Week 2 - Christmas Cranberry Curd

Manchester - 8th January 2011

As it turns out, there was a theme to my Christmas presents this year. Alongside the requested sewing machine, and a set of knitting needles, Santa slipped a copy of Nigella Lawson's seminal volume How to be a Domestic Goddess under the tree (not quite a sable, but a close second). Now I have no illusions of grandeur, and God forbid I should ever see myself as a 'goddess' (although I think I can certainly stretch to 'domestic') but for some reason this Christmas in our house was filled with cooking experimentation, to which I added my own little investigations in the form of a failed batch of Nigella's Christmas muffins (it turns out muffins + Aga do not agree) and also a jar full of Christmas Cranberry Curd.

A jar of Cranberry Curd, nom nom...

I enjoy making curd, and as it turns out, cranberries make a particularly satisfying curd. Not only is it sweeter than lemon curd, whilst retaining that satisfying tang which balances out the richness of such an eggy spread, it comes out an aesthetically pleasing shade of maroon. And it was, I must admit, this rather than anything else which prompted me to use my Christmas Cranberry Curd as the inspirational backbone of my first solo batch of macaroons. As I see it, it was difficult to lose: aside from the handsome colour, I would be starting the year with a relatively simple (at least in theory) yet thoroughly festive flavour.

And so to the experiment itself...

Recipe

I spent much of December trawling the internet for macaroon tips and, being a cheapskate, recipes, and in my search found this gem of a website:

http://www.syrupandtang.com/200712/la-macaronicite-3-the-more-reliable-macaron-recipe-and-a-few-tips/

Luiseach it seems has set the bar high, having pulled off what is known in the business as the 'French' method. Like most things French, her method looks the simplest but, once the surface has been scratched, is hugely temperamental, suffering from intense mood swings. I, however, being less of a risk-taker (although still more adroit at lavender-lifting), opted to take a more laid-back, reliable, Italian route to macaroon perfection.


Ever keen to make my life a little easier (and in a Job-Centre-fuelled bid to save money by ruining as few batches as possible), I took the leap and bought myself a sugar thermometer in order to take on Syrup and Tang's 'Italian' recipe. Syrup thermometer arrived in the post, egg whites weighed and hand beaters at the ready, I set about making my unflavoured, pink-coloured macaroon shells. 

Baking

The national Italian motto of enjoying life's three essential components to the full (namely food, sleep and sex), as well as an understanding that macaroon making is stressful at the best of times, means that the most traumatic experience of Syrup and Tang's Latin recipe was spilling half a bottle of red food colouring on my mother's new granite counter, followed at a distance by juggling the boiling of sugar syrup with the whisking of egg whites.

Baking dans le microwave-oven.

The actual mixing of the macaroon shells took less than 10 minutes, although preparations took considerably longer, as did 'piping' (or in my case 'spooning') and baking. I later found Syrup and Tang's helpful examination of oven types and how these affect the resultant macaroon. Sadly, having an Aga has meant that our regular oven is in fact a microwave oven, and as a result its heating filaments are at the top rather than the normal bottom or back of the oven. This has a rather substantial effect on the way the bottom of the biscuits (and therefore the feet) cook in comparison to their shells - basically, they don't cook fast enough in comparison with the rest of the macaroon. I will be remedying this next time!!


The Finished Product

Of course, there is a price to pay for a stress-free life - a denser, meatier macaroon - which is less than desirable for any macaroon perfectionists out there, but to my relatively unrefined palate, the resultant pink biscuits were spot on. They seemed to go down well with my taste-ees too!! For a fruit-flavoured macaroon, the cranberry curd provides a smooth and slightly tart balance to the chewy sweetness of the shells - just the cranberry:sugar ratio.

Also with regards to the final macaroons, you might notice they are rather lumpy, for which I believe over-heated syrup was partly responsible, and I know that my lost piping-bag nozzle should be blamed for the rest (requiring some nifty tea-spooning action). It also turns out that accidentally turning off the oven mid-way through baking à la Baking Batch 3 will result in 10 mini macaroon 'eruptions' (or as I like to call them, 'vomiting' shells).*

The Finished Product (note some mini macaroon 'eruptions' 3rd row up)

Afterthought

In the wake of Food-Colouring-gate, my mother has declared war on all of the well-loved food-colouring stuffs in the house of Farf. Having thrown away everything that looks like dye from our cupboards, I have been forbidden from bringing it into our kitchen again (under pain of paying for a new granite worktop). As a result, my macaroons from now until the foreseeable future must be in different shades of ivory to brown, which takes some of the fun out of the biscuit, but adds an extra dimension to the Flavour Challenge. I think I might need your help.


