Macarons, do I even like them?

When the macarons took the world by storm, I didn’t get sucked up in the whirlwind. The first macaron I ever tasted turned me against them. Eventually, I reluctantly gave them a second chance, and they weren’t horrific, but not great. After ignoring many opposing opinions by friends for a long long time, I suppose I was ready to try again, ’cause I did. If I ever was to change my mind about them, what better way is there, but to make them under time pressure and subject your family and friends to them. ‘Cause that really gives them a fighting chance, right? Doing it in a rush.

About two days left before the family would descend, I pulled out a couple of cookbooks and looked through them, planning what to make. In one, there where tons of macarons, the first few I just turned to the next page as quickly as I saw them. Too sweet, sickly sweet, weirdly dry and sticky at the same time. Macarons, I’m certainly not making those. Yet, I stopped turning the pages as I spotted a lime and mint macaron.  With my interest piqued I eyed through the recipe, it didn’t seem that bad, or hard to do. The lime and mint counteracting the sweet, I decided to give it a whirl. What’s the worst that could happen?

Being a cooking show fan, I’ve seen them made so many times, that for once I decided it was worth to sift and be precise and all that hassle that I usually dismiss as quickly as possible. I weighed the 170g powdered sugar and the 110g of almond flour and sifted it. Ending up with some of the larger pieces of the almond flour left in the sieve. I eyed the recipe again and saw that it said “110g sifted almond flour (see page …)”. Turns out, they wanted you to sift it, then weigh it, than sift it again with the sugar. Hassle. I put what was left in the sieve on the scale found it to be approx. 30g and weighed out 30 more that I sifted in, resulting, hopefully, with the right amount in the bowl.

In another bowl, I whipped the 3 egg whites firm, added 2 tbsp granulated sugar, and kept going until it was stiff. Then I folded in the flour/sugar mix along with a few drops of green food coloring, going slowly and gently as to not loose the fluff I’d just created with the whites. Don’t give up, it took me quite a while to loose all pockets of flour and get the color somewhat even. Then I spent some time looking for where on earth I’d put the piping bags, after which I got most of the mix into one. I’ve yet to become a piping fiend,  but I guess experience is needed first. I piped out various round blobs onto a sheet of parchment paper. First I tried piping in a small spirally blob from outside in to center, but after a couple of those I gave letting it grow itself way. Where you hold the bag and tip still and let it build itself. That was the way to go, I decided. Then the mass production started. Resulting in somewhat similar yet different sized circles.

There where supposed to be about 50 of them, according to the recipe. I accidentally doubled that, as they where apparently supposed to be bigger than I thought. I went from “this is so wrong and will look as horrendous as they will taste, what on earth am I doing?” to “I’ve got this, it isn’t hard, this is super easy to make. Look at me go!” and back a couple of times before I eventually ran ought of the mixture.

Turn on the oven to 125c, you’ve got time to let the oven heat up as you’re supposed to leave the piped circles air for about 45 minutes for a skin to form on them. Which is important so they don’t crack and do get that glossy smooth top. Which in turned I’ve learned from watching cooking competitions on tv, going “no, stupid, you need to let them rest! They’re going to get a rough cracked surface, love” as the expert I am. or not, seeing as I didn’t leave them out long enough, I sort of read 20-30 minutes and not 45 so that didn’t happen. They go in low in the oven for about 20 minutes, until they can be picked up from the parchment, but before they get any color. Let them cool. I packed them in a tin over night when they were cooled enough, to keep them crisp until I had the filling done.  Varying in size, wondering if I’d find even two same-ish sized to match up, I still had a slightly good feeling about them. They were sweet, but not that bad, I could sense the potential.

Next day, time to get that filling sorted. In a pot, put 125g white chocolate, roughly 10 mint leaves, I picked the big ones and took a couple more. Remember, so far, my opinion on macaraons were too sweet, so I wanted to counteract that with the filling, with the sweet white chocolate working against me. Make sure to chop the leaves before putting them in. The recipe calls for the zest of a lime, I added some lime juice, a bit more acidic lime to balance the sweetness out. I poured in probably a bit less than 2 tbsp of honey,  eyeballed it. At this point I had started to dismiss the hassle that I said in the beginning I wouldn’t. I’ve done ganaches before so I figured what could possible go wrong. Lastly add in about 2 tbsp of double cream. Put on some heat and stir until melted. As I used vegan white chocolate, it’s not as white as milk white chocolate is, the filling melted and blended into this off-white, not a good colour for food, yellow with green specks from the lime zest and mint leaves. I quickly decided to make that green as well, added in a bit of food coloring and stirred it in. Not an epic colour, but at least not an off-putting colour.

Pour the filling into a piping bag, and leave it in the fridge to cool and set for about 1 hour or so. This time, I approached it as a piping-pro, having the full experience of piping yesterday. I did actually get it all into the bag this time around. I also left it in the fridge for longer than an hour as it didn’t feel firm at all. Eventually, I figured it good-enough. Well, I was running out of time so, it was now or not at all. I went in with a good feeling and was immediately crushed. Or melted? The first went good, I piped some filling and put a somewhat similar sized cookie on top. Now, where and how do I put it? I placed it back in the tin, laying flat and decided to mass-produce. So, I piped a couple at the same time, put the piping bag down to start putting them together and in the tin. Before I had done two, the filling on the last was running down the sized. And as for the ones in the tin, the top cookie was sliding off. After another what on earth am I doing. I took the lid from the tin, and started standing them up on the side instead. This way, I figured, if the filling runs, at least it runs down and pools underneath the side of the two hopefully still gluing them together somehow. I kept doing them one and one and filling up the lid in circles from outside in, standing them up. It went surprisingly well, but as soon as I started thinking it, the filling spilled, the cookies slid… You get the idea, the macarons were out to get me, but I had at this point decided that they were going to be served, even if they had to be renamed to sticky almond-meringues standing in circles in a puddle of lime-mint ganache.

