Almond joy

K - so remember when I was all ambitious-like and wanted to post every week?  Hah.  So young...so naive!  But just to explain myself quickly: 3 days, 9 girls, 2 suites, and about 10 hours of sleep total.  Vegas my friends - such an amazing time but I needed a full week to even begin to recover.  Well worth it, but I'm le tired.

So now I'm back and ready to bake - assemble the minions!  To add a little spice to the blog, I decided to throw in something different - maybe some French Macarons?  First things first, macarons are not the same as macaroons which are those shredded coconut cookie-things.  Macarons are sandwiches made from two delicious, merengue-based cookies with a fun treat in between.  Note: I don't know if the whole spelling of macaron vs. macaroon holds true, but Wikipedia says so and I'm OK with that!

The wonderful thing about these macaron cookies is that they are gluten free.  Yay celiacs!  I mean - not yay celiacs but yay that celiacs can eat them!  There are four ingredients in the macaron cookie portion of a macaron.  Almond flour, confectioner's sugar, egg whites, and granulated sugar.  That's it!  Amazing how something so delicious can be so simple.  Now, of course, simple is only in regards to the ingredients.  Macarons are fairly difficult to make because they're quite finicky and the weather will actually have an effect on how the cookies turn out.  I've had many a failed batch and yet seem to keep trying because a successful batch is one of the best feelings in the world.

So - the macaron.  They have a nice smooth top and something called a "foot" at the bottom, which looks a bit rough and goes around the circumference of the cookie.  When you see the foot, you know you've done something right!  Pastry Pal has a most amazing tutorial that I believe you have to email her to get.  It. Is. Worth. It.  Once the basic macaron is mastered, you can start adding variations - chocolate, coffee, lemon, lavender, passion fruit, etc etc.  The filling is also up to you!  You can put jam in between, buttercream, ganache...practically anything!  I have yet to go into the really crazy flavors because I'm not totally comfortable with basics yet, but I'm getting there!  For today's baking adventure, I decided to try something new and make Hazelnut Macarons with Nutella Buttercream.  And because you can also bake with hazelnuts, I substitute half of the almond flour with hazelnut flour.  Mmmm mmm mmm (that is me as I eat a macaron, just FYI).

Hazelnut Macarons
Yield: about 20 french macarons

½ cup almond flour (almond meal)

½ cup hazelnut flour (hazelnut flour)

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

3 egg whites

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 280° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Into a medium bowl, sift the almond flour, hazelnut flour, and confectioner’s sugar and whisk to combine.  Set aside

In a separate bowl or the bowl of a standup mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites until they begin to froth and turn opaque.  Add the two tablespoons of granulated sugar and continue to whip until you have stiff peaks.

Add half of the dry ingredients into the whipped egg whites and carefully fold to combine.  Try not to let the egg whites deflate.  At this point, the mixture will look like it has curdled – this is ok!  Once everything is mostly mixed, add the mixture back to the remaining dry ingredients and continue to fold to mix.  At this point, the egg whites will begin to deflate.  The final batter will still have some body to it, but have no more visible dry patches of flour/sugar.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (i.e. round) and pipe quarter-sized dots onto the baking sheet, leaving about an inch between each cookie.  The end of the batter will spread a bit more than the start of the batter because of all the handling – just so you know! 

Allow the cookies to sit at room temperature until they develop a skin.  You should be able to gently touch the top of the cookie without having batter stick to your finger.  This is where weather can play a role: humidity = no bueno because it takes forever for the cookies to dry.  Once the skin is formed, bake for about 15-17 minutes.  Let the cookies cool on the sheet and carefully peel off the parchment paper.

Nutella Filling adapted from Annies Eats

¾ cup butter, at room temperature

6 tablespoons Nutella

¾ cup confectioner’s sugar

Pinch of salt

In the bowl of a standup mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and the Nutella until smooth and well incorporated.  Add the confectioner’s sugar and salt and beat until light and fluffy.

To assemble the macarons, match together similar-sized cookies.  Pipe the Nutella filling onto ½ of the cookies – about a teaspoon per cookie.  Carefully sandwich with the matching macaron and voila!  Do a dance cause you just made a macaron!

Tiffany