Adventures with macaroons, part one of a series

The other week a little flurry of random cooking led to Viennese biscuits. If I have ever piped anything before it was back in my school days, and its not the sort of thing I would expect to be any good at, but I was suprised by how easy it was to control the bag. In fact the hard part was getting the mixture into the bag in the first place. I had intended to half coat these biscuits in chocolate but they all got eaten while I wasn't looking, which pretty much put paid to that.

The same night I also made some chocolate macaroons. These were not the elegant and stylish version currently so popular, but the old fashioned chewy almond cakes. Or at least that was the theory. For me, this has long been one of those foolproof recipes which always works and which I can bash out on no notice, but this time it went wrong. Rather than neat little domes, I produced a pile of thin cookies. They did appear to taste the same - and lasted about as long as the Viennese biscuits - but it was frustrating. What is it that means a simple recipe, followed many times, suddenly takes a random turn?

Some time ago we were given a gift of Laduree Macaroons. The beautiful colours, delicate flavours and stunning presentation made them a gift to treasure rather than to dive in and scarf, and the box lasted the best part of a fortnight as we shared each treat. I don't for a moment expect to be able to achieve what those chefs do, but suddenly there seemed little point in not trying a challenging recipe if the simple ones were going to play up anyway. So bugger chewy almond cakes, I decided to try my hand with the modern version.

I spent a happy evening researching various recipes and found that, as suspected, the authentic Parisian ones tend to look like something Heston Blumenthal came up with after concentrating really hard. Reassuringly though, there are many people out there who have been similarly inspired and have detailed what works for them. There are some variations - oven door open or closed, egg whites left out overnight before use or just at room temperature - and some useful tips such as smoothing the surface of the raw macaroon with a damp finger to get a smooth finish. Cherry picking bits from different websites according to how much sense they seemed to make and choosing a recipe with sensible looking quantities, the baking commenced.

For a first batch, I am absolutely thrilled with the results. The process was far less complicated than I anticipated, although most comments I read suggest that macaroons have a mind of their own and getting the ingredients and method right carry about equal weight with the weather and blind luck. In my case, the sheet nearest the top of the oven produced about half which looked exactly right (I decided not to smooth the tops this time around, focusing on taste, texture and size to begin with, so many of them had a little nubby bit from the piping). The macaroons on the sheet immediately under this rose into a more obvious dome shape, suggesting that I'll need to bake one sheet at a time to get the right appearance.

There is a definite difference in texture between the two types, with the domed macaroons being much more meringuey - albeit about the best meringues I've ever tasted. They are gloriously gooey in the middle and melt-in-the-mouth crispy on top. I may even be tempted to use this recipe whenever I make meringues in the future and just be sure to bake them on that shelf.

The flatter, smoother macaroons look much closer to what I was actually aiming for and are definitely closer in texture. A number of the websites suggest leaving them 24 hours before icing them so that the texture dries out, and that is definitely something I will try next time. This time curiosity got the best of me so I ploughed ahead with a Swiss meringue buttercream. An absolutely stunning combination and luckily too rich to eat much of, as the sandwiched macaroons were just wonderful.

These macaroons are supposed to improve after a day or two, which could make them the ideal Christmas gift, given that we tend to catch up with different friends over a number of days at that time of year. So now I have a plan. Over the next eight months I will be trying out the various tips, perfecting the recipe and to introducing variants.

First up, perfect the vanilla ones. This means trying the recipe with small changes each time to see exactly what works best in my kitchen - leaving the egg whites overnight, leaving the cooked macaroons for 24 hours before icing, refrigerating them, smoothing the tops and who knows what else.

Once I have mastered those it will be time to move on to colours and flavours. Substituting ground pistachios for some of the almond meal in one batch, swapping some icing sugar for cocoa in another. With trial and error I am hoping to be able to produce a range of flavours by December. Although of course its equally possible that I will lose the will to live when it comes to macaroons and end up offering to do everyones Christmas cake for them. Or lebkuchen, I really do fancy giving those a try. Or Florentines. Or maybe gingerbread. So many options, so little time.

Also baked in the last fortnight: vanilla cupcakes (again), Nigel brownies (again), plus a batch of lemon cup cakes with lemon frosting happily described as the perfect combination of cake and icing by the man currently working his way through the last couple left in the tin.

