The Occasion
H’s birthday was this past weekend, but he didn’t want me slaving away in the kitchen to make him a birthday cake, insisting that I get some much needed rest during the New Year weekend because I’d been sleeping poorly the past 2 weeks.

Fortunately, I’d made a batch of macaron on New Year’s eve on a whim and decided to assemble a macaron tower for him instead! It would be experimental, but at least he would have some sort of a birthday dessert. Plus it would be way grander than any birthday cake if it worked out.

The Experiment
I’d always wanted to make a macaron croquembouche, but was concerned about a few things.

1. What to use for the cone base
2. How to attach the macarons to the cone
3. Whether the macarons would stay in place, given the weight of the fillings
4. Whether the macaron fillings would turn soft and melt before all the macarons had been attached

The Results
Concern #1 was easily resolved with a homemade cardboard cone covered with baking parchment paper. I’d originally considered using a styrofoam cone, but had no idea where to buy one.

I decided to go with caramel as the “glue” since traditional cream puff croquembouches are so constructed. I started attaching the macarons at the bottom and was really delighted when the 1st layer appeared to stick on to the cone really well. What I hadn’t counted on was the caramel not hardening well.

As it turned out, concern #3 was also a valid one, especially since the macarons in the upper layers began to slide downwards, resting on the bottom layers when the caramel started to soften, possibly from the condensation from the macarons, which had been refridgerated prior to being attached to the cone, or perhaps from a poorly made caramel.

Despite the air-conditioning being turned on, the macaron fillings also started to melt somewhat. This was particularly true of the buttercream fillings. I had originally contemplated filling the macarons with a simple jam filling to overcome the melting issue, but didn’t want to spend hours making the shells, only to end up with overly-sweet macarons that would then be unpleasant to eat.

And so it was that H’s birthday croquembouche stayed intact for a grand total of 10 minutes before I decided to take everything down, mainly because the assembled croquembouche was too tall to fit into my fridge and the bottom layers were getting squashed from the weight of the other layers sliding down and resting on them. I was miffed that many of my painstakingly-made macarons were now either somewhat squashed, smeared with sticky, non-hardened caramel on one side or had part of their delicate outer shells left hanging on the cone when I attempted to remove them. Fortunately, they still tasted good and H didn’t mind in the tiniest bit, especially since his favourite chocolate ones had remained intact.

Experiments to come
I’m determined to try this again some other time and I’ve got some other ideas on how to better attach the macarons to the cone (reducing the amount of macaron filling being one of them and possibly using only ganache), but I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got any suggestions on how to solve the problems I encountered!

A Baking Session
It’s been a while since I posted an entry on this blog and an even longer while since I baked macarons. Given the amount of time and effort that goes into macarons, I had no problems avoiding macaron making. That is until H invited WL over for a baking session one Saturday.

I was initially hesitant about WL’s suggestion to bake macarons for 2 reasons. First, the weather had been horribly wet and humid, which is generally bad for meringue making, not to mention macaron making. Which meant it would be safer to go with italian meringue instead of french meringue. Which in turn led to the second reason for my reluctance.

Italian Meringue Macarons
The last few batches of italian meringue macarons I’d made had a huge air pocket between the shell and the base. Since I’ve had many successful batches before with italian meringue, this is something that still has me puzzled. There are just too many possible reasons. Drying time? Baking temperature? Baking time? Unstable meringe? Still, we forged ahead.

The Result
The flavours of the day were cocoa shells with dark chocolate ganache and hazelnut shells with salted caramel buttercream. As I’d expected, the shells did end up with an air pocket each, but once filled and bitten into, it didn’t matter at all. The overall texture and taste were still right. Most importantly, WL seemed more than happy with the salted caramel ones.

French Meringue Macarons & Heart-shaped Ispahans
Unhappy about the air pockets, I made another batch of macarons with french meringue the following week. The weather was once again far from ideal; it was pouring outside while the egg whites were being whipped in my Kitchen Aid mixer. Fortunately, the heart-shaped Ispahan macarons turned out fine (1st and last photographs of this post) as did the regular sized ones, which I filled with rose cream and lychee pieces (2nd photograph of this post).

The Ispahans were visually impressive as always and my sister loved the combination of the tart raspberries, lychees and vanilla cream. But the best part for me was the lack of air pockets, which more than made up for the smaller feet that macarons made via the french meringue method seem to have.

With the fast approaching holiday season, my head is filled with visions of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” while snow falls gently outside. Except that we don’t have a fireplace, at least not here in Singapore, nor do we have snowy cold winter days that is a quintessential part of my holiday season fantasy.

Nonetheless, chestnuts are still in season (at least I think so, based on the size of the Chinese chestnuts I saw at the market), so it was only befitting that my french meringue macaron adventure continued this past weekend with a chestnut theme. The plan was to make a Mont Blanc dessert using macarons instead of the traditional snowy white meringue base.

I had the shells baked and ready to be assembled with chestnut cream, crème Chantilly and marron glacés. There was just one minor snag: I didn’t have any candied chestnuts. I looked up recipes for marron glacés and was taken aback to learn that it takes 4 days to make the candies! I certainly didn’t have time to go through the 4-day process; the macaron shells would have turned into terribly sweet sugar discs by then. I decided to go try something else instead.

I first boiled the shelled chestnuts for 10 minutes and removed the brown membranes. The peeled chestnuts were then boiled for a further 20 minutes to get them softer. I made a sugar syrup and poured them over the softened chestnuts, intending to just soak them in the syrup for a couple hours or so.

After a few minutes, I noticed the undeniable beginnings of crystalisation: a white cloudy mass that was slowly spreading like an unstoppable plague throughout the syrup. In my hurry to get the chestnuts done, I must have overlooked a few grains of sugar, which likely served as seeds for the crystalization that I was observing. It was then that I decided to poach the chestnuts a further 10 minutes in a fresh batch of sugar syrup and make chestnuts with a nice shiny glaze instead of “true” candied chestnuts.

While I was pleased with the final look and taste of the assembled Mont Blanc macaron dessert, the candied chestnuts continued to haunt me.

I have never had marron glacés before and had no idea what the real thing tastes like. Soft throughout? Crisp on the outside with a soft interior? With no benchmark, it was easy to be satisfied with what I had. I began to wonder if it would even be possible to make true marron glacés with the Chinese chestnuts I had bought. Apparently, there are several species of chestnuts (European, Japanese, American & Chinese), with certain European species/hybrids being “superior” in that it has a single nut in one fruit instead of the usual several nuts per fruit and has smaller grooves. And so began my 4-day candied (Chinese) chestnut experiment.

The photo above shows the results after 4 days. I was disappointed that the chestnuts weren’t translucent. In fact, they looked pretty much like the ones I’d made earlier under 2 hours! The worst part was that many of them developed a tough and chewy texture on the outside, with the centre remaining soft once they’d cooled down after drying in the oven.

I thought that the non-translucency might have been caused by not boiling the chestnuts long enough in the beginning, except that most of them were already on the verge of disintegration when I fished them out of the hot water. The chestnuts were also supposed to have absorbed most of the sugar syrup at the end of the 4th day. But more than half of the syrup remained.

Did I not cook the syrup sufficiently? Was it really a case of the chestnuts being insufficiently soft from the onset? Or was it that the chestnuts I bought were just not meant to be candied like its European cousins? Should I have just boiled them in sugar syrup until they turned translucent instead of soaking/boiling them for 4 days?

Perhaps I’ll just buy ready made ones in the future. Except I don’t know where to find them in Singapore and they have a reputation for being very pricey!