Daring Bakers October Challenge: Macaroons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe. My results this month can only really be described as pretty disasterous! My macaroons did not turn out particularly well - in fact they may be the ugliest in history! They were all chewy but very little crunch. However they did taste fantastic!

The sticking point was my offer to Mr Jen to bake whatever flavour he fancied. He immediately picked raspberry. The recipe advised to avoid adding any additional moisture to the mix so I went in search of freeze dried raspberries or powder thereof. The only ones I was able to find were lyophilised raspberries from the Ferran Adria Range at Simon Johnson. Unfortunately these cost over $50 a tin which I thought was pretty steep (although I was tempted.....). Then I had a brainwave. When we were over in Ireland last year, Mr Jen decided he liked Special K Red Berries cereal. On returning to Sydney we couldn't find them until I saw an own-brand version whilst on a chocolate and baby wipes run to Aldi (its the best place to buy chocolate for baking!!). I stocked up on three boxes only for Mr Jen to do his usual cereal behaviour i.e eat a few bowls then go off it entirely....... With two boxes sitting on the shelf I decided to pick out all the raspberries - it didn't take long and I was quite impressed with my haul which I blitzed with the almond flour and icing sugar in the recipe.

My salvaged freeze-dried raspberries

While the raspberries were fairly dry they were a bit sticky so I'm definitely putting them down as the reason for my failure........ I made a dark chocolate ganache to fill them with (melt 200g chocolate with 150ml cream and 1 tsp of vanilla extract and then whisk until smooth and thick). The combination worked really well flavour-wise as the raspberries gave a tart edge to the macaroons and the ganache was pure chocolate with very little sweetness which I loved.

Anyway, here's the Claudia Fleming recipe if you'd like to give it a go. The methodology is pretty simple but next time I think I'll try aging my egg whites for a few days in the fridge and drying the macaroons for 30 mins-1 hour after piping and skipping the first oven stage in the recipe as that does seem to help according to other people. I decided not to add food colour due to the risk of additional moisture and I was happy for them to look a bit rustic (not quite this rustic though!)

Ingredients

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami's note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons.

Cafe Next, Rozelle

While I love experimenting with new restaurants for lunch and dinner, I am always a little more cautious when it comes to breakfast venues. If I have a disappointing breakfast I feel like I've started my day on the wrong note. As we were picking up an overseas friend who was staying in Leichhardt I decided to go outside my comfort zone and try somewhere new. My first step was to call our Leichhardt dwelling friends who I would trust implicitly for restaurant recommendations. Without pausing for breath they recommended Cafe Next in Rozelle. I looked on Eatability and the reviews and rating seemed to confirm their enthusiasm so the venue was decided.

We ordered coffees immediately, closely followed by the food. I went for the Mediterranean Eggs - scrambled with pesto, tomato and feta. The food all arrived at about the same time but I wish the same could be said for the coffees which arrived in three separate deliveries - you'd think they needed to re-use the cups as we'd finished the first batch before any others arrived! We also ordered a babycino to entertain the monkey (yes - she's so Eastern Suburbs....) but we had to ask three times before we received it.

Mediterranean Eggs $13

My meal was slightly disappointing - the portion was ample but not massive and the eggs were pretty bland considering all the components -the feta was pretty rubbery when I expected a more crumbly cheese. Our overseas friend ordered the buttermilk pancakes with banana which were fantastic and all other food ordered was good.

Buttermilk Pancakes with Banana

While the food was pretty good the service really let this place down for us. The coffee situation was pretty average plus on arrival we asked if they had a high chair for the monkey, the slightly sullen waitress said she would go and see. As a frequent cafe diner, the monkey knows the score when she's in a high chair - she sits quite happily for as long as there is food to be eaten. Without a high chair she is more like a caged animal as she's too small for an adult seat and being on our laps isn't ideal for anyone. As we never heard back we assumed there was no high chair so were disgusted to see one being brought out as we were leaving. As the waitress would have seen the struggling monkey throughout the meal, I can't belive she'd forgotten our request. Despite the decent food I don't think we'll be returning....

Does service make or break cafes/restaurants for you?