Having finally gathered the right combination of ingredients together, I also got around to baking apricot and coconut cake. I have absolutely no idea who named this recipe, which actually contains more fig than apricot, plus a fair amount of sultanas, but it produced a lovely golden cake full of moist fruit and texture. It was one of those cakes that would also work warm as a pudding, so will be revisited when we have guests who actually like that combination of ingredients. This is apparently going to be less often than you might expect, what with all the coconut haters and fig bashers out there. Hmmmm, fig bashers reads rather like a euphemism, now I come to look at it.Time to call it a day.

Next up - carrot cake(probably) and further adventures with macaroons. Ah, the life I lead.

My citrus phase

Other than a batch of (rather fabulous) wholemeal bread, it's all been about citrus for the last few days. It started with a lemon cake, adapted from a cup cake recipe to become a grown up layer cake. This didn't actually work out all that well - the cake tasted fine but the layers were thin, despite using a small tin size. Next time I'll try it as a single layer top-iced cake. The flavour was great though, and a really moist texture. Sandwiched with lemon and cream cheese icing it was a gooey delight and a good change from my usual lemon drizzle, which was rather the point.

I have a few Australian cookbooks and the lemon cake sent me back to them. Many of the recipes substitute some or all of the flour with almond meal which tends to lead to a very moist sponge, and the use of fruit is fantastic. I keep meaning to make a hummingbird cake but whenever I think I have gathered the right fruits together I inevitably turn out to be missing some crucial element.

I'd been having an urge to bake something with coconut for a few weeks. I am sure other people must have far more interesting urges than me since mine all seem to relate to baking, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Or something.

Anyway, coconut was on my mind. I had some limes in so googled for combo ideas but was surprised by how little was out there. Various lime cake recipes came up but most had pretty critical reviews, or something about the recipe just didn't look right to me. A fair few cheesecakes, but nothing inspiring.

Returning to one of my Aussie books I found a lime and coconut friand recipe. Friands are a big favourite of the Cake Eater in Chief but since they use a lot of egg whites I have tended not to make them as often as asked. Now that we have a dog who has spent a big part of her life living rough and as a result burns off more calories through nervous energy than she can consume in conventional dog food, I have a ready receptacle for any spare protein lying around the house. Though since she is quite happy to steal what she feels she needs (half a pound of butter and two packs of biscuits last week alone, must get child locks) this still doesn't feel like a good enough reason to go friand crazy.

Either way, lime and cocnut friands it was, and they were absolutely fantastic. Beautifully light, delicately scented and with toasted coconut on the top. The whole batch went within 24 hours (the other reason I don't make them too often is that I am told they do not keep and must be scarfed instantly, although how their staying power can be judged when they are never around for more than a few hours is beyond me). I made another batch the next night which were served warm from the oven with cream. A definite hit.

The coconut urge is still with me, as is a supply of citrus fruit, so tonight I have ventured into boiled orange cake territory. Again the recipe is quite meal-heavy and follows the classic boil-a-whole-orange-or-two-then-pulp method. This was a stunningly easy cake to make - bash all the other ingredients together with a wooden spoon then add the now-room temperature orange pulp and bake. The result is a cake even I could happily eat. The sharpness of the orange means the cake is barely sweet and it is not only gorgeous to look at, with it's brown top and yellow / orange speckled middle, but is also beautiful to eat.

So where does the coconut come into it? Well the original recipe calls for a macaroon topping to be added with ten minutes cooking time remaining. Although it was this mixture of ingredients which first drew me in, as the time to separate the eggs drew nearer I started to have doubts.

There is a phenomenon I have noticed in Marks and Spencer a few times. Glancing around the store something will catch my eye, for instance, on a recent occasion, a pale blue shirt. Walking closer I realise it's pin striped. Nice. Closer again and there appears to be a huge ruffle either side of the buttons. Plus a pocket. And something weird with the cuffs. I barely dare to look at the back, by now quite certain there there will be a ribbon tie. What is going on here? Why does nobody in the design or manufacture team ever scream 'enough'? Why should a single item of clothing be subjected to every single flounce and fancy that the designer can think of?

This was going through my mind as I considered adding macaroon to the top of my orange cake. I felt so sorry for that blouse - the temptation to rescue it from it's hanger and remove the ruffles was enormous - and could not bring myself to flounce the cake. So it is gloriously topping-free and having tasted it I feel vindicated. The sharpness of the orange and simplicity of the appearance make it a grown-up cake, a serious cake for serious times. It will be the perfect cake to go with the Sunday papers and, for those who do, a pot of fresh coffee.

And of course it leaves my coconuty urge un fulfilled, the perfect excuse to bake again. Tomorrow I suspect I'll be trying coconut, apricot and fig cake. But tonight belongs to the orange.

