French Macaroons

I left Paris in February intrigued by what made French macaroons so good. Their texture is the right balance of chewy, creamy, and crunchy, and the flavor can be anything – rose, chocolate, mocha, lemon, raspberry, or something more imaginative. This weekend, a trip to Dessert Studio – where there were no macaroons, but Earl Grey infused gelato with dark chocolate “chantilly” and a fair amount of conversation about desserts – inspired me to give it a try.

Rumors on the web: it’s easy to do, but hard to do right. The first problem is almond flour. Debate rages about whether almond meal as sold in the US is the same as almond flour. Some recipes call for you to pulverize almonds yourself. I bought almond meal and fully intended to process it further in my spice grinder, but I couldn’t find the spice grinder (of course 30 minutes later, when it was too late, I realized it was just hidden behind something on a shelf). So I mixed it with confectioners sugar, as called for in the recipe, and decided to “push the outside of the envelope” as Tom Wolfe and a gaggle of flight test pilots might say. You know a recipe’s good if you can mess around at the edges and still get good results. I used this recipe for the macaroons, but with orange extract rather than raspberry… I also added a drop of the flavoring to the macaroon batter itself, rather than saving all the flavoring for the ganache.

The batter is thick and a little grainy – I have a feeling that my almond meal test is going to crash and burn. Let’s just hope it still tastes good, even if it’s a mile off in texture. Then again, it’s not over yet. The recipe calls for a “makeshift pastry bag,” made of a plastic bag with a corner cut off. I figured I had real pastry bags and tossed my batter into one, but I didn’t use the right decorator tip and it came out in irritating little ribbons, so I took the tip off and just squeezed the batter out of the end of the pastry bag.

That was a little too wide, so my macaroons look like lumps rather than “Hershey’s kisses” as intended… still crossing my fingers that they taste good! Looks can come later. Now they are sitting out on my kitchen table until the outside surfaces harden a bit.

They’re out of the oven… Some look great, some are cracked or misshapen homemade. So much for the perfect smooth rounds from Paris. I tried the smallest one and it was pretty good – I didn’t nail the texture, but I’m hoping the others will be creamier because they are bigger and wouldn’t have dried out so much in the oven. I am letting them cool before filling them and doing the final taste test.

They’re done. It was surprisingly quick to spread the ganache on one cookie, press another onto it, and voila! macaroons. The verdict: close in texture, though not perfect – I do think finer almond flour would help because it’s thick rather than delectably smooth – and not quite right in taste. I think I prefer the macaroons I had in Paris, which stuck to one flavor. The chocolate-orange combination is too heavy and overwhelming, in my opinion. I remember tasting each macaroon at Laduree and delighting in the individual flavor – lemon, mocha, vanilla, each one intense but still delicate. Next time I’m doing plain orange cream with orange, vanilla with vanilla, etc. Maybe even Earl Grey!

Geekiest cake ever…

My camera’s in the shop, hence the lack of visuals lately. The cake is chocolate butter cake, with lightly mint-flavored buttercream frosting, for the last day of LEGO robotics tomorrow. I couldn’t stay true to the NXT colors, no one wants to eat grey! Yuck.

Never mind education, I’m blogging about food from now on…

I mean really, SEVENTEEN comments about what you eat for breakfast?  When a thought-provoking story about, I dunno, my classroom barely gets two?  I’ve been barking up the wrong tree with this teacher-blogging thing, it’s all food from here on out! The Omnivore’s Dilemma, indeed.

For two days now, I’ve packed and eaten The World’s Healthiest Breakfast.  I know it deserves this title, because no one can watch me eat it and not comment: Wow, that’s really healthy!

I basically used one of those plastic boxes that mixed organic pre-washed greens come in, put in a smaller container of Greek yoghurt with acacia honey (when you’re packing The World’s Healthiest Breakfast, you can’t skimp on your honey… though the next jar will definitely be something local), peeled chopped up half a cuke and one tomato, added a hardboiled egg salted and peppered, put the lid on, and took the whole thing to school.  So far, so good.

My vision included a few slices of fresh bread, but I woke up Tuesday morning to find my baguette more weapon-like than edible, so I sprinkled a little of my remaining stash of cereal on the yoghurt.  And breakfast was amazing.  After I ate it, I just felt satisfied.  Healthy, energetic, full.  That night, I went in search of better bread, and picked up an Italian loaf at a nearby gourmet supermarket.  This morning, the loaf was still good, and I added a couple of slices, along with some olives, to the mix.  All would have been well except that it all mixed around in transit and I didn’t get to eat until third period, by which point the bread (and everything else) was thoroughly yoghurt-soaked.  Still tasty, just uniformly sweet and yoghurt-flavored.  Note: Put a lid on the yoghurt’s container.

The interesting thing is that this meal takes longer to make – expected – but also makes me slow down eating it.  There’s no inhaling when you have such a varied, tasty breakfast.  Which is actually a problem, or at least suggests a need for a restructuring of my morning routine (unlikely), because today I never found the 20 consecutive minutes I needed to enjoy the meal until third period, by which point I was hungry enough to consume school supplies.  Fiber, indeed.