The last one done and placed on the tin-lid, I stuck it in the fridge, shut the door and decided to forget about them until serving-time. Time to move on and clean up. I always leave stuff to the last minute, I do my best work right before the deadline. So I had all the other things to get ready and couldn’t obsess about the macarons that I don’t even like the stupid things. Why did I even bother? Stupid.

But, they were good. I mean, really good. I’m definitely going to make them again, good. I’m a convert. Well, I still think they’re sweet, and macarons are teetering on the risk of sickly-sweet. But maybe there might be some good ones out there, amidst the, fudge dipped in sugar caramelized and served with honey sweet, sweet ones. Or weirdly dry and sticky ones. Ok, so I’m not crazy enthusiastic about them? But I’m willing to give them another go. Some of them.

I made macarons. Good ones. But, macarons, do I even like them? Really?

‘Til next time, give it a whirl. Whatever it is that you’ve ruled out, deemed impossible without really trying. Give it a whirl and see if it really is that impossible or horrendous. It rarely is.

The mysterious case of the disappearing Saffron Biscotti

People! Hi! 😀

First of all, let me just say, make tons because a bit more than half mysteriously disappears from the time they’ve entered the oven until they’re stored in a box. Second of all, that box, make sure it doesn’t have a false bottom and lid and sides and that it’s properly locked away, because the biscotti keep disappearing. It’s like how socks disappear in the washing, but on an extremely exaggerated rate. Extremely. Okay, so, warnings have been given. Beware.

Now, don’t be scared, the disappearing biscotti mystery aside, they are so freakishly easy to make, but looks and sounds like they aren’t. Which means that practically everyone gets massively impressed when you ask if they want some home-made biscottis, biscotties, biscottoes? Biscotti.

As it is Christmas season (YIPPIE!!! HURRAY!!! FINALLY!!! This should be no surprise to people who have caught a snippet of my ringtone the past 3 years(?), which still is an instrumental version of “sleigh bells”. I LOVE CHRISTMAS. And, just to let this parenthesis go on a bit more, let me just tell you that having a Christmas tune for a ring tone is extremely effective, because post-Christmas from when most sane people are sick of it until right about now, I do everything in my power to answer before people realize what tune it is, getting some undeserved looks and giggles if they do. But spread the joy, Christmas tunes are cozy and joyous. And if they smile, then just know that you put a smile on someone else’s face and that’s great!) Sorry, I do realize I’m actually sort of mid-sentence, there is a start somewhere before the beginning of the over-extended parenthesis. For both our sakes, I’m going to go ahead and restart this whole paragraph in the next one, let me just scroll up and see what it was. Okay.

As it is Christmas season, I made Saffron biscotti instead of normal ones. And, I’ve lost my train of thought, so I’m going to go ahead and start the recipe that you’ve by now started wondering if it would ever appear. You and me both.

Turn on the oven, 175 degrees. That’s step one. And since I always forget to take out the baking trays and line them with paper before I’ve got one hand covered in the dough and have to balance the bowl with the dough on my hip as I try to fix everything without the dough ending up on the floor, I’m going to tell you, do that now, take out trays, 2 of them, line them with baking paper. Phew. Potential disaster averted.

Melt 100g of butter in a pot. Measure up 1,5 dl caster sugar. Lightly crush 0,5g of saffron along with some of the sugar. My mom taught me to use sugar cubes when crushing saffron, when the cubes have turned into caster sugar the saffron is lightly crushed. Tadaa! Mix the saffron with the butter, pour into a bowl and let it cool.

Mix in 2 eggs and the rest of the sugar. Mix 5 dl of flour with 1 tsp of baking powder. Lightly chop 1,5 dl of almonds, and let me tell you, when a recipe tells me to lightly chop something, I take it very literally. I measure up the almonds pour them out on a chopping board, pick up a knife and chop until most of the almonds at least have some sort of trace of being touched by the knife, not necessarily cut, but grazed, and not all but most.

To the saffron mixture, add the almonds and the flour mixture. The dough is very soft and sticky. The original recipe will tell you to divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll them to the length of the baking trays. But most of the times, the dough have not been roll-able, a definite lack of roll-ability. So, I’ll tell you to sort of aim for a quarter of the dough, scrape it of your hand onto the lined tray and then squish/drag it out into the shape of the imagined roll and repeat until you have the 4 “rolls”.

Bake in the oven for about 15 min and then let them cool somewhat. While the oven cools down to 100 degrees, because you have now told it to do that and I have now told you to do that.

Cut each length into slices, if you do it somewhat diagonally like the traditional biscotti they turn out a bit longer, but there’s no need. At this stage, the ends tend to magically disappear, biscotti have no end bits, right? Put the sliced biscotti back on the lined tray with one of the cut surfaces facing upwards.

Dry in the oven for at least 1 hour, or until they are dry. During the drying process biscotti systematically disappears, some claim that it has to do with checking if they are dry yet, some claim that that never happened. At some point, flip them around so the other side is facing up. Let the oven door be slightly ajar. If you want to really dry them out you can leave them in the oven, turn it down to 30ish degrees, and leave them overnight with the door ajar. Drying them out properly will make them keep longer, but they never last long enough for that to be a problem.

That’s it. Store them in a paper bag or a tin so they don’t go soft.

Enjoy, or maybe you already have? 😛

‘Til next time, have some delicious, easy to make, biscotti!