Rotten Eggs and Lessons Learned

As I sit and clack away on my computer, with a batch of purple colored macarons baking, I want to put a question out there into the universe. We've all heard and said "smells like rotten eggs" but my question is this: who out there has actually smelled rotten eggs? I have tonight and continue to smell them as I have them splashed on my shirt. Its horrible.
My grandmother Sally (rest in peace) taught me a lot about baking and cooking and this evening I foolishly disregarded two valuable lessons.
Lesson one: wear an apron to protect your clothing. I usually do but for some reason, I didn't tonight hence the rotten egg on my shirt.
Lesson two: when cracking eggs into anything, never ever crack them right into the bowl. As previously mentioned, the egg whites used in macarons must be aged for several hours on the counter top. This strengthens the protein and makes the meringue stronger. While measuring my 115 grams of egg white (from approximately 3 eggs), I made two mistakes. I almost broke yolk into the whites (which would prevent the whites from whipping) and i also cracked a rotten egg which kind of egg-sploded all over me, the counter and quite nearly into the other egg whites. Since i only had 3 aged eggs, i had to use one non-aged white to replace the stink bomb (I will never use the term "smells like rotten eggs" lightly again).
So maybe tonight's failure at attempt #5 was my grandma's way of giving me hell from beyond the grave. Okay, okay. Lesson learned grandma.
My whole first batch of macarons cracked this time. A new and exciting problem that I hadn't encountered yet. Hooray! This means one of two things. Either I didn't have the oven set at exactly 200 degrees for the first baking stage, causing the batter to remain wet too long which forms too much steam and causes the shell to crack. The other possibility is that I either over whipped the egg whites or over mixed the dry with the wet ingredients again. Oh boy.
I just took them out the oven and that is a far as I have gotten. I still plan to fill them with something delicious and eat them tomorrow night when I have friends over for dinner. While I'm boring my dinner guests with an explanation of they did not turn out, I'll be hearing my grandmother's voice in my head telling me that it serves me right for being careless. Kitchen karma, I reckon.  

First batch. Fail.

BUT WAIT! As I was about to post this entry, I took the second batch out the oven. I was very careful with the oven temperature this time and EGADZ!-they look nearly perfect! But I mustn't say another word for that karma is still lurking. I don't want my cat to jump on them or something....

The Blues.

To the right, moderate success. To the left, disaster.

 Fun fact: there are no blue foods in nature. For example, blueberries are actually dark purple, not blue at all. Actually, the color blue is believed to be an appetite suppressant. Years ago, weight loss experts used to suggest eating off of a blue plate or to put a blue light in the refrigerator as a way of curbing appetite. It's hardwired into our primal nature to avoid blue foods because millions of years ago, blue and black were warning signs of poison (I should note that despite the color, my latest macarons were not in any way poisonous).
Here's another fun fact: I knew all of this when I selected "Cornflower Blue" gel food coloring at the Bulk Barn a couple of weeks ago. The blue food thing is actually one of those useless tidbits of knowledge that I've had stored in my mind for years.  

 So it should come as no surprise that blue was a bad omen yesterday when I arrogantly dove into attempt #4.
One recipe makes two full pans of macarons. As i piped my first pan, i tried to ignore the sinking feeling that I had over-compensated for under-macaronner last time around and over-mixed this time. I continued to ignore it even though the first batch spread too thin, got too brown and had pathetic, weak feet. Upon the first pan rotation of batch #2, I couldn't ignore the feeling anymore. They were a mess. A hot mess. But not in the sexy-Project-Runway-cool kind of way. They were just hot and sloppy. Actually, there was so much wrong with them, I'm not entirely sure that over j-folding was the only problem. I consulted the Trouble Shooting guide but didn't even know where to start. So instead, I went with "Fuck it". That's not officially in the Trouble Shooting guide but i reckon it outta be. Just for those times when shit's gone wrong enough that you're gonna call it a write-off. I accept that now, a day later, but yesterday I was stomping around the house like a beast, feeling rather blue.

On the up side, when i was still feeling pre-failure cocky, I made some maple buttercream. I bought a candy thermometer last week and got to break it in and what's more is that the only other time I ever tried making buttercream was 3 summers ago and it was a horseradish-looking flop that i vowed never to try again. But this time, it was a calorie and fat laden success! Maple Buttercream. Mm-hmmmm.
Not wanting to waste it, i filled the Cornflower Blue macarons (I'm not sure what a cornflower looks like but the color of the macarons kind of made me think of storm clouds which doesn't really make me think of meringue. Well, it didn't before but as i type this, it occurs to me that from now on, I'll probably associate the two) and took them to Easter dinner at my sister-in-law's house, dropping some off along the way at a friend's house as well. I got my moment as a food stylist (yes, that is actually a real job) as i hid the ugly second batch beneath the somewhat pretty looking first batch so that people looking at the bowl were misled into thinking they were all pretty.
They were a hit at dinner and my macaron blues are starting to lift. I also plan to lift that little jar of Cornflower Blue coloring into the trash can as it was probably destined to be bad luck from the start. As far as my little french darlings go, i think I'll tell them that blue isn't a part of their color wheel anymore.

Third time around is not a perfect charm.

I'm really starting to feel as though my little macarons and I are getting to know each other better; our relationship is really improving and we didn't even have to go to therapy or counselling or anything. Let me explain.

After piping them out and slamming the pans on the counter as required, I was sad to see that they had little tails on top that weren't settling out. What isn't sad is that without consulting the Trouble Shooting section of the bible,  I was able to recognize why there were little peaks in the centers and also why my shells appeared slightly lumpy: Under-Macaronner. I did not j-fold the dry ingredients in to the wet ingredients for long enough, thereby creating a meringue that was too strong. But if you remember from my previous entry, if you over mix, you'll have a different set of problems. So I suppose I don't know them suuuuuuper well yet, but it's getting better.

