Patisserie 16: Rhubarb and Rose Buttercream Macarons

 Once I got back to my home kitchen, I was determined to prove that my improved macaronage and troubleshooting from previous macaron bakes were the culprits of my issues with this pastry. So I made a batch of macarons, intending to fill them with a rhubarb and ginger white chocolate ganache. 

Suffice to say, white chocolate behaves significantly differently than other types of chocolate, and my ganache was an utter failure. Basically, the lack of cacao content means that it sets softer and in general requires far less liquid to make a ganache; my resulting ganache, based on a recipe for dark chocolate, was way too liquid. But I baked up a batch of the macaron shells anyways, figuring I'd find some other type of filling for them the next day when I was less frustrated. 

Patisserie Intermission: Baking Abroad

 It's kind of odd that, despite a monthlong trip in Europe while unemployed sounds like a relaxing time, it was actually one of the least relaxing trips I've taken here. Herein lies the trap of letting your hobbies become your responsibilities: it will follow you home through the goodness of your heart wanting to help you improve. I got the itch to bake and write, and so, funded by my parents' desire to stop hearing me threaten to go home because I couldn't cook in their kitchen, I purchased a few bare bones pieces of equipment and was able to make some decent pastry explorations while there. 

In total, I bought: 

• A kitchen scale
• A rubber spatula
• A pastry brush
• A single silicone mold
• Food coloring
• A set of circle cutters
• A piping bag (13")
  
• A piping tip (round, 10mm)
• An offset spatula
  

And with those, I was able to make...

Patisserie 15: Orange marmalade and pastry cream macarons

 I had an abundance of oranges from my produce box that I wanted to use up before heading out for a month of travel coming up, so I decided to make marmalade, and what better use for a tiny batch of marmalade than as filling for another batch of macarons? 

I was also excited to try making macarons in my kitchen this time, without my friend's helpful guidance, to see if I had learned anything from our previous collaboration. 

I don't have a whole lot of photos from the marmalade process, because my focus on this journey is on the patisserie, but the basic gist is that I riffed on this recipe from David Lebovitz using five oranges and a lemon. Because I was going to be using the filling in macarons, I used a zester instead of cutting up the peel, so the resulting bits of marmalade would be smaller. 

Patisserie 14: Blood Orange and Rosemary Macarons

Macarons are a type of sandwich cookie that has exploded in popularity in recent years as a dainty snack. Laduree in Paris is largely credited with introducing the cookie to the public as the Parisian Macaron, where macaron previously referred to the unfilled, singular cookie halves. The cookie portions are meringue with almond flour, and the filling is typically a ganache, buttercream, or other semi-solid flavor component. The cookie is typically smooth on top, with a ruffled brim called the "foot", and flat on the bottom, and assembled macarons are aged for at least a day after filling to allow the cookie interior to moisten.

So, I've been dreading this section on macarons because their recent popularity has taken the form of the pastry down the same road as the croissant: held to a known standard that prioritizes hyperoptimization of certain features that the public has deemed "ideal". In the case of croissants, I am in major disagreement with several of the ideal features and thus unmotivated to pursue them as a pastry learning endeavor; in the case of macarons, I simply did not think I would like eating them enough to want to make batches over and over to iron out issues that might not even matter in the finished product. They're intimidating because there are a lot of ways they can go "wrong" according to the rubric of the ideal, and perfecting them is tedious (as one can imagine from the multitude of blogs proclaiming strategies for troubleshooting to obtain the "perfect" macaron). Plus, the last time I made them, which was admittedly almost a decade ago in college, they were absolutely a disaster, ideal aside. 

But I didn't start this trajectory of patisserie to just make things I think are adequate, I guess. I want to get good, to figure out why some things go wrong and how to fix them, and to make little cakes I will want to eat more than what I see in a pastry shop window. So I dutifully called up a friend who often makes macarons for gatherings of friends and headed to her kitchen with a bunch of equipment in tow for a guided macaron baking session. 

Patisserie 13: Opera/Glazed chocolate and coffee layer cake

 We've arrived at last at one of the most ambitious cakes in patisserie: The Opera Cake, or Gâteau opéra. From Wikipedia: 

It is made with layers of almond sponge cake (known as Joconde in French) soaked in coffee syrup, layered with ganache and coffee,...French buttercream, and covered in a chocolate glaze. Its namesake originates from the layers resembling the levels of an opera theatre

 This cake is meant to be decadent yet delicate, with umpteen variations on its many layers making it a popular cake that presents nicely when sliced to reveal its layers. The version of the cake in The Book has three cake layers, two butter cream layers, a layer of ganache, and a layer of glaze, for a total of six. 

