Zebras
Pink FlamingosThe life of a food blogger is a series of ups and downs, a bumpy road of utterly brilliant, finger-licking successes and horrible, miserably stunning failures! Watery, separated sauces, breads hard as rock, cakes dry and unpalatable, soufflés fallen. If we’ve cooked it, we’ve had it fail. Now, this is only human nature, you argue, and you would be right. Life is an unexpected blend of comedy and tragedy, brag-worthy triumphs and embarrassing mishaps. Which, as I say, is all fine and dandy and makes for a much more interesting, colorful life (less the cursing), but when one is a food blogger and the failure is in the kitchen and (worse) we are tight with posting time, misery sets in. The dilemma then arises: do I post the failure on my blog or not? Should I only post the perfect, the tried and true? Or should I brave the shame of failure and open myself up to the risk of losing face and reputation? Shall I use my stunning failure as a teaching tool, a “see, it happens to the best of us” lesson? A dilemma indeed!
Now, my little blog is no showcase for the stunning. I, like my cooking, am not perfect and although I love cooking and baking and I love sharing what comes out of my kitchen, I feel that I am simply in one long learning process. So, needless to say, I have my fair share of failures. Sad, but the truth must be told. But the failure is all the more painful when I fail at something that I have built my reputation on, something that usually works to perfection. Okay, let’s put it all out on the table and be done with it: the macaron! Yes, I am sorry to say but the Mac Queen has failed. Miserably. Cracked and feetless, these babies would have quickly found their way into the trash if, well…, if they hadn’t been so darn delicious! Mmm, as bug-ugly as they were, the chocolate-vanilla marbled macarons filled with a fabulous mascarpone cream with a luscious swirl of melted chocolate were simply fabulous! A thin crispy outer shell gave way to a dense, brownie-like chewy center and the cool, thick cream was just delicious. The pink macaron shells had been flavored with deep garnet-red pure cranberry powder, which gave the cookies an intense strawberry flavor (strange but true). I used more mascarpone cream filling but this time swirled in a couple of spoonfuls of rich, ruby-red cherry jam. We popped them in our mouths one after the other with amazed delight!
The macarons in question were made for the latest Mactweets event: Take a Walk on the Wild Side: the Mactweets Express is bound for adventure! Armed with only the barest of equipment, the most necessary of arms, whisks, beaters, spatulas and pastry bags, we were left to wander through jungle and across the savannah, hunting for the most dangerous of wild creatures which we were to then capture, bag and carry back to camp to turn into the wildest, the tastiest of macarons. I plunged headfirst into the dense underbrush of my kitchen with barely a pith helmet or mosquito net to protect me, and, pastry bag poised and ready to use at the merest hint of danger, I forged ahead, whipping, sifting, piping like there was no tomorrow, as if my very life depended on it. Working from morning to night, the sun beating down, the humidity rising, snakes and scorpions threatening me with that one fatal bite, I worked and worked. Then I heard it. Ears alert and eyes peeled, I saw movement in the distance, heard the rustle of leaves, the stomp of hooves, the flutter of flapping wings. Cautiously I headed towards the noise, quietly so as not to draw attention to myself, I stepped out into the clearing and saw the herd of zebras and the flocks of tall, elegant pink flamingos.
Well, sadly, I am no Jane nor Sheena Queen of the Jungle, and, slow on my toes, the only wild beasties I managed to bag were the old, slightly deformed ones, the rejects of the crowd, the ones so slow themselves that I managed to catch up and toss my net over their little heads. Oh well, the luck of the hunt was not with me this day, but whipped up, piped out and baked, these babies were tasty treats after all. Okay, so my adventure was more like a Marx Brothers comedy than a Tarzan movie, but done is done and lesson learned: a bit too much confidence and the wrong conditions and things don’t turn out the way one had planned.
It’s a Jungle out there! Food blogging is a dog eat dog world and everyone wants to be King (or in my case Mac Queen) of the Jungle. We move in a herd and hopefully it is one in which we all watch over one another, encouraging, supporting, picking nits out of each others’ hair, rolling on the ground in joyful abandon. The Law of the Jungle is an easy one to learn: over confidence always comes back to bite us in the rear end! We learn from our lessons and hopefully in sharing our mistakes, our faux pas, our little trip ups, we can slow down, understand and improve with each attempt.
But revenge shall be mine and I shall recreate these delectable treats and offer you perfection on a plate.
Thanks to my darling mac partner and sister Deeba! And you can see all of the fabulous Wild Macs created by our fellow MacPassionate Bakers here! Et merci comme toujours à Mathilde pour les belles journées macarons! And thanks to Deeba, Ken and Mardi for patting me on the back and convincing me to post these little beasties anyway.
