Home › Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies › Swiss Macaroons
Swiss Macaroons
1 pound sugar 4 ounces cornstarch 4 ounces ground almonds 12 ounces shredded almonds 2 oranges (grated rind) 2 eggs, well beaten Sift sugar and cornstarch twice, add the rest of the ingredients, stirring in the beaten eggs. With hands, shape the mixture into balls the size of a walnut and bake on pans covered with oiled paper in moderate oven about 15 minutes. Makes five dozen.
A flourless almond cookie bound only with sugar, cornstarch and egg. The dough is stiff and slightly crumbly by design; resist the urge to add liquid.
- Weights to volume1 pound sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated. 4 ounces cornstarch is roughly 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons; 4 ounces ground almonds is about 1 cup of almond flour, and 12 ounces shredded almonds about 3 1/2 cups. Weighing is far more reliable here than measuring.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is generally taken as 350-375F. At 15 minutes the macaroons should be set and just barely coloured at the edges; they firm as they cool and will be dry and hard if baked to a full brown.
- Shredded almondsThis means almonds cut into fine slivers or shreds, not the modern flaked or sliced product, and not the sweetened coconut sold as "shredded" today. Slivered almonds, chopped once or twice, are the closest match.
- Two eggs may not be enoughStart with two large eggs, beaten well, and if the mass will not hold together when squeezed in the palm add a third egg a little at a time rather than water.
- Oiled paperParchment on a sheet pan is the closest modern substitute for the oiled paper, and needs no greasing. These are high in sugar and will weld themselves to a bare pan.
- The hingeSift the sugar and cornstarch together twice as directed. The cornstarch does much of the binding in a cookie with no flour, and lumps of it bake into chalky pockets.
- Orange rindGrate only the coloured zest of the two oranges and add it to the sugar so the oil is distributed before the eggs go in. Any white pith carried over turns bitter in baking.
- Yield and keepingFive dozen walnut-sized cookies. Cooled completely and kept airtight they hold about a week.
Macaroons of this kind descend from the almond-and-sugar confections of Italian and French pastry, which reached German- and Swiss-speaking bakers early and stayed in their Christmas repertoire; the Swiss and Austrian versions typically lean on ground nuts and a starch rather than wheat flour, which is what gives them their short, sandy bite. The name comes through French macaron from Italian maccarone, a word that is generally held to have covered a range of pastes and doughs before it settled on pasta in one direction and almond cookies in the other. Its place here, among "extra-special company cakes and cookies," reflects the economics of the era: a full pound of almonds (4 ounces ground plus 12 ounces shredded) and a pound of sugar in one batch made this a deliberately expensive thing to set out for guests, and the absence of flour, butter and leavening marked it as confectionery rather than everyday home baking.