My Food Geek

another try at making candies, this time I’m armed with a secret weapon!

The eater got me a very cool gift for Christmas that I really haven’t used all that much: The Chocovision Revolation 1. For those of you that aren’t super-foodies, the Revolation is a chocolate tempering machine. It is the little brother of the Revolation X3210 professional model, but don’t let that fool you, this little guy gets it done. It will melt up to two pounds of chocolate, temper it for you automatically, and keep your chocolate tempered for well over an hour or so.

When I temper chocolate by hand I never seem to have problems getting the chocolate tempered properly; my problems usually come from trying to use the tempered chocolate. Even with the best of setups I always seem to have problems dipping candies or filling molds or keeping all of the stray chocolate off of me. The Revolation probably takes a little bit of the art out chocolate making, but I’m not complaining.

Over the weekend I made several varieties of candies but I think I went a little overboard this time. I managed to come up with macadamia nut turtles, dark chocolate-matcha ganache truffles, white chocolate-coconut ganache truffles, and chocolate covered caramels. I really intended to make more, but the candy supply started to get out of hand.

Although I made too many plenty of candies, they did not turn out exactly how I expected. The chocolate I