ZEBRA MACARONS
Vanilla batter:
100 g (3 ½ oz) powdered/confectioner’s sugar
55 g (2 oz) finely ground blanched almonds
1 ½ large egg whites (about 55 g/2 oz)
15 g (1/2 oz/1 Tbs) granulated sugar
Seeds scraped from one vanilla bean
Chocolate batter:
100 g (3 ½ oz) powdered/confectioner’s sugar
55 g (2 oz) finely ground blanched almonds
1 ½ large egg whites (about 55 g/2 oz)
15 g (1/2 oz/1 Tbs) granulated sugar
2 tsps unsweetened cocoa powder
Prepare 2 large baking sheets. On 2 large pieces of white paper the size of your baking sheets, trace 1 ½ inch-diameter circles (I used the wide end of my pastry tip) evenly spaced, leaving about ¾ - 1 inch between each circle. This will be your template to help you pipe even circles of batter onto the parchment paper. You will be able to reuse these endlessly. Place one paper on each baking sheet then cover with parchment paper. Set aside. Prepare a pastry bag with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809).
Sift the powdered sugar, the ground almonds and either the vanilla pod seeds (for the vanilla batter) or the cocoa powder (for the chocolate batter) together into two separate mixing bowls, one for each recipe.
In a standing mixer or with a hand mixer, whip the egg whites, again, each measure of 55 grams in a separate bowl (preferably plastic or metal) for 30 seconds on low speed then increase speed to high and whip until the whites are foamy. Gradually add the granulated sugar as you are whipping the whites until you obtain a stiff glossy meringue.
Working one recipe at a time, gently but firmly, using a plastic or silicone spatula, fold about one bowl of whipped whites into the powdered sugar/ground almonds mixtures. Fold the whites into the dry, turning the bowl as you lift and fold, scraping up the dry hidden at the bottom, making sure you fold in all the dry ingredients completely. When the batter is ready to pipe, it should flow from the spatula like lava or a thick ribbon. To test to see if you have folded it enough, drop a small amount onto a clean plate and jiggle it slightly. The top should flatten, not remain in a point. If it doesn’t flatten, give the batter a few more folds and test again, but do not overfold or the batter will be too runny.
You should now have one bowl of white batter and one bowl of chocolate batter. Fill your prepared pastry bag with large dollops of the two batters, alternating blobs of white and chocolate batters without blending the two together. Pipe circles onto the parchment paper, using the traced circles on the template sheets to guide you, holding your pastry bag above each circle and piping into the center. You should have dollops of batter with swirls of white and brown. DO NOT FORGET TO CAREFULLY REMOVE THE WHITE PAPER TEMPLATE FROM UNDERNEATH THE PARCHMENT PAPER. YOU DO NOT WANT THIS TEMPLATE TO GO IN THE OVEN!
Preheat your oven to 280°F (140°C).
Allow the macarons to sit out for 30 minutes to an hour. The top of each shell should form a “skin” (it will feel like it hardened a bit when gently touched). Bake the shells for 15 – 20 minutes, depending on their size (when I touched macs that were not quite done, the top jiggled a bit as if there was still a bit of liquid batter between the top and the “feet” so I let it continue to bake another minute.) I turn the trays back to front halfway through the baking.
Remove the tray from the oven and immediately slide the parchment paper with the shells off of the hot baking sheet and onto a surface, table or countertop. Allow to cool before sliding the shells very gently off of the parchment by slipping a cake spatula under the shell as you lift it up. Be careful or the center of the shell risks sticking to the parchment.
Prepare your filling as your macaron shells cool.
PINK FLAMINGO MACARONS
7.2 oz (200 g) confectioner’s/powdered sugar
4 oz (115 g ) ground blanched almonds
3 large egg whites (about 3.8 – 4 oz/ 110 – 112 g)
1 oz (30 g) granulated sugar
1 tsp powdered cranberry powder
a couple drops of red food coloring
Follow the directions above for the macaron shells, sifting the cranberry powder into the dry ingredients and adding a couple of drops of red food coloring to the meringue to heighten the pink color.
MASCARPONE CREAM FILLING
This recipe is enough cream to fill one set/recipe of shells.
8 ½ oz (250 g) mascarpone, drained
1 oz (30 g) fresh goat cheese, drained
2 Tbs (30 g) superfine sugar (I used about 1 ½ Tbs sugar so it wasn’t too sweet as I would be adding chocolate or jam)
½ tsp vanilla
For the Zebra Macarons filling:
Melted semisweet chocolate cooled
For the Pink Flamingo Macarons filling:
A heaping tablespoon or two of Cherry jam or jelly
It is best to have the mascarpone and the goat cheese almost at room temperature so they are creamy. Drain either or both in a colander over a bowl if necessary.
Place the mascarpone, the goat cheese, the sugar and the vanilla in a bowl and beat with an electric beater on low or with a wooden spoon until smooth, creamy, a little fluffed up and well combined. Spread the cream out and place a few tablespoons of either the melted chocolate or cherry jam here and there on top of it. Using a sharp knife or spoon cut the chocolate or jam into the cream just giving it a swirl effect. Carefully spoon into a pastry bag with a round or star tip so it doesn’t blend more and pipe a dollop onto the bottom shell of each pair of shells. Sandwich closed. You can also just use a teaspoon.
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