Home › Cake Fillings And Frostings › Macaroons (Whites eggs lb powdered sugar)
Macaroons (Whites eggs lb powdered sugar)
Whites 3/8 eggs 3 lb. powdered sugar Work together almond paste and sugar on a smooth board or marble slab. Then add whites of eggs gradually, and work until mixture is perfectly smooth. Confectioners at first use the hand, afterwards a palette knife, which is not only of use for mixing but for keeping board clean. Shape, using a pastry bag and tube, on a tin sheet covered with buttered paper, one-half inch apart; or drop mixture from tip of spoon in small piles. Macaroon mixture is stiff enough to hold its shape, but in baking spreads. Bake fifteen to twenty minutes in a slow oven. If liked soft, they should be slightly baked. After removing from oven, invert paper, and wet with a cloth wrung out of cold water, when macaroons will easily slip off.
A confectioner's method rather than a home baker's: the paste is worked on a hard surface until smooth, then piped and baked gently so the surface dries without colouring. Two things in the original need clarifying before you begin.
- The almond pasteThe method calls for almond paste but the quantity has dropped out of the ingredient line as printed here. Classic proportions for this style of macaroon are equal weights of almond paste and powdered sugar, with 3 egg whites to about 8 oz of each; treat the printed sugar figure as unreliable and work by that ratio.
- Almond paste is not marzipanAlmond paste is the less sweet product, generally somewhere between equal parts and two parts ground blanched almonds to one part sugar, firm and only lightly sweet. Marzipan carries far more sugar and will give a cloying, over-soft cookie. Buy paste sold in a tube or can, not a marzipan block.
- Slow oven300F. These should dry and set to a pale biscuit colour, not brown. Fifteen to twenty minutes at that heat gives a crisp shell with a chewy centre; pull them earlier, around twelve minutes, for the soft version mentioned.
- Work the mixture, do not fold itThe whites go in a little at a time and the mass is worked smooth against the board. This is the hinge of the recipe: unlike a meringue macaron, nothing here is whipped or aerated, and under-worked paste bakes lumpy and cracks.
- Palette knifeAn offset icing spatula or a bench scraper does the job. A marble slab is pleasant but any cool countertop works; the point is a hard, non-absorbent surface that can be scraped clean.
- SpacingHalf an inch is too close for a mixture the recipe itself says spreads. Allow an inch and a half between piles on a parchment-lined sheet.
- The wet-paper trickDamping the inverted paper softens it and loosens the sugar stuck to it, so the macaroons slip free. Parchment makes this unnecessary, though the method still works if you use plain buttered paper as written.
- YieldAbout two and a half dozen macaroons an inch and a half across. They keep a week in a tin and improve after a day as the interior softens.
Almond macaroons of this kind reach American cookbooks by way of French and Italian confectionery, where a paste of ground almonds, sugar and egg white had been baked into small cakes for centuries; the name is generally traced to the Italian maccarone, used of a paste or dough. The instructions here are unusual in being frankly professional: they describe what "confectioners" do, hand first and then palette knife. Almond paste was available ready-made from grocers and confectioners' suppliers, which may be why the book assumes it as an ingredient rather than teaching the reader to blanch and pound almonds.