If you have any suggestions, let 'er rip in the comments!


Until next time...

* Note to self - do NOT Google the word 'vomit' ever again. Not ever. No no no.

Christmacaroons (had to be done...)

Starting this blog in the New Year with a post from before Christmas is not really ideal, but is tellingly reflective of my approach to time commitments. Me and Douglas Adams – we’re like that, see?

            Anyway, the first macaroons to grace this blog (and they had grace oozing out of them like weeping pustules) were Christmas-flavoured. What does Christmas-flavoured mean exactly? Did they taste like a Norwegian spruce? Did they prickle like holly? Did they smell like Christmas morning? Not unless you spent Christmas morning inside a Diptyque candle… Use of the term ‘Christmas’ to describe flavour usually means cinnamon, and disgusting fake cinnamon at that. I have only to mention the travesty to the tastebuds that is the Starbuck’s Gingerbread latte (where’s the ginger, people? THIS IS CINNAMON. Or, as I like to call it, cinnaminging) to jog your gag reflex. Sorry about that.

            But no, I rebel. I don’t actually have that much against cinnamon, in small doses at least, but my sister, really really loathes it with every fibre of her being. And since she was co-hosting the party I made these macaroons for, I decided to humour her. Besides, I wanted to take the idea of a spiced macaroon, but alter it slightly. So I decided to make Nutmeg macaroons. I adore nutmeg with the same degree of passion that I loathe cinnamon. That fragrant, custardy, warming fragrance (more than taste really): I wanted to make a macaroon that tasted like a custard tart.

Pre-oven macaroons. Having a rest.

            I took the basic macaroon recipe but started with trepidation – in the macaroon experiment in the summer, I mentioned that Farf’s macaroons worked out much better than mine, which tasted fine, but lacked the smooth, crisp carapace (not dissimilar to a smartie, really) that characterises the perfect macaroon. BUT GUESS WHAT PEOPLE, I’VE DISCOVERED THE SECRET: time. In the summer, I was freaking out and trying to get my macaroons into the oven as quickly as possible, as you’re supposed to do with most egg white-based confectionary. But according to Pierre Hermé (God of Macaroons) and also the BBC food website (source of solace in times of trouble), macaroons need a little breathing space before they meet the inferno. Hermé reckons on 15 minutes, but the Beeb suggest an hour. I reckon on somewhere in between – 40 minutes is ideal, allowing the macaroons time to firm up. Prior to this, I made a plain white macaroon mix, but with plenty of grated nutmeg (probably half a… what do you call a single unit of nutmeg? A clove?). I wasn’t sure about the colour, so ill-advisedly tried adding half a teaspoon of cocoa powder to boost the shade, which merely ended in giving a spooky grey tinge to the mix (luckily this disappeared on baking). In the end I figured I was happy with the buff colour flecked with darker shavings of nutmeg. So the macaroons rested, and I had a nap, and then they went into the oven for 15 minutes.

                                                                    ******

They emerged. They were beautiful. The colour of oyster satin, with shiny smooth shells, and the most heavenly smell you’ve ever smelled. I nearly cried with pride (I have had more macaroon disasters than you can shake a whisk at) as I eased them off the baking paper (that’s right – eased. Not tore, pulled, or crowbarred. Eased). I let them cool and set to making the filling. We’ll have to discuss macaroon fillings at some point, but generally I favour a buttercream bulked out with ground almonds. I was adding nutmeg to this and getting sister no. 2 to taste it, when she had a brain wave. Ginger. These macaroons were crying out for ginger. But not just any ginger. Little nuggets of crystallised ginger mixed into the buttercream. And so I chopped up the crystallised ginger (not very much- about two tablespoons for 20 macaroons) and stirred it in, and oh my. The delicacy of the nutmeg perfume was countered by little zings of chewy sweet spicy ginger. It was like listening to a duet. I listened to the happy little macaroons as I sandwiched them together, and made a little tower of them on a plate. They were the stars of the party. Nutmeg and ginger macaroons. Perfection.

Happiness.

Afterword: there’s a more unhappy sequel to this story. I made the first batch on the 23^rd December, then tried to follow up by making them again on Christmas Day for a café gourmand (of which there will most certainly be more later). Only left them to rest for 20 minutes pre-oven. MISTAKE. Again, the taste was fine, but that disappointing moussey texture made my heart weep. Pride definitely goes before a fall. And Pierre Hermé, you are so not a god of macaroons. 15 minutes my eye.