DARING BAKERS MAKE FRENCH MACARONS...YES, TIME FOR FEET AGAIN!

"Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential."

Winston Churchill

It's the 27th again, time to post the Daring Bakers challenge, a wonderful & fun group brought together by Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. This month we were led into a merry dance; the challenge was to find 'FEET'. Hail the great French macaron/macaroon, an elegant French cookie that I find entirely temperamental and fiddly. One that has reduced me to tears in the past, brought me to my knees in the quest for 'feet'...yet one that gave me untold joy when I finally found them.

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Unless you’ve been frozen in permafrost for the past five years, you’ve likely noticed that cupcake bakeries have popped up all over like iced mushrooms. Knock one down, and three take its place. Much has been made about not only the cupcake’s popularity, but also its incipient demise as the sweet du jour. Since we seem to be a culture intent on the next sensation, pundits, food enthusiasts and bloggers have all wondered what this sensation might be. More than a few have suggested that French-style macaroons (called macarons in France) might supplant the cupcake. This may or may not come to pass, but the basic premise of the French macaroon is pretty damned tasty.In the United States, the term “macaroon” generally refers to a cookie made primarily of coconut. But European macaroons are based on either ground almonds or almond paste, combined with sugar and egg whites. The texture can run from chewy, crunchy or a combination of the two. Frequently, two macaroons are sandwiched together with ganache, buttercream or jam, which can cause the cookies to become more chewy. The flavor possibilities and combinations are nigh endless, allowing infinitely customizable permutations.

French macaroons are notorious for being difficult to master. Type in “macaroon,” “French macaroon” or “macaron” in your search engine of choice, and you will be inundated not only with bakeries offering these tasty little cookies, but scores and even hundreds of blogs all attempting to find the perfect recipe, the perfect technique. Which one is right? Which captures the perfect essence of macaroons? The answer is all of them and none of them. Macaroons are highly subjective, the subject of passionate, almost Talmudic study and debate. Chewy? Crisp? Age your egg whites? Ground the nuts or use nut meal or nut flour? Cooked sugar syrup, or confectioners’ sugar? In the words of a therapist, what do you think is the ideal macaroon? The answer lies within you...

A mac obssessed group of us foodie pals on twitter had ventured into mac territory a few months ago, and it took me many attempts before I got it right. 'Many' translate into 6 attempts on a single morning, in a mad frenzy, batch after batch, failure after failure. It was on the 7th attempt that I finally tasted success with David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macarons with Pistachio Buttercream. All credit went to a great bunch of tweeples who held my hand. Of them many were Daring Bakers - Meeta, Aparna, Hilda, Jamie, Ria & Barbara! Jamie was crowned the Mac Queen...and boy, am I glad I got all that experience. What worked for me then was a much lower temperature and David Lebovitz's recipe; I now call him the 'Mac Mastah'!!When the challenge was announced this month I was doing the salsa, the flamenco, the tango, the cha-cha-cha ... even the macarona, if there was one! We needed 'FEET' here, and I knew just what I had to do; also knew just how to behave if they failed. No more tears, no more panic. Many egg whites lined up, almond meal made from scratch & I was ready to roll. Popped batch one into the oven with the DB recipe, and the first lot at 93C turned out beautifully, with the prettiest feet developing. All was lost at 190C & my tray bubbled over. UGH! I should have known, because that's just what happened when I tried a David Lebovitz recipe during the mac attack at 190C.

Then again, no drama. Calmly wrapped the parchment paper, binned it & began all over again, but this time with my tried & tested 140C variant on the Lebovitz recipe, sans cocoa. Found colour inspiration and sound advice from Trissa @ Trissalicious. One look at her blog, & her beautiful coloured macs, returned me to an uber confident baker, unfazed by failure. Exchanged mails with her, and was back at it in no time, again with a 1 egg white batch. I divide the batter into 5 portions and added a drop of neon colour to each. Ended with vanilla sugar flavoured, pretty coloured French macarons, not perfect, but good enough for me. Loved doing the challenge, maybe because it worked for me. I sandwiched them with a vanilla butter cream, and the kids loved them. I'd do this again soon, but for the fact that I find macarons far too sweet. I might try them again in the winter with a bittersweet chocolate filling, or might try them again just because I love the way they look! They really are stunning little creatures!I did a batch with pumpkin pie spice too, just because I had some pumpkin puree left over from this Praline Pumpkin Pie here, and I wanted to make something pumpkin pie spice flavoured. These turned out delish too, but we finished them sooner because of the pumpkin puree filling, as it had more moisture. I preferred these to the vanilla buttercream ones, as I found them less sweet.Awesome tasty cookies. I'm including them here for the Great HallowTweet ... a Halloween Bloghop by Renee @ Flamingo Musings (refer my post here)!

Vanilla Macarons with Vanilla Buttercream
as adapted from David Lebovitz's recipe
(I made half this recipe )
Macaron Batter
1 cup powdered vanilla sugar
½ cup powdered almonds
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 tablespoons granulated sugar
Liquid neon colours

Method:
Preheat oven to 140 degrees C.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and have a pastry bag with a plain tip (about 1/2-inch, 2 cm) ready.
Grind together the powdered sugar with the almond powder and cocoa so there are no lumps; use a blender or food processor since almond meal that you buy isn't quite fine enough.
In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they begin to rise and hold their shape. While whipping, beat in the granulated sugar until very stiff and firm, about 2 minutes. (They should stay in the bowl if you hold it upside down. try at your own peril!!)
Carefully fold the dry ingredients, in two batches, into the beaten egg whites with a flexible rubber spatula. When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop folding and scrape the batter into the pastry bag (standing the bag in a tall glass helps if you're alone).
Divide into bowls and gently mix in the colour if you want too. See Trissa's post here.
Pipe the batter on the parchment-lined baking sheets in 1-inch (3 cm) circles (about 1 tablespoon each of batter), evenly spaced one-inch (3 cm) apart.
Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15-18 minutes.
Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream
Double the ingredients if you are making the whole recipe above.
50gms butter at room temperature
50gms powdered vanilla sugar
1/4 vanilla bean
1 tbsp light cream
Method:
Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into a bowl with all the ingredients, & whip together to firm consistency.
Pipe onto cookies & sandwich. Store in refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Note: For pumpkin spice macarons, 1 added 1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice to almond meal & blended for a few seconds. For pumpkin buttercream, I mixed 1 tbsp of pumpkin puree to a white chocolate ganache. These macs should be consumed faster because the moisture content in the pumpkin buttercream could lead them to be soggy faster than the regular buttercream.

♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥

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Do stop by and see the other Daring Bakers around the world find their feet HERE!

Thank you Amy @ Baking Without Fear for this wonderful challenge!

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