A Mother's Love.

Purdy's, stick to the chocolates.

Ahhh, Mother's Day weekend. A time for moms everywhere to spoil their bratty adult daughters. Oh wait....

On a recent business trip to Vancouver BC, my lovely mother was thinking about me and bought me macarons from not one but two places. Who's heard of Purdy's Chocolates? They do decent chocolates. I've gorged myself on their dark chocolate with blueberries and almonds a couple times (although they did their version of an Easter Cream Egg this year. Don't even get me started there. You can't mess with perfection, Purdy's. Pfft). Anyways, over coffee and the Saturday morning news paper, I ate 6 bites of 6 different macarons. The two from Purdy's were weak. If i didn't know better, I'd say they were made of dry cake. I'm suspicious that perhaps Purdy's is trying to pass off something else as macarons. Imposters. Stick to the chocolatier-ing, yo.
The other 4, from a place called Stuart's Baked Goods in the Granville Public Market, were pretty damn good. Great texture, pretty colors. But here's what worries me: i think i might be a bitch. I felt pleased that theirs too had crooked feet. Also, the flavors were good but far too subtle to guess what they were without knowing. I mean, maybe it's 'cause I'm pretty much hollering from my roof and wearing a flashing sign that says what flavor mine are, but it seems to me that they are pretty obvious.  Maybe I'm delusional the way a mother is blinded by love for her child and thinks her's are the prettiest/most handsome and smartest even if they're ugly and stupid. Maybe I'm blinded by love for my little babies. Well at least I don't feel completely left out of the motherhood thing this Mother's Day.

Ba! Crooked feet here too!

Macaron Hunting Abroad: Part Deux

 On a recent trip to Toronto, I knew I would be successful at locating macarons for the portion of this project that I have been successful at from the very begining: eating them. If you recall, last time i tried to find macarons abroad, I was unsuccessful. This time, we decided the Saint Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto was the place to start.
Funny thing about that market: pretty much the whole upstairs is meat. Deli counters, sausage vendors, meat cabinets, sea food on ice... you get picture.  My friend and I had to laugh at this because all I wanted was French Pastry and all I (a long term herbivore) saw was meat. But as soon as we descended the staircase to the lower floor, the first thing we laid eyes on was a pastry cabinet filled with macarons. We bought six. But before we ate them, we had a full day of beer drinking, shopping and adventuring around  the city to get through. When we were finally ready to eat them, they were pretty sad looking. BUT, as we sunk our teeth into them, i understood immidiately why they held up so poorly: they were waaaaaay under baked. My friend, who had her macaron-tasting cherry popped that day in the back seat of a taxi cab after drinking beer all afternoon, said to me "Really? This is what all the fuss is about?".

How very sad that this was her first impression 'cause aren't first impressions everything? I immediately kicked into defense mode, trying to convince her that she'd have to try them again. Then it occurred to me that both times that I've purchased someone else's macarons, they have not been nearly as delicious as mine even though mine might not have looked as pretty. As I let the pride wash over me, I told my friend she'd just have to wait to taste the ones i make and that they were worth the 3000 kilometer trip across the country to do so, to which she happily agreed.

PG-13 Buttercream Prep

Summer must nearly be upon us.
If you've ever made buttercream, you'll know that it takes a long time for the butter and the beaten egg whites to emulsify. In making both macarons and buttercream, a stand mixer would be mucho helpful. Since I don't have one, I do it all with electric hand beaters. I point out the looming arrival of summer because last night as I stood in my kitchen rotating the hand beaters for a total of 26 minutes, I got so warm and had to remove my shirt.  There I am, in my underwear, making buttercream and sweating. To add to the magic of it all, i managed to splatter green food coloring and buttercream all over my bare gut (the food coloring, of course, left stains). But let me tell you, the toasted pistacio vanilla buttercream was worth the sorry sight I was making it. Oh and I also have a blister on the tip of my tongue from a hot-out-of-the-oven pitascio. 
Maybe the April Showers will bring me a stand mixer instead of May Flowers.

