Treat Thursday- BVF French Macaron Bake Off: Recipe #2 Final Bake Off

 

Beautiful French macarons from the Las Vegas Mandarin Oriental. 

Have you ever wondered why French macarons can be pricey? After trying two recipes, we have concluded that these tasty treats are worth purchasing from a bakery. We are ending our  bake off after two attempts.

Although the average macaron recipes contains less than five ingredients, creating these tasty treats have proven to be anything but simple. 

Recipe #2 

This recipe is from BVF fav celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. 

Recipe #2 Ingredients 

For the biscuit base

• 200 grams ground almonds
• 2 medium egg whites
• 50 grams cocoa
• 375 ml icing sugar

For the filling

• 125 grams butter (softened)
• 375 ml icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 tablespoons milk

Double up

or

Cancel

Directions 

1. Pre heat the oven to 200C
2. Mix the egg whites and almounds together in an electric mixer or by hand, adding the sifted icing sugar and cocoa to form a sticky, coheisive mixture. 
3. Spoon even dollops of the mixture onto a lined baking tray and bake for 11mins. 
4. Allow the macaroon top and base to cool before filling.

For the Filling:

1. Whip the butter until it it turns white then add half the sifted icing sugar and cocoa to the electric mixer, taking care to ensure all the butter is incorporated. 
2. Add the milk and then continue to beat in the remaining amount of icing sugar and cocoa.
3. When done, Pipe in a swirl or spread half the biscuits with the frosting and top with the remaining biscuits.

Di's Experience 

I love Nigella Lawson and have many of her cookbooks, and if I don’t have a recipe for something I always check with her first because I find her recipes are fool proof! Well the Chocolate Macaroon recipe is not the case!! I followed the directions to the ’t’ but I found that adding 375ml, which is a fluid measurement didn’t measure up, so I converted it with the recommendation of 1 1/2cups of icing sugar. The mixture was so dry with just two egg whites and all of the dry ingredients.  I gradually added water to moisten the mixture and ended up adding 6 tablespoons of water. The recipe wasn’t gloopy enough to require piping it into the silicone macaroon sheet, so the first batch I used two teaspoons to decant the mixture and the on the second batch I rolled the mixture like you do some cookie recipes to hopefully have a smooth outcome, but the mixture was too grainy to achieve the typical smooth finish with a sheen. 

The filing is delicious and was easy to make, but I’m not the biggest fan of making icing because the powdered sugar leaves a film on the kitchen counter and clean up entails deep cleaning the kitchen after baking!

For me it made 50 halves to create 25 macaroons and the outcome after baking, cooling and filling was a delicious flavour, crunchy like a cookie on the outside and chewy on the inside.  They certainly don’t look professional and I’m not keen to try this recipe again. 

Monica's Experience

As much as I find baking to be a relaxing and soothing hobby, French macarons are not my forte-at all. 

My experience was very similar to what Di encountered while using this recipe. The mixture was very grainy, but I did not add any additional water and the recipe yielded 18 macaron sets. I converted the ingredients to cups/ounces, not sure it that was a factor in the outcome of the final product. 

I tried using a small bag to pipe out the mixture, since it was so thick-this wasn't an ideal method. I eventually spooned out the  batter and smoothed it into the pre-drawn circles on the macaron silicon baking sheet. 

The macarons were actually very tasty but very crispy. I reduced the oven temperature by 20 degrees and the cooking time by 3 minutes but it didn't make a difference for the 2nd batch. 

The most delightful part about this recipe is the chocolate filling. I used a delicious brand of cocoa I discovered while visiting France, last October and was excited to try it. VanHouten was smooth, rich, and delicious. It mixed in perfectly into the macaron and cream mixtures. 

I highly recommend using the chocolate buttercream recipe for the center and outside of a chocolate cake or even for cupcakes. Just keep in mind since its essentially mostly butter, its very delicate and needs refrigeration. 

 

The chocolate buttercream recipe was very easy to make and I did not make any modifications. 

Although the BVF French Macaron Bake Off has come to an early final round, we had fun experimenting and  learning new techniques in baking. 

Bon Appétit!!