Fudge

Nine chocolate cupcakes in a presentation box. What could be a better birthday cake for a grown man? Nine chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing in a presentation box, that's what.

When making vanilla cupcakes I generally stick to an extremely light vanilla buttercream but I have never really been convinced by the chocolate version. Somehow the deeper flavour of the chocolate cupcakes calls for something more substantial than the buttercream and more dense than glace icing.

I've written before about childhood memories of bread being baked. Cakes were also a regular treat. My father has a sweet tooth and every weekend my mother would bake a cake. Her bible for such things was a Kate Stewart cookbook and once this had been discovered the norm was for a chocolate or coffee sponge, with fudge icing. I can clearly remember the taste of both, despite not generally being drawn to sweet food myself.

It was the icing that did it. I recently tried the chocolate sponge recipe and found it heavy compared to my usual recipe (although spectacular for a chocolate sponge pudding). But it was the icing that had really stuck in my mind. Butter, caster sugar and a little water brought gently to the boil then poured over icing sugar and cocoa, beaten smooth and then stirred regularly as it cooled and thickened. It would thicken quickly, the top of the mix forming a crust which could then be beaten back in, until the texture of the whole mix became densely spreadable. Spread across the base sponge, put the top on, then leave to set to a thick fudge filling.

So it was this icing I used on the birthday cupcakes, and it worked a dream. The set icing has a beautiful glossy finish which I simply did not know about as it was always hidden in the middle of the cake in my childhood. It was thick and (unsurprisingly) fudgy, densely chocolatey and complemented the cakes beautifully. A palpable hit.

So many cakes these days make a point of using nothing but the finest chocolate but this icing is a reminder that sometimes a good quality cocoa is every bit as luxurious.

Update

I know there is an ongoing debate about how often it is appropriate to blog, but I have just realised one good reason for being disciplined and writing often - I totally forgot an entire baking session, producing two cakes for friends.

First up, Nigel Slater's awesome chocolate brownies, the ones he ran a few years ago to coincide with Glastonbury. Such an amazing recipe but one I don't make too often simply because these brownies are impossible to resist, even for me with my savoury tooth.

Karmically this is not a good recipe for me. Those who love me would surely argue, but I can be just the teensiest bit competitive so, for instance, if I were going to a gathering where each of us was tasked with preparing some food, I'd bake these. Guaranteed praise and applause, which I am shallow enough to love. Though on a more positive note, there is also something so deeply satisfying about baking something that people truly love to eat. It makes me feel all warm inside. Which is, of course, still making it all about me. But then it's my blog so nyah nyah nyah. And is karmically even a word? Not according to dictionary.com which has helpfully suggested 'karmic ally' as an alternative. Now I'd love a karmic ally. Hell, who wouldn't?

But I digress.

Butterscotch cake. That was the other one. I hadn't tried the recipe before so wheeled out the brownies as my sure-fire back up in case it wasn't spectacular (on this occasion not just for the applause but also because I really love these people and wanted them to have good cake). The cake was a bit of a disappointment but my expectations may have been unrealistic. Butterscotch is such a lovely taste but I would even have been pleased with a brown sugar feel. This however was just a sweet sponge. It was a pretty brown colour, admittedly, and tasted perfectly fine, but it just wasn't special.

Mind you, I really blew it with the icing. These friends arrived on a Friday night and had only been able to confirm that they were coming that day, so this baking was taking place in the context of dashing home from work to hoover the house, clean the bathroom and check the spare room was clean and tidy. This meant that the butterscotch cake was still warm when they arrived, so I wandered out to ice it about an hour after that.

The icing in question was basically a dlight variation on a fudge recipe, but removed from the heat at an earlier stage than usual with the mix still a thick paste. Sadly I was pretty toasted by this stage in the game (did I mention that these people are drinkers?) and was also chatting throughout the cooking process. To cut a short story shorter, I overcooked the icing and made - yes - fudge. This was particularly ironic given that in the run-up to Christmas I tried making fudge several times to see if I could do it well enough to make a gift of it, but did not feel that I could. Oh how I laughed.

So, not for the first time, thank the lord for Nigel Slater. Oh, and for good friends and white wine. In fact, looking back, the surprise isn't that I forgot to blog about these cakes last time around, but rather that I remembered that I'd baked them at all.

Dough!