Dr. French Rachelle

There is much to-do about bigger being better, how many inches in enough, and so on. Obviously I'm not referring to male anatomy folks. This is a blog about baking, for chrissakes. I am talking about macaron size: 1/2" miniatures, 1" smalls, or 2" larges. Save for one other time, I've only done larges (insert smutty joke: _________ ). Today I made smalls 'cause that way I get 3 pans full rather than 2 and therefor a chance to experiment more with baking temperatures and techniques. And get this- I actually think I might be starting to come to some solid conclusions about what is at root of all my problems. Oven Temperature Runs Too Low. Alternate Baking Instructions, page 256 of the Bible. Ovens that run low can cause all kinds of problems, all of which I've had, but believed to be caused by something else. For the first time since I started this baking adventure, I did not have a stupid perplexed look on my face when I opened the oven door. I was starting to think I'd need some botox to get rid of the confusion-induced forehead wrinkles.  
Un: My control group. Baked the conventional way: 200 degrees for 15 minutes. Increase heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 9 minutes. As expected, they didn't work out. Looked like they partied too hard and threw up on themselves.
Deux: Used alternate Baking Instructions for ovens that run low. 425 degrees for 3 minutes. Decrease heat to 325 degrees and bake for an additional 6 minutes. Obviously that was too much of a good thing. Looked like they were trying to be fried chicken but they were all level footed and even.
Trois: Alternate baking instructions used again but I raised the oven rack to the middle and went 3 minutes at 425 degrees and only 4 1/2 minutes at 325 degrees. They were starting to brown so I took them out of the oven. Every single one looked perfect! Every single one. Unfortunately they were a little bit gooey on the inside soooooo I think next time around, I'm going to play around with the temperature and timing of the alternate baking instructions because I really feel like I'm on to something here.
Grad students work on their thesis', they conduct experiments, draw conclusions, defend the thesis and get their PhD's. If you know me, you know that I would never have the patience or discipline to get a doctorate in anything too intellectual but I'm going to call this my version of grad studies. I'm getting closer to having my dissertation ready....

At the market!

This morning, bright and early and despite my gueule de bois (translation: hangover), I got up and headed out to the farmer's market to see if the gal who started my little journey of intrigue and lust had any macarons. As I'm sure you deduced from the photo, she did! I bought one in each flavor she had. At 9$, it was money more wisely spent than last night at the saloon. I asked her how her macarons were lovely to which she told me she studied culinary arts in Paris. Shit. I need to be in one of those Mastercard commercials:
New oven for even baking: 2199.99$
Studying culinary arts in France: 50,000$
Mastering the French Macaron: Priceless
 There are some things money can't buy, for everything else you need to blow cash on, there's Mastercard.

Waste Not.

 I got up Saturday morning and glided into the kitchen ready to make some kind of filling for my purple macarons that i whipped up late Friday night. I was seduced by their fancy purple shells and had to eat one (meringues at 8 a.m. is probably bad for the waistline but a pretty bitchin' way to start the day). Well a perfect macaron should have a slightly crisp, very thin shell and a delightfully chewy interior. I'm going to quote my last post here: "the second batch looked nearly perfect". Looked being the operative word here. Well we all know looks can be deceiving. I bit down and mine were so thick shelled and dry that it crumbled all over the counter. Well, that won't do. I've come to the inconclusive conclusion that a lot of the problems are because of my oven. There are instructions for an alternate baking method that i think I'm going to try next time.

 Now I'm going to quote whoever the cheese-ball is who said this: "when life gives you lemons, make lemon-aid". That expression irritates me but i grudgingly admit it's fitting here. Since the meringues were too crumbly to fill and eat as planned but too delicious to waste, I made little deserts out of them. I made some lemon curd (eggs, eggs yolk, lemon and lime zest, lemon juice, butter, sugar and salt. It's very similar to lemon meringue pie fill and it's so good that I would be okay if I had to shower in it, drink it, eat it, marry it, dance with it, stand in it, etc, etc.), whipped some cream, crumbled up the little purple meringues and layered it all in mason jars. The lemon curd was really tart, the meringues really sweet, the whipped cream really whipped-creamy and the whole concoction really really goooood (*I take a deep bow). It was good thing that I didn't waste any of the meringues (almond flour is a little pricey i suppose) because after we ate, my dinner guests and I were off to spend thousands of dollars on a couple pies and a few pitchers of beer but that's a story for another day.

Lemon curd

Here's a slick tip: whenever you're storing puddings, custards or anything else in that family, put plastic wrap directly on the surface rather than over the bowl. This way, a disgusting skin won't form. Neato.

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....