Chocolate French Macarons

After some traditional holiday baking, there were some leftover ingredients – like egg whites, chocolate glaze and sauce from the Profiteroles.   My eyes light up now when I’m using a recipe that will leave me with multiple egg whites. What better baking project than whipping up some French macarons! I was really cutting it close as to how long I had the egg whites in the refrigerator, but they didn’t disappoint.

I went on a macaron making hiatus for several months. The avoidance is over – I am determined to get them to a point of more consistent outcome. It all started with a baking challenge in 2009 from the The Daring Bakers group that I heard about the French macaron (not to be confused with the coconut confection). My first attempt was something short of a disaster. The failure drove me to determination as I switched tactics and used a recipe from Martha Stewart’s site. It worked out well sometimes, but last year while attempting more macaron miracles – the results were inconsistent.

Starting Over:  Some Ingredients for More Macaron Success

• First and foremost, I weighed the ingredients on a scale {gasp!}. I know, I know – and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit it, but I’m so used to cups and teaspoons…I resisted “weighing” ingredients. For something as finicky and where precision is essential, you gotta weigh the ingredients. Baking is, after all, a science.
  Last year I finally added a kitchen scale to my repertoire of kitchen essentials.
• I decided to start fresh with a recipe I hadn’t tried yet and used the Tartelette’s recipe, method and technique. She couldn’t write a more clearer recipe for macaron success – why did I take so long to adopt? Grant it, there are other factors like humidity, freshness of your ingredients, oven temperature variations, etc. If you’ve been beating your head against the counter about macarons or are interested in trying these delicate treats for the first time, save yourself the anguish and just start by reading her tutorial and studying it. After you read it, read it again – play it out in your mind. Make notes, then give it a try. It’s the basis to get you to more successful results, but other factors are involved as mentioned – and it will take practice. If you enjoy macarons, it’s worth it.

For the first time I feel more confident about the results and look forward to my next macaron batch.    If you’ve made macarons before, you can relate to the elation of feet!  Oh yes…we’re talking macaron feet fetish.

For these chocolate macarons, I added cocoa powder to the dry ingredients in place of the almond flour when measured.   Although the macaronage changed into a nice chocolaty brown, it didn’t bake into the same deep color.  Maybe I need to add more cocoa powder and this is where I fell short of having brown food coloring (which is on it’s way from King Arthur’s!).

I’m including a recipe for Dark Chocolate ganache. I didn’t use it in the pictured macarons (I used leftover bittersweet chocolate from the profiteroles).

Invaluable Resources

• Helene from Tartelette has an updated Macaron Tutorial – Demystifying Macarons
• Not So Humble Pie has a great Macaron Troubleshooting Guide, among many other great reads.

Also, check out Seattle Pastry Girl – not only does she have a delicious blog, she has some fantastic entries like her very elegant Vanilla Macaron with Fromage Blanc.