So, next comment-provoking question: Do you own a bread machine?  Which one?  How much was it?  Are you happy with it?  They’ve always struck me as weird specialty appliances, a huge luxury in a small NYC apartment, especially since I’m actually pretty good at making bread the old-fashioned way (not that I ever do).  But if I made all my bread myself, I’d know exactly what was in it, and – better! – I’d have fresh bread every morning! So, bread machine reviews, please!

What do you eat for breakfast?

I’ve decided to move away from breakfast cereal, inspired by a growing sense that I don’t actually know what it is, most of the time.  I mean, sometimes I buy fancy cereals where you can actually see the oats and raisins and whatnot, but all too often I run out and end up dashing across the street to the cornerstore and grabbing something like Oatmeal Crisp with Almonds, and honestly, delicious as it may be, it’s somewhat unclear what it is, although it’s probably at least partly oats and almonds.  But it’s processed, and sweet, and reading the first section of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma finally pushed me to examine my food habits more closely.  Cereal is one of the processed foods I eat most often and in greatest quantity, and I’ve done so since I was young, but it makes me wonder…. what else is there?

I suspect I will go towards Turkish breakfast – hardboiled eggs, fruit/veggies, yoghurt, olives, bread, honey – since it’s the other breakfast plan that I’ve actually lived on for any period of time.  Some friends eat steel-cut oatmeal that they cook overnight in a slow-cooker.  Another eats bread with (organic, natural) peanut butter and fruit.  What do you eat?

Changing one’s 6:30 am first meal of the day lifelong habit isn’t going to be easy.  Await further reports from the breakfast front….

Fumbling towards ecstasy…

So, yesterday I spent about four hours making a cake. An amazing cake, if I do say so myself. I made genoise ladyfingers, this time drawing lines on the parchment so they were much more uniform in size and shape (though I still have a ways to go). Then I made strawberry mousse with whole pieces of fresh strawberries in it, along with grand marnier. I put a layer of ladyfingers on the bottom of the springform pan, then lined up more ladyfingers around the inside edges of the pan, this time overlapping them so that no mousse would ooze out the sides, which happened the last time I tried a similar cake. I poured mousse into the pan, then made another layer of ladyfingers, then more mousse, and put it into the fridge to set. A couple of hours later, I made some fresh whipped cream, took the cake out of the fridge, and prepared to put it on my cake carrier, add the whipped cream, decorate with fresh strawberries and a few remaining ladyfingers, wrap a ribbon around the sides which seems to be de rigeur in strawberry charlotte-land (I know this from browsing cake groups on flickr), and head off to my friend’s 30th birthday party.

I’m not sure what happened next, but suffice to say that as I took the cake out of the springform, it flipped over, landing upside-down and smashed on my (fortunately clean) counter. I think I handled it pretty well: no tears. But what was I going to do? I ended up scraping it off the counter and making trifle – which looked like partially-digested baby food, but tasted amazing – and buying another cake so there’d be a proper-looking cake.  I feel like this should appear on my resume in some way: good in a tragic crisis.

There’s nothing to say here other than, oy vey. But I want to try the strawberry charlotte again soon, so if you’re having a special event, hit me up… you just never know. I’ll try not to drop it.

So, um, brussels sprouts…

I did not like them as a kid.

I did not like them no matter what Mom did.

I did not like them before dessert.

I did not like them with yoghurt.

I did not like them in a bowl.

I did not like them sliced or whole.

I did not like them when grown-up,

Hidden in salad, all cut up.

But in the store the other day,

I saw them and they looked green and gay.

Culinary battle-lines drawn,

I bought them: ’twas my Rubicon.

I sauteed them in oil ’til they sizzled

then o’er top lemon juice I drizzled.

And yes, you guessed it: they’re really good!

Or maybe it’s just the garlic.

Five is a Handful

Sometimes, you need a little Moxie. One of my colleagues brought some back for each of us from a trip to Maine. A little research reveals that we’ve had Moxie since 1884 with nary a pause: it’s “the oldest continuously produced soft drink in the US.” Oddly, Moxie came up in my comments today, too, but this one’s a parenting blog. Go figure.

*****

After reading a review in this week’s New Yorker, I’m totally psyched to pick up Peter Carey’s new novel, His Illegal Self. You may know Carey from the True History of the Kelly Gang or possibly Oscar & Lucinda). It’s a little weird to quote from a book I haven’t yet read, but I cannot resist a book with lines like this: “Plans have changed, she said, getting all busy with a cigarette.”