I have been horribly slack in keeping this up to date though not, I am delighted to say, in the baking. Following my triumphant production of the World's Best Sponge Cake Ever (WoBSCEr) I started fiddling around with different size cake tins to see what impact that would have (and also,to be honest, because I couldn't actually remember which tins I had used in the first place). It turns out that the recipe works stunningly well in a 6" tin and becomes average in anything else. So it's 6" cakes all the way in this house. A sharp raspberry or bramble jam is definitely needed with the sweet buttercream (apple and raspberry is just too sweet) although the in-house critic has also helpfully reminded me that jam 'without bits' works best.

The ginger nut biscuits have run their course as an obsession but are now a staple. Fifteen minutes from start to finish, though they do catch suddenly on the bottom. Last time around I considered covering them in dark chocolate just for the hell of it (let nobody say I don't know how to live life on the edge) but they were all scarfed before I got the chance.

A fruit loaf went well, though to my mind it was not really much different to a bog standard fruit cake. The recipe said it worked well sliced and buttered but I can't see it myself. Mind you, it is from a 1970s cook book and I suppose they did things differently then. I do like a loaf cake so will be trying a few variations on the theme in the next few weeks, but right now I have the urge to play with coconut and limes and marscapone. Though probably not all in the same cake.

After the fun of making white bread like my mother used to, I progressed to wholemeal baked in tins. This proved popular on the home front though I thought it seemed too dense. Today was a real breakthrough though, the fun bit that comes when you relax into a recipe and start following what you think you should do rather than sticking to the letter of the law. I made a seeded loaf - not in advanced way, I bought a flour with seeds in - and other than the ingredients and the oven temperature went my own way with it. The recipe called for one ten minute knead followed by a rise in the tin then straight into baking but this really didn't feel right for me. I let it rise in it's bowl until it reached American gameshow host texture - smooth and stretched on the surface but, as with too-tight post-surgery skin, with the sense of a seething mass trying to break through. A second kneading then into a two pound loaf tin (rather than divided between two as suggested) and left to rise again. Baking took longer than stated, as was to be expected, but silver foil across the top worked it's usual magic and the end result was easily the best bread I have ever made. Beautifully light with a fantastic crust and amazing with butter and good cheese.

A totally new departure today was an apple and almond tart, as I was asked to produce something on the pudding side of cakey. This has a blind baked shortbread base with a moist almond sponge and sliced apple on top. Here my complete inability to work out what size cake tins I am using caught me out slightly. The recipe called for a 23 by 3 tart tin with removable base. Evidently the one I used was slightly bigger as there wasn't enough shortbread to go up the side and the finished tart has a slightly thicker base than would be ideal as a result. Mind you, I was mainly distracted by once again told to roll out an incredibly short mixture. Who are these people who can achieve such feats? I did my usual trick of slapping the ball of dough in the middle of the tray and using my knuckles to squish it into shape and place. Anyway, the tart is absolutely lovely and disappearing at an alarming rate. One of those things that looks and tastes far more impressive than it is so a good one to try on guests.

Returning to a moment for the question of sizing cake tins, I wonder if I am alone in struggling with this? I once mentioned in passing to the lady behind the counter at Lakeland that they would clean up (with me at least) by selling tins that had the size indelibly printed on them. Both she and the woman next to me in the queue looked at me as if I was quite insane. Evidently they are the sort of women who can tell at a glance whether a tin is 21, 22, 23 or 24cm in diameter. Or maybe they are just the sort of people who keep everything in its packaging. Either way, these simple things defeat me.

And now I feel vindicated - having had someone who is better at these things than me measure the tin I used, it is 22cm in diameter while the recipe called for 23cm. So are cake tins like women's clothes? Can you wander from cookshop to cookshop seeking the perfect size 22 only to find that one shop makes them baggy while the others are skin tight?

While rambling generally, this seems a good moment to acknowledge the dog's contribution to my recent baking. Since the glorious day when some raw cake batter fell on her head she likes to accompany me in my efforts, forcing herself between my legs and the work counter in the hope that history will repeat itself (or that the extra half egg will find its way into her bowl again). When it doesn't she has taken to helping herself. Hearing the telltale sound of a dog with her nose where it shouldn't be I wandered into the kitchen yesterday afternoon to find one side of the cooling rack had collapsed and half the cake it held had mysteriously disappeared. I might be more flattered by her enthusiasm for my cooking if she wasn't a dog who will truly eat anything and has been found tucking into raw root vegetables in the past. My parents used to have a childlock on their fridge to keep the cat out and now that the dog has worked out how to get into a pedal bin it is surely only a matter of time before she masters opening a cake tin.

Speaking of the dog reminds me that it is high time she went for a walk so I will abruptly abandon this post. Having strayed so far from the topic there seems little point in trying to find my way back and the sun is, after all, shining.