Patisserie 10.5: Paris-Brest again

This is just a short post, but I made the Paris-Brest pastries again, incorporating the following changes that I wanted to improve on from last time: 

• Pipe the correct diameter circles (OD 70mm)
• Using 10mm piping tip for larger choux width
• Chilling the mousseline prior to piping for sharper results
• Filling the pastries more liberally
  
• Figuring out the correct piping pattern for the mousseline
  
• Making a large batch of praline from scratch to eliminate hazelnut chunks that might clog my piping tip

I did still end up using almost an entire extra egg (3.8) compared to the three that the recipe calls for. The larger piping tip resulted in fewer total pastries (14 total), but also had the unintended effect of needing longer to bake. I removed the first batch from the oven a little too early, and this resulted in a few of the rings sagging slightly, though none deflated entirely. Otherwise, though, these rose fairly well and were not overwhelmingly bagel-like.

The ring in the foreground is deflated slightly, while those in the back are round. Should have left them in the oven longer, especially since drying out isn't really a concern with milk in the mix and a filling on top of that.

Since I filled these pastries the same day as I baked them, the choux shells were crisper, but so were the almonds. This resulted in a lot of the almonds chipping off while I was cutting the shells in half. I'm beginning to see why so many modern Paris-Brest variations choose to use pearl sugar as a topping instead. 

I piped an initial ring of chilled mousseline into the bottom half of the choux this time, to fill in some of the space.

I piped an initial ring of mousseline to fill in the cavities in the choux, so the prettier piped ripples would not sink down

Then, I piped loop-de-loops of mousseline in a circle around the pastry, which is a technique I picked up after browsing Instagram to figure out how the heck I was supposed to pipe the mousseline to get those nice ripples when viewed from the side.

Mousseline piped using overlapping loops to achieve the scalloped edges when viewed from the side

The more liberal piping of the mousseline yielded only one dozen Paris-Brest completed, but my, were they picturesque!

Paris-Brest, attempt two! I think this is a faithful reproduction, but I admit I have never had one of these from a patissier before.

Even though I chilled the mousseline prior to piping, the shapes were not as sharp as pictured in The Book, but the mousseline was airier in general than last time. I think I'm ready to move on from choux/this recipe, though I may come back and visit eclairs soon because I've been seeing a lot of beautiful ones coming in lately with fruit flavors as the weather has warmed (and had a delicious strawberry one a few weeks ago). Now I just have this extra praline paste that I have to resist eating with a spoon. 

Quote of the day: 

Patisserie 12: Biscuit Moka/Mocha Cake

 The moka cake is the first "advanced" recipe I've tried from the cakes section of The Book. At first, it was not immediately apparent why this recipe was marked as being harder than the other cakes, because in comparison, the assembly is a lot easier and there are fewer components overall: a sponge cake (similar to the Fraisier from last time), coffee buttercream, and toasted almonds. I suspect the difficulty rating is due to the risks of baking a tall, circular sponge cake, and also in part due to the assembly process of the final cake. But I think, for my first cake of this form factor, that it all went well. It is an atypical shape of cake because it is apparently an Alsacian festive cake, and various flavor profiles can be used. This recipe used rum and coffee as the chief flavorings.

Like in the Fraisier sponge, this sponge cake began with egg whites separated from the yolks, to be whipped into stiff peaks with sugar. However, instead of beating the egg yolks into the meringued whites, the egg yolks were also beaten separately with sugar until they were pale and thick. Additionally, the cake contained flour but also the addition of corn starch. I sifted these two powders, though I perhaps should have sifted them together as well. Back in the day, sifting was important to prevent unsavory milled things from getting mixed in with your flour, but now, it's primarily done to eliminate lumps that will either remain undissolved in the batter and bake up as little raw flour pellets, or necessitate additional folding to incorporate that risks overworking the batter and either deflating it or creating excess gluten formation that will make the cake tough.

The ingredients for the sponge: Egg whites ready for whipping, egg yolks and sugar to be whipped simultaneously, more sugar to whip into the meringue, and flour and cornstarch sifted together.