*****

And speaking of reading, it’s all about the brain, senses, learning right now: This is Your Brain on Music, The Emperor of Scent, and this article about how the brain perceives number, and how we learn to do things with numbers (more New Yorker for ya):

Dehaene’s work centered on an apparently simple question: How do we know whether numbers are bigger or smaller than one another? If you are asked to choose which of a pair of Arabic numerals—4 and 7, say—stands for the bigger number, you respond “seven” in a split second, and one might think that any two digits could be compared in the same very brief period of time. Yet in Dehaene’s experiments, while subjects answered quickly and accurately when the digits were far apart, like 2 and 9, they slowed down when the digits were closer together, like 5 and 6. Performance also got worse as the digits grew larger: 2 and 3 were much easier to compare than 7 and 8. When Dehaene tested some of the best mathematics students at the École Normale, the students were amazed to find themselves slowing down and making errors when asked whether 8 or 9 was the larger number.

Plus, Oliver Sacks has a new one out about sound and the brain, and Donald Plaff is investigating how the golden rule may be (somewhat) hardwired into our brains (this would have been a neat lecture but who can make it from the Bronx to Battery Park by 6:00 pm? Not me). But there’s a larger post in all this, because “Scent” was one of those life-changing books.

*****

I’m taking my enrichment cluster kids to a violin-maker’s studio in March. We’re also going to Sony WonderLab.

*****

My LEGO kids unbuilt the mission models which took us so long to build. It wasn’t destructive, just the outcome of days and days of play, of stealing pieces for other projects. Which would be fine except we’re entering an exhibition/tournament in early April, and suddenly we need to build what we unbuilt. And the pieces are all mixed together with pieces from previous years. Live & learn?

*****

Nevermind that last bit, the REAL #5 is this:

For a friend’s birthday…

Pic is fuzzy ’cause it’s from my phone. Genoise ladyfingers layered with chocolate mousse, whipped cream on top, chocolate shavings on top of that. So many eggs it was really one big chocolate omelette! Crazy rich. I might try it with a berry mousse come spring.

Cupcake Combinatorics

In New York Cake & Baking Supply, earlier today…

Me (after perusing the racks of flavorings): Do you have lavender flavoring?

C&B guy: Flavoring? No. We have color. I’ve never heard of lavender flavor before.

Me: Okay, yeah, I looked for it, just making sure. Do you have any idea where I could get lavender flavor?

C&B guy: I’ve never heard of that flavor before.

Me: Well, I’m experimenting with new buttercream flavors.

C&B guy: Well then you need lavender color!

Me: No, no, I don’t actually want it to be lavender color, just flavor. Never mind.

C&B guy: I’ve never heard of that flavor.

Me: Never mind, I’ll just have to make it with tea or something.

*****

Turns out that there’s no such thing as just lavender tea at Whole Foods. I get three salespeople on the case, but no dice. What I really need are loose dried lavender flowers to make an infusion, but there’s snow everywhere, freezing rain falling, and I don’t know where to get loose herbs in the city. So I’ll have to save the lavender experiment for another day.

*****

I’ve made four or five dozen miniature cupcakes, in three flavors: vanilla, lemon, and almond. I estimated wrong and ran out of miniature cupcake liners, so the vanilla ones are actually heart-shaped tea cakes (disappointing, but what are you going to do?). And while the cupcakes baked, I’ve been soaking apricots, cardamom, and ginger in hot water (separately) to make infusions for interesting new buttercreams. I’ve also got blackberries (no, I’m not sticking to in season this time around), coconut flavoring, oranges, and any number of other fun spices and flavor ideas, like cinnamon, maple, mocha, honey, lemongrass (can’t do this one today, sadly). So my question is… which unusual flavor combinations sound appealing to you? Which sound dreadful?

Cupcake Flavors: lemon, almond, vanilla, chocolate, orange

Buttercream Flavors: ginger, apricot, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, pomegranate, coconut, maple, cinnamon, mocha, honey, lemongrass, lavender, rose, cardamom, cherry, yoghurt, pepper, jalapeno, coffee (not mocha), hazelnut, lychee, tropical fruits like mango, papaya, guava, cherimoya, lime, peanut, caramel, orange, mint, lime, chocolate, vanilla, cumin… anything else?

Today I am making, for certain:

lemon-ginger, vanilla-ginger

lemon-coconut, vanilla-coconut

vanilla-orange, almond-orange(?)

lemon-blackberry, vanilla-blackberry, almond-blackberry

lemon-apricot, vanilla-apricot

lemon-cardamom, vanilla-cardamom, almond-cardamom

almond-maple, vanilla-maple, lemon-maple(?)

p.s. These are all for a party a friend of mine is having tomorrow.

Chocolate Genoise

Here’s the finished chocolate genoise cake from a week ago.  I didn’t have time to make cherry mousse and let it set, so I filled the cake with cherry preserves instead, and ringed the edges with thawed frozen cherries.  A spring version of this cake would feature fresh cherries and be much more elegant and delicious.  Also, although I was careful to fold in the chocolate carefully, it still partially collapsed the egg structure necessary for a light and airy genoise, so it was a little dense.  The chocolate glaze was lovely, though, and made way too much, so I ate it by the spoonful for days afterwards…