Despite the technical problems, they looked terribly cute and tasted like heaven. I found gel food coloring which creates stronger, more saturated colors than liquid food coloring (note the whimpy light pink of my previous entry). And I had better luck with even baking. While some still slid and created baseball caps, i had quite a few that turned out pretty nice. I had to rotate the pans during baking way more often than I should have to but that's okay because I never stray too far from the kitchen during baking anyway.

My inner-therapist told me that since we made progress this time around, we should be rewarded so I made some proper chocolate ganache to fill them with. They were enjoyed, very quietly (I think the silence was a good sign) late one evening by a group of us huddled together around the kitchen island at my brother's house. I felt proud and very pleased because some of the best times in life are spent gathered in kitchens and this time around it was thanks to a semi-successful third attempt at my petits macarons.

A Tasty Fail at Attempt #2.

 I flipped on the television tonight and Top Chef Canada was on. I caught it mid-way through. Coincidentally, one chef had chosen to do a pink macaron. The main judge, a big-shot chef, seemed nothing short of dazzled. The other judges asked him "are they difficult to make?", to which he responded "the failure rate is very high." The brave contestant mastered it (jerk) and won the whole challenge for the episode because he "exhibited great technique and skill."

I tell you this because it made me feel better about this past Friday's failure at attempt #2. Rather than foolishly diving in head first as i did on attempt #1, this time around i carefully planned and did all the necessary preparations before i even sifted the almond flour. The piping size guide made up (if the little darlings are different sizes, they'll bake differently thereby causing more problems); the ingredients all weighed on the digital scale and sifted, aged egg white delicately separated and beaten for 15 minutes (i understand now why a stand mixer is recommended), and finally, the stage i had not reached before: Macaronnage. It is the ever important, very precise, super finicky and surprisingly physical act of J-folding the dry and wet ingredients together. Do it too long, fail. Don't do it long enough: fail.

 Well I'm pleased to report that i successfully made it through the macaronage stage; my batter looked like it had a pretty good viscosity. But the bliss was short lived and defeat came during the 3 stage baking process. My macarons developed their feet (the textured ring around the bottom that forms as moisture in the macaron turns to steam and rises) but slid over, creating the "baseball cap" effect. This is caused by uneven oven heat and happened despite the stacked up pans that they baked on and  regardless of the frequent rotation of these stacked pans. Must mean i need a new oven (this is going to get expensive). This wasn't the only technical problem either. There were air pockets inside the shells because i didn't slam the sheets hard enough before baking to remove the air. Also, the larger batch got way too brown, which means that the oven temperature was too high in one of the baking stages.

Despite all the flaws the little darlings had, they were still awfully cute and just as importantly, they were super delicious as well. Progress was made. And in case anyone is wondering, i didn't eat the whole batch alone. Friends and family got to delight in their tasty imperfection as well. My final thought on attempt #2 is that they did taste good enough that i could have eaten the whole works alone and that's a far cry from a hand full of crumbled egg whites I ended up with on my first try.

Macaron Hunting Abroad.

This weekend I took a mini-vacca and decided to turn it into a French Macaron-hunt as well. In a city of nearly a million people, you'd think that finding a bakery with French Macarons would be easy. After being instructed by our waitress on how to walk to a nearby bakery and nearly giving up when the directions turned out to be poor, we came upon BeeBell bakery. There we found what they called a French Tart. It was a lovely looking little tart-sized frosting dome that turned out to taste like nothing more than a dry cake with a butter patty on top. "It's as if a pie and a cake had a baby" said my friend....a dry and buttery baby. A man on the corner where we ate our pastries must of had a sixth sense that mine claimed to be French 'cause he started his unsolicited advice for us with "Sacre-bleu!". His advice was that we should be smoking weed with our pastries. Maybe that would of made my tart tastier. I should probably look into this and see what these alleged French Tarts are about. But I digress, this isn't about French Tarts.
I came across an Italian pastry counter  and thought I could settle for an Italian Maccherone being that they are similar. As I approached the counter, I started to feel hopeful. I could see a plate with what looked like tiny, brown macarons. To my dismay, they were just biscotti cookies held together by some kind of filling. I wonder though, if the look of the cookie was inspired by the look of an Italian Maccherone being that they are popular confections in Italy as well. In fact, it is widely believed that the origin of the macaron is Italalian. It is said that in 1533, along with her Italian chefs, Catherine de'Medici brought the macaron to France from Italy when she married Henry II. The word macaron itself comes from the Italian word maccherone or macaroni which in turn came from a Greek word meaning kneading or cooking. What's important to remember is that I didn't find what I was looking for at the Italian pastry counter. Instead I ate salad.
Just as the trip was coming to close, I found the second best thing to actually finding a macaron: The Bible. Well, the French Macaron bible anyway. Les Petits Macarons has everything a person could ever want to know what making the little darlings. How-to, trouble shooting, flavor ideas (including savory recipes such as Chevre Rosemary and Duck Confit with Port and Fig), glossy photos and more fill the 270 pages of bliss. I'm on page 23 and among other things, I've learned that a million things can go wrong and no two pastry chefs agree on a single method for making macarons. All this has confirmed that my Adventures in Macaron Land might be even more challenging than I anticipated....

In case there was any confusion....

Not to be confused with Macaroons, the little coconutty heaps, the French Macaron is two little clouds of almond flour meringue held together by buttercream, jam, lemon curd or ganache.