Though I respect macarons, macaroons are much closer to my heart. My grandfather, a man of great dignity and taste, was crazy about them. Here I should insert that a really good macaroon is a rare thing. Too often macaroons are dry, papery and almost completely devoid of real coconut flavor. Thus, most people — […]
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Foodies have come to revere the macaron the way Catholics do the communion wafer. Therefore it only seems fitting to open this tutorial with a prayer. As we prepare to undertake this mystery, let us acknowledge our failures and ask the Lord for pardon and strength. Amen.
Now then, to business. What I’m about to demonstrate is the classic French method for making macarons. There’s another method, called the “Italian” method because it employs Italian meringue. The French method, I think, is more straightforward if not as adaptable for incorporating exotic flavors.
READ ONThis is something else you hear an awful lot about in regard to macarons. What we call “aged eggs” French pastry chefs simply call “eggs”, since they tend not to refrigerate theirs. They just get them very fresh, use them relatively quickly, and order more. Here we’re a little more uptight about maintaining egg freshness, […]
READ ONI’ve been catching a lot of flak the last many months for not having a presence on Facebook. I’ve resisted it, frankly, because I have no idea what I’ll actually do there. Today I can finally say to those of you who’ve been so adamant about it: you win. I’ve secured a Facebook page and […]
READ ONAsk that same experienced gourmand I referenced down below about what distinguishes the perfect macaron, and he’ll tell you that the most important feature of a good macaron is its “foot.” What are “feet” in the context of macarons? They’re the rough, uneven bits on either side of the filling, the bottoms of the disks […]
READ ONAnother very good question, since a recipe for macarons — practically speaking — can be as few as four or five lines long. Strange then that most magazine features on macarons go on for pages as authors labor to explain the picayune nuances of getting a macaron just right. Some of them get downright mystical. […]
READ ONMacarons wouldn’t be macarons if they weren’t fussy things. Though they are at their core very simple little cookies, a variety of things can go wrong during their preparation, preventing them from achieving the Platonic ideal. Me, I don’t see why that’s the end of the world. However I confess that if mine didn’t come […]
READ ONThat question from reader Phil H., and it’s good one. The thing is, in most of the English-speaking world, the term “petit four” refers to a very specific thing. That being a small, layered cake covered with poured fondant. Among the French, however, the term refers to an entire family of small sweets. The word […]
READ ONRegular reader and commenter Chana writes in with this: You see — you take a simple potato knish, change the dough a litte, fill it with something a little different, and everyone is screaming “you call that a knish? You call THAT a KNISH?? Are you crazy? That is NOT a KNISH!!” You take a […]
READ ONSo. Two disks of almond meringue stuck together with a filling. Not terribly much to work with from a creative standpoint. Or at least that’s the conclusion Parisian pastry chefs seem to have collectively arrived at in the decades after Desfontaines’ innovation. For more than fifty years macarons remained pretty straightforward affairs. The meringue disks […]
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