French macarons

I made French macarons! Ooh fancy!

I was trawling through Pinterest a few evenings ago and stumbled across a recipe for French macarons that promised to be easy, so I thought "heck, why not give it a go", and did just that.

The recipe I used is this one, courtesy of Martha Stewart.

I halved the recipe in order to halve the risk of wasted ingredients, in case it all went pear-shaped, so I used:

Just over half a cup of ground almonds
Well over half a cup of icing sugar (some of which I made by grinding caster sugar, as I ran out of icing sugar)
A pinch of salt (which you'll note isn't actually added in the instructions Martha gives, though is in her ingredients list... hmmm)
2 egg whites
1/4 cup caster sugar
A drop of vanilla essence
Raspberry jam, stirred into a runnier consistency

I sieved the ground almonds and icing sugar into a bowl and put them to the side. In a large bowl I whisked the egg whites and salt until they were frothy, then slowly added the caster sugar while whisking until the mixture formed medium peaks. Slop in the vanilla essence somewhere along the way too.

Then I folded the sieved mixture into the eggs (it said to do it the other way, but I had to use the big bowl for the eggs so I just kept them in it and added the dry ingredients to it). The whole lot was mixed together thoroughly, keeping in lots of lovely air.

I then used a sandwich bag and a piping nozzle (I tore the proper piping bag doing some hardcore cupcake icing last year) to pipe what should have been inch wide blobs onto a lined baking sheet. Note for next time - if it looks like an inch when it lands it will spread to 2 inches (minimum!).

I then let them sit for 30 mins (should have let them sit for 1 hour, in retrospect) and then baked them at 170 degrees for 14 minutes, turning once. 

This gave me 16 halves. It should have given me quite a bit more than that, and if I'd done them small enough it would have done!

I let them cool, which took hardly any time at all, and then squashed them together with jam in between.

They tasted lovely and for a first attempt I'm pleased. Next time, however, I'll let them sit longer, make them smaller and use less jam. They were very very soft in texture and could really have done with being harder. But yay for trying.

Margarita Cookies

My friend and colleague, Matt, showed me a recipe book a few months ago - it had lots of different types of cookies and biscuits to try, and one that stuck in my mind was Margarita Cookies, so I thought I'd give them ago. I didn't have the recipe book to hand today when I was making them, so I sort of made it up as I went, following the principle of lime biscuits with tequila icing.

So here's what I did...

For the biscuits:
225g butter
110g caster sugar
275g plain flour
Zest of 1 lime

For the icing*:
115g icing sugar
2 tablespoons of tequila
Splash of lime juice

1. Cream the butter so it's light and smooth
2. Cream together the caster sugar and smooth butter
3. Mix in the lime zest
4. Work in the flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a dough is formed

The first batch of these I did had quite a dry dough - the second was more moist even though I used the same quantities. It's worked out nicely with both consistencies - so long as it's not sloppy and you can mould it with your hands you should be ok!

5. Roll these into small balls, about the size of a walnut, and place on a baking tray, lined with baking paper.
6. Squash the balls down with your fingers to make rough circles about 8mm thick. They don't need to be smooth - in fact the bumpier they are the easier they are to ice. You should end up with 25 biscuits.
7. Bake at 170 degrees celcius (fan assisted oven) for 13 minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack for cooling.
8. Mix in the first tablespoon of tequila to the icing sugar, to make a paste. Then mix in the next tablespoon which should loosen the mixture even more.
9. Add a splash of lime juice if you think the mixture needs loosening further - but remember it's got to stick to the biscuits and dry, so you don't want it too sloppy.
10. Dip a spoon into the icing, and drizzle it over the biscuits. To do mine I put all the biscuits close together and shook the icing over a bit like a cobweb.
11. Allow to dry for an hour (but they're ok to try before they're dry!).

*this much icing was enough to cover a batch and a half of cookies