A Spoonful of Sugar

The recipe in the book is very long (three pages!!), so I won't reproduce it here, but I did find a link with a basic recipe from Pierre. The quantities given seem to match up pretty well to those in the book, just doubled up - I used 100g egg whites, 25g cocoa, 250g icing sugar and 140g ground almonds.

I found it helpful to have absolutely everything weighed out and prepared before starting to make the macaroons. You'll need to make sure that you have plenty of counter space cleared - enough to take the two baking sheets. Talking of baking sheets, Pierre specified insulated baking sheets... I've never heard of these? I ended up using my heaviest (and darkest) sheets. The macaroons cooked perfectly, so I can't have been that wrong.

There are quite a few other hints and tips given in the book recipe which never made it into the Bon Appetit article... I'm passing them onto you as I think they'll make a big difference if you decide to try your hand at these little beauties.

Once the batter was prepared and spooned into my piping bag, I piped a small blob at each of the corners on the baking sheets before placing the baking parchment on top. I was sceptical about this, but the paper stuck fast and withstood even my worst piping attempts.

I'm really terrible at piping. The batter itself is easy to pipe out, but I seem to be incapable of piping mounds which are all of equal size. Mercifully I do seem to be able to err twice - when I came to fill and pair up the macaroons they all had similarly sized partners. I was supposed to be piping 1 inch rounds spaced 1 inch apart.

Pierre then instructed me to hold the baking sheet (one at a time) firmly in both hands and then bash it hard on the counter to force the air out of the macaroons. I was really worried that the parchment would fly off and decorate my kitchen with chocolate dots, but it still didn't move on the sheet (maybe this batter would make good glue?). The next step was to set the sheets aside for 15 minutes while preheating the oven so that the macaroons could devlop a skin on top and also spread out slightly. They were sprinkled with some more cocoa just prior to baking.

A fairly significant ommision from the article (at least in my opinion) was that you should preheat the oven to 220C and then turn it down to 180C immediately that the first sheet is put in the oven. Pierre also instructs you to prop open the oven door slightly with a wooden spoon and bake for 10-12 minutes. If you don't have a spring-loaded oven door, you can probably avoid using the wooden spoon! The oven should be turned back up as soon as the sheet is taken out of the oven.

To remove the macaroons easily, with no sticking and tearing, you must steam them off the baking parchment. This step seemed rather scary when I initially read the recipe but in practice turned out to be rather simple. I loosened the four stuck-down corners of the parchment and then lifted one corner up using tongs before pouring some just-boiled water onto the sheet. Moving very quickly indeed, I tilted the sheet madly until the hot water had trickled under each macaroon. I waited a few seconds before lifting off the macaroons with a palette knife and cooling on a rack. You can add further water if necessary - I found that a couple of macaroons at the far edge of the sheet were stuck on their outer edge, so poured on some more water. I'm wondering if this trick will work for other cookie doughs? This would be a really good solution to those cookie doughs which tend to stick to baking sheets...

Filling the cooled macaroons was really easy. I used Pierre's Bittersweet Ganache recipe which was really quite luscious but you could use your favourite ganache recipe. I did toy with the idea of making a chocolate-caramel ganache from elsewhere in the book, but decided to make the recipe as written before trying out variations.

And the taste - absolutely incredible! I can totally see what all the fuss was about. Its so much more refined than the large heavy coconut macaroons that we're used to in the UK. After a night chilling in the fridge, the edges of the macaroons were still crispy but the middle was soft, chewy and slightly melded with the ganache. Chocolate heaven!!