Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Macaroons Are Overrated

The other night, I did the cliche food blogger thing: I made French macaroons. I've seen loads of pictures of them, and they look so cute. (Google-image them here). Seriously, every food blogger has got this cookie up their sleeve, as if that makes them legit. But it's totally not worth the effort.
And in fact, it took a bit of effort (at least more than your basic chocolate chip cookies). The macroon is sort of meringy, so whipped egg whites, which I (of course) messed up the first go-around and ended up with a soupy mess that look a lot like Pepto Bimol. I tried again and coaxed out some nice, fluffy white peaks. I decided to dye them pink, because I think it looks the cutest and thought it would go nicely with my lemon icing.
According to David Lebowitz's instructions, I filled my piping bag (aka giant Ziploc) using this glass as an assistant. And piped what turned into a runny liquid onto my baking sheet (Can you see the specs of almond flour in the batter? Appears to look tasty, but we all know looks can be deceiving). I was pessimistic, but one tray came out of the oven looking like macaroons. The other tray somehow got burnt and stuck unforgivingly to the baking sheet.
Megan suggested crushing them (see below). We both decided that the macaroon crumbs would be a great ice cream topping. There's this mother-daughter pair that sells cake crumbs at a downtown farmer's market in the summer to go on ice cream. They pass out samples. It's a good idea. But also a huge rip off. They sell these plastic containers of crumbs for like $5 a pop. I bet they use the boxed cake mixes. Unfortunately, we only got about two tablespoons of crunchy, macaroon crumbs.

2 comments:

Jess said...

I'm glad to read this. I've noticed the glamour of macaroons, but I just don't want to make them. I wish to eat them, yes, but not to make them. Now I feel justified in my stubborn ways.

p.s. did it end up tasting okay?

Lainey Seyler said...

no. they weren't even that good. very different. there's a shell on the outside that looks so pretty but then it's airy on the inside. if that makes any sense.