Macarons at Adour
But if you grew up in France, macarons are ethereal discs of almond flour meringue, sandwiched with buttercream. Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside—possibly what a cloud might taste like if God had a hand for pastry.
Luckily there are mortals who can make this elegant cookie and one of them is Fabrice Bendano, the executive pastry chef at Washington’s Adour Restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel. At an in-the-kitchen course, he shared some tips and sweets with a few macarons-obsessives—women (all women, naturally) who love to bake and/or eat macarons.
I think many of us had abandoned any hope of making them at home, intimidated by the flights of flavor and expertise that Parisian patissier, Pierre Herme has used to make macarons his brand. He offers them in 35 flavors at any one time, including olive oil and vanilla, campari and grapefruit, chocolate and cassis. He’s even gone so far as to establish Le Jour du Macaron, as an annual fundraiser.
But macarons were part of the home cook’s repertoire. In 1927, La Bonne Cuisine de Madame St. Ange (a kind of Joy of Cooking for French housewives), Madame presents earnest directions involving sweet and bitter almonds, drum sieves, and a mortar and pestle. The Roux brothers update the tools and technique in the their 1986 cookbook with complicated, pre-silpat instructions for pouring a thin sheen of hot water between the baking sheet and parchment paper to ease the baked macarons off the paper. It was this technique that put me off making them at home
But watching Bendano move purposefully through his kitchen gives me confidence and with a silpat, I am ready to attempt them again, with these tips from Bendano.
• Leave the almond flour and sugar mixture spread on a cookie sheet to dry for a few hours (or even overnight) so the almond oil doesn’t keep the cookies from being dry and crispy.
• Mix the meringue and almond paste with a firm hand. This is not about gently folding to preserve the egg whites’ foam, but about breaking them down a bit. Bendano almost kneads them with a plastic scraper in a large bowl, until as he draws through the middle, the batter falls back toward the center on either side. It should be more liquid than you would expect. See a video here.
• Use food coloring to tint the macarons to reflect their flavor.
• Beat the meringue until it’s cool (or barely warm), then blend with the almond paste.
• Pipe the batter from a pastry bag onto the silpat-lined baking sheet. Bendano’s description: “pipe, stop, cut.” My suggestion, relax and practice.
• Bendano says smaller macarons should cook more quickly and in a hotter oven. Again, practice.
• Let the cookies cool on the silpat, then match them up by size, and gently make a depression in the bottom of each one to hold the buttercream filling in a neat sandwich. And make your life easy, prepare the buttercream ahead and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready.
• You can store the macarons for a few days in the fridge. Wrap them tightly in plastic to keep the moisture out.
Macarons are a canvas for the baker’s creativity—flavors and colors can be infinitely combined in the cookie and the fillings. Bendano’s November 2009 macarons were tinted a delicate orange and filled with both white chocolate and pumpkin spice buttercream and pumpkin buttercream. I love the idea of pulling the spice out of the pumpkin and using it to add complexity to white chocolate. Bendano was intrigued to create a sweet from what he views as a vegetable flavor—not a stretch for pumpkin pie inured Americans.
You can find classic recipes for macarons in Madme St. Ange, the Roux brothers, Dorie Greenspan, or David Lebovitz. The proporation of ingredeints vary, but they all follow a similar technique—making a batter of almond flour, sugar, and unbeaten egg whites, and adding in a meringue. But knowing the tips of an expert like Bendano will help ensure the desired result.
Once you’ve mastered the classics, why not try some high-wire stuff, like Pierre Herme’s ketchup macaron, described at baker and author David Lebovitz’s site.