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.