Mercredi Passion – Orient & Epices , Anse Vata, New Caledonia

Giant tagine

The first Wednesday of each month, the tourist board here organises a street fair down by the beach in Anse Vata. This month the theme was “Orient & Epices” roughly translated as “The East and Spices”. It was a lovely evening so we went for a walk along the promenade to build up an appetite first.

There were a variety of stalls selling local and “eastern” items including some big bags of vanilla pods at a bargain price l but I don’t think I’d get them through Aussie customs. Now onto the fabulous food stalls. We first hit a French Caribbean themed stall (not sure how that relates to the Orient?) – they were selling a wide range of sweet and savoury pasties. We went for a couple of meat ones (250 francs/approx $3.50 each) – they were tasty with slightly spiced ground meat inside but they would have been better if they were hotter.

We then homed in on the Indian stall which apart from anything else was the most crowded and I’m all for following the crowd in this type of situation. They had a huge range of little appetizer sized items all for only 50 francs each (about 70c). We made a start on the savoury side with chicken and fish mini samosas and little patties made from semolina and mild chillis – we went back for more as soon as we’d finished our trial batch. We held ourselves back a little as there were also plenty of sweet options. My favourite of these were little banana dumplings which were somewhere between banana bread and a doughnut – very banany without being too sweet.
We’d made the schoolboy error of eating too much too soon but managed to squeeze in a bag of Achas de Poisson (fish fritters - I've never seen the word Achas anywhere before?) from another Indian stall (500 francs ($A7) for a dozen although I got the last portion of the batch so I ended up with about 18! Again these were excellent but it would’ve been nice to have some sort of dipping sauce. I had grand plans to head back to the apartment and mix some onion into some yoghurt for a quick dip but needless to say our little bag of Achas didn’t last that long.....

Achas de Poisson

Lastly we couldn’t resist a portion of Moroccan tagine and couscous to takeaway (900 francs ($A12.50). There was plenty for the two of us when heated it for lunch the next day and while we’d thought it was just chicken and vegetable, Mr Jen in particular was glad to find a couple of spicy merguez style sausages in there too.

The monkey was fading fast so we had to head home before the entertainment began but there was a troop of Indian dancers all ready to go as we were leaving so I think the party was only just starting....

New Caledonia and French Supermarkets

We were long overdue a relaxing holiday as Mr Jen and I figured out that we’ve never actually managed to take a holiday together that didn’t end up involving visiting friends/family and a hectic schedule. I wanted to head east so that the time difference would work in our favour in terms of the Monkey’s wake up time. I did my dissertation at uni on the French Pacific so I’d always been interested in visiting New Caledonia. I had heard that it was pretty expensive but when I realised I could get the flights on frequent flyers I couldn't resist.

New Caledonia is a “territorial collective with special status” of France – I won’t go into details but I suppose its kind of like a colony. As confirmed Francophiles, Mr Jen and I were excited about it being a little piece of France without a 24 hour flight! The native people in New Caledonia are Melanesian plus there has been a significant influence from Polynesian, Indonesian, Vietnamese and of course French migrants which have all got to lead to some exciting food options.

I must start by admitting that I have what can only be described as a fetish for foreign supermarkets so the prospect of French supermarkets was potentially one of the things I was most looking forward to on this holiday. Eating out is expensive here (although but no means as expensive as I had been expecting), but this gave me the excuse to head straight to the supermarket on the morning after we arrived to stock up our apartment.

I was pleased to find that most prices were either the same or slightly more that my local supermarket in Sydney. The best thing was to stick to local produce and French imports – if you wanted Australian imports you’d be paying a significant premium but that certainly wasn’t what I was here for. We stocked up on a variety of cheese, saucisson sec (salami type thing), salad veggies and some kitchen staples - including French butter of course which I would eat by the spoonful if I could! Despite all the fabulous French imports, Mr Jen was most excited by the big jars of Dry Roasted Peanuts which he can never get hold of in Australia.....

I don’t know what it is about French supermarkets in particular, the quality of the in store butchers and cheese counter is always great but I’m also a sucker for a bit of exotic packaging – I think I’ll be bringing the table salt back to Sydney purely for that!

We’ll no doubt be making another supermarket trip and I can’t wait – is it wrong to look forward to that more than the beach?