Macarons: take two

“Right,” I said to myself, “I will NOT be defeated by sugar and eggs.” So this weekend I found myself in Waitrose buying more eggs than a one person household should ever need and begging a shelf stacker to search the stock room for ground almonds.

This time, I decided to actually follow a recipe book (“The Secrets of Macarons”) and adopted the Italian method. For those not in the know (like me until the last week), there are two basic methods to macarons. Either beat the egg whites and fold into the dry ingredients (French) or make meringue with boiling sugar and eggs before folding into a paste of liquid egg white and the dry ingredients (Italian).

O la la! The macaron disaster

Last night I tried baking macarons for the first time. On the bake off James Morton used to whip them up so quickly. “How hard can it be?” I thought.

Using a slightly dubious recipe from the interweb I made some chocolate macarons. Although they taste ok, the texture is too grainy and they are not quite how they should be. I thought I had done it all by the book: the resting to form a skin, sieving the ground almonds, weirdly opening the oven door during cooing to let out steam…

Quiche

Following my recent visit to the Tangerine Dream cafe, I thought I might try making a quiche inspired by their classic cheese tart. Mine was much smaller and only have gruyere cheese, without goat’s cheese (which seems generally over used in vegetarian cooking). I blind baked basic pastry (flour, butter, water) for half an hour at 150C fan, topped with a thin layer of roast tomato paste and then covered in a basic mix of three eggs, small carton on single cream and good heap of gruyere cheese. As a garnish, I added some chopped chives. I then baked it for a further 40 minutes. It puffs right up in the oven, settling when it cools. I served it with salad, when the quiche was still warm, but not scalding. Lovely weekday supper enjoyed before the final of the Great British Bake Off = happy Pistachio Plum Girl 🙂

Related articles

• Quiche au Gruyère (sipchompchew.wordpress.com)

Almond and plum loaf cake

This loaf was baked following the Waitrose magazine Autumn recipe booklet- with the substitution of flaked almonds on top rather than the raw plums. It def requires a lot of baking but the result is scrummy – moist and more-ish!