooking, just look at how I layered the crust in my pictures). I use my dad's pie crust recipe, wherein I take 1/2 cup salted butter and add it to 1 and 1/3 cups flour. Knead this together and add three tablespoons of ice cold water, continuing to knead. Once your dough is a singular mass, put it onto a piece of wax paper taped onto your surface and cover with another piece of wax paper. (Dust surface with flour). I then use my nifty ceramic rolling pin, which I can fill up with ice water, to flatten the dough to within an inch of it's life. You know the rest. Feel free to add a pinch of salt or sugar. You may need to make some extra for the cross-hatch pattern. 

Once the pie was ready, we sat down to eat and watch "The Man who Never was," and as I put the first piece in my mouth I thought, "Mincemeat swallowed whole!"