This year for the annual Christmas Eve dinner and white elephant extravaganza, I wanted to make something that the maximum number of attendees could eat. The vegetarians weren’t there, but the gluten- and allium-phobes were. Hence, I made macaroons and macarons. Both of these cookies use beaten egg whites as structure and leavening. Macaroons are popular desserts during Passover, when use of wheat (or other grain) flour is prohibited. Macarons are the signature cookie of France, and a hot item here in the States. They’re little sandwich cookies, often flavored and dyed in colors unknown to nature. You can see Parisian macarons in this window from our trip to France last year:
Macarons tucked inside a chocolate pump in a Paris shop.
The chocolate macaroon recipe came off the back of the Bob’s Red Mill shredded coconut bag. Unlike the garish items illustrated above, I made Basque macarons from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi. Both recipes require beating egg whites to stiff peaks, then folding in the flavor ingredients. For the macaroons, that was the aforementioned coconut and melted chocolate; for the macarons, a mixture of almond flour, cinnamon, and unbeaten egg white.
The macaroon prep went off smoothly. On the other hand, it took forever for the egg whites for the macarons to reach the desired stiff peak stage. A clear-cut example of RTFR; I added the sugar to the egg whites rather than the almond flour mixture. They weren’t particularly voluminous, but the macarons were better received than the macaroons at the party. Now we have more than enough macarons, macaroons, and glutinous Christmas cookies to last for weeks.
Macaroons (left) and Basque macarons.
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