Such a tiny treat with such a huge reputation, the
French macaron is a sweet confection that has to be mastered. They have become very
popular or maybe just well-known to me over the past five years or so. I have seen
photos of the colorful disked shaped sandwich sweets all over social media
websites. So I figured that as a future chef I should try my hand at it. Mind
you, I have undergone minimal culinary training and most of what I have learned
is from watching others and testing it out. So that is what I did, Byron
Talbott, a YouTube Culinarian provided his subscribers with about four
different variations of the macaron through his videos. They were colorful and
looked quite delicious; the only problem was that I couldn’t taste them through
my computer screen. I had never tasted this dessert but I was so anxious to
experiment that I bypassed that logic and proceeded to make them. I seceded to
try the chocolate macaroon with a caramel filling. This is the recipe I used
from the YouTuber Byron Talbott.
Ingredients
65g
(2/3 cup) Powdered Sugar
50g
(1/2 cup) Almond Flour
15g
(2tbsp) Cocoa Powder
1
Egg White
20g
(2tbsp) Granulated Sugar
2
drops brown gel food coloring (optional)
Caramel
1
can sweetened condensed milk boiled for 2 ½ hours
Because I bake quite often I had most of these
ingredients but I had never come across almond flour. I was sure that it was
possible to grind almonds fine enough to make a powder on my own but because it
was my first time making macarons I didn’t want to chance it, so I decided to
try and find it at the supermarket. My first option was Walmart Super center,
because I am in my early twenties I do not have boatloads of money, so rollback
prices are usually what I gravitate towards. As I am looking down the baking
aisle I see all-purpose flour, cornmeal, bread flour and every other basic baking
product that you could ever need. As things go, I was unsuccessful with that
trip. My next two stops were smaller regional grocery stores; Kroger and
Martins. I was sure that I would find it in one of those places; Heck, Martins
even has an all-natural and specialty section. To my dismay I had no luck at either of those
places. Now some of you may be thinking, “Well why didn’t you try a Whole Foods?”
I thought deeply about driving thirty minutes away from town to find this
little bag of almond flour that would probably shoot my budget to the moon so I
decided to throw that idea out of my little black Ford Focus’ window. Hope wasn’t
fully lost as it may seem, I found a little all-natural market about a week
before and I remembered that it was right across the street from where I
already was. Lucky me! I walked down the baking aisle again but this time I
wasn’t surprised by the lack of almond flour, my eyes widened at the price; $12.99
for a bag of flour! I understand that it’s not like the bleached flour that you
will find at your local supermarket and I also know that I said my budget would
basically sky rocket but I was trying to throw the pessimism out of the window
with the Whole Foods idea. The only way that I could rationalize my purchase was
to think of it as an investment, which it was because I plan on trying out more
macaron recipes. Now that I have all of the ingredients I can get started with
the real fun or so I thought.
In order to make macarons time is something that you
need plenty of. With all of my travels around town, some of that time had
slipped past me. The most time consuming piece of this project was definitely making
the caramel, which was also new a technique to me. I had never seen anyone use
sweetened condensed milk to make caramel. The only issue was that it would take
2 ½ hours to transform and then another 1 ½ hours to cool. I put the condensed
milk in the boiling water as soon as I got home which was around 5:30pm. So
this meant that the caramel wouldn’t be fully done until about 9:30pm, I truly felt
like a mad scientist who works in his lad at all times of the night.
While the milk was boiling away, I sifted the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set it aside.
Next
I whisked the egg white and flour until it had soft peaks, or so I tried.
I have whipped egg whites a few times before and
have come out with nice peaks in the end, but this time it just wouldn’t work.
I just bought a new hand mixer that had a whisk attachment but it didn’t get
the job done. I tried to fold my weak peaks in with the dry ingredients and all
I got was a lumpy mess. My first thought was that I didn’t beat the egg enough,
but because my arm, back and ears from the movement and sound of the mixer; were
starting to hurt I knew that it couldn’t be so. My sister suggested that I just
use the regular mixer attachment which worked after having to start all over
with new everything. After that was all sorted out I was finally able to reach
the soft peaks with triumph.
My victory was short lived after I realized that I
did not sift the dry ingredients the second time, which resulted in my batter
not being as smooth as it should have been. At this point I was over perfection
and just wanted to get them inside of the oven and assemble, so I put my semi
lumpy batter in a plastic zip bag and cut off the tip. I then formed round
circles on parchment paper with the bag. To release any air bubbles I tapped
the circles on the counter a few time and waited for them to dry. It should
have taken about 10 to 15 minutes but mine never dried completely and I’m not
sure why, so I just placed them in the oven for 15 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
After the macarons came out of the oven I immediately
saw they did not look like the ones that I saw on Byron’s videos. I tasted one
of the disks and it taste just fine but how would I know how they are supposed
to taste, it was my first time trying them. I was slightly disappointed but not
discouraged enough to discontinue the process, I had gotten so far and there
was no turning back now. As I waited for them to cool the caramel had been
sitting in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes and I still had an hour to go.
By this time I am worn out from the trial and error game so I just waited until
I regained my excitement and could not wait any longer. Thirty minutes into my
waiting session I decide to open the can of condensed milk knowing that I
should wait until it’s fully cooled. Besides my impatience, something else had
gone wrong, the mixture had thickened and changed in color but it still wasn’t
the way it looked in the video. I didn’t care I put some of the iffy caramel
into the plastic zip bag and piped it in the center of the chocolate rounds.
This was my result.
So in conclusion of my battle with French macarons,
I did not get the outcome I expected and there is much room for improvement but
this will not be my last fight with these delicious treats. They were quite
scrumptious but I will have to taste some from a professional before I try to
take them on again.
Peace and Love
Natural_istic
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