Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Macaroons Flavored with Chocolate
Macaroons Flavored with Chocolate
Take half a pound of ground sweet almonds, add a quarter of a pound of slightly warmed chocolate and a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar; mix them to a stiff paste with the white of the eggs. Shape the paste into round balls, place them on a sheet of paper leaving a space between each, sift over some fine sugar, and bake in the oven until they are of a golden color. When they are done, take the paper out of the oven, dampen it a little so that they will be removed easily, and place the macaroons on a sieve until they are wanted.
A short, ratio-driven formula of the kind professional pastry kitchens worked from: almonds, chocolate and sugar in equal weight terms, bound with as much egg white as the paste will take. The vagueness about eggs and oven is the only real obstacle.
- The hinge: add egg white graduallyThe original gives no quantity because the correct amount depends on how oily the ground almonds are. Start with one white for this quantity, work it in, and add a second in spoonfuls only until the paste holds a ball without slumping. Too much white and the macaroons spread into flat wafers.
- Weights in modern termsHalf a pound of ground almonds is about 8 oz (225 g), roughly 2 cups of almond flour. The chocolate and the powdered sugar are 4 oz (115 g) each.
- What "sweet almonds" meansThe qualifier distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which period kitchens used sparingly for flavour. Ordinary blanched almonds or commercial almond flour is what is wanted; nothing else is needed.
- The chocolateIn recipes of this period 'chocolate' generally meant plain unsweetened chocolate rather than sweetened eating chocolate, though this recipe does not say so. Unsweetened baking chocolate is the safe reading; warm it only until soft and workable rather than hot, so it blends into the paste without setting the egg white.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, in the region of 325F, suits macaroons of this type. The original says to bake until golden; with cocoa in the paste that colour change is harder to read, so watch also for the surface setting firm, and check early.
- The paperSheet paper here means plain unwaxed paper laid on a tin. Parchment removes the need for the damping trick entirely, though the original method works: moistening the paper once it leaves the oven loosens the sticky bases.
- The sifted sugarSifting fine sugar over the shaped balls before baking gives the crackled crust that distinguishes a macaroon from a plain almond drop. Do it just before they go in; left standing, the sugar dissolves into the surface.
- Yield and keepingExpect about 24 to 30 macaroons at walnut size. The instruction to rest them on a sieve is about air circulation; they keep several days in a tin and improve on the second day as the centres soften.
Oscar Tschirky's collection dates from 1896, and the recipe carries no oven setting, no egg count, no yield. Almond macaroons themselves are far older than the hotel, often said to have originated in Italian convent baking before being carried into French patisserie, where they became the base for a large family of petits fours. Chocolate versions have long been part of French pastry work. The detail about dampening the paper is a survival from before parchment: bakers baked on plain sheet paper and steamed the sugary undersides loose.