{"id":7075,"date":"2013-04-28T19:09:43","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T00:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/?p=7075"},"modified":"2013-04-28T19:11:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T00:11:56","slug":"not-exactly-what-i-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/not-exactly-what-i-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Not exactly what I expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rach and I have been talking about macaroons on our walks – among other things. She is craving to try to make the real, classic French, actually Parisian, macaroons – silky little pillows in lots of flavors, with fillings. David Lebovitz<\/a> has a lengthy post and recipe about the difference between Parisian macaroons and other macaroons, that links to more writing about macaroons by Dorie Greenspan<\/a> – and they’re both Americans who have lived in France a lot.<\/p>\n

\"Parisian

Parisian macaroons (macarons) at Laduree<\/a>, where they are sold by the 10s of thousands per day.<\/p><\/div>\n

Evidently I have always made rustic (or maybe Italian) macaroons – crustier, with crackly tops, anathema to the little pillows. Dorie talks about the macaroons from Saint-Emilion<\/a>, and they look not terribly different from mine.<\/p>\n

\"pinenutmac\"

Pine nut macaroons<\/p><\/div>\n

We talked about whether to make the macaroons with ground nuts or paste – I usually start with almond paste, based on the the Odense Marzipan recipe<\/a>, but I whip the egg whites. I grind up the almond paste in the food processor with the sugar, and then fiold it into the beaten whites, and then use a small scoop to potion ithe dough out onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Rach was reading all this stuff about aging the whites – you really just need to let them sit at room temp for a few hours. I often am using whites from the freezer so they are sort of “pre-aged”. I think the aging idea is that the whites & yolks are easier to separate when they’re cold, but the whites whip better when they’re warmed up – or been frozen and thawed, and have a thinner consistency.<\/p>\n

I had a can of pistachio paste, so I thought I’d try pistachio macaroons. I planned to make chocolate pudding to use up the yolks. I had the eggs ready to whip, and the food processor opened up to dump in the can of pistachio paste and sugar – but when I took the lid off the can there was an inch of pistachio oil floating on the top. Didn’t want to dump that<\/em> in the processor. So I decided to try beating up the sugar and the paste, and then added UNwhipped whites. Which resulted in a pretty easy to work with batter, and I happily made little greenish mounds with my scoop. When I checked them after the few 5 mins of baking they looked like they’d be perfect, but alas, after the next 5 mins, they flattened out into more rustic style disks. Too much sugar and egg, not enough ground nuts to keep them puffy.<\/p>\n

I made the pudding, and sandwiched the flat patties with Nutella. Definitely edible, just not what I expected.<\/p>\n

\"Sandwiched

Sandwiched pistachio macaroons<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Closer

Closer look at sandwiched pistachio macaroons<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Somehow

Somehow the very last tray was not quite as flat<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rach and I have been talking about macaroons on our walks – among other things. She is craving to try to make the real, classic French, actually Parisian, macaroons – silky little pillows in lots of flavors, with fillings. David Lebovitz has a lengthy post and recipe about the difference between Parisian macaroons and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[168,29,235,279],"class_list":["post-7075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cookies","tag-failures","tag-walks","tag-weekends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7075"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7083,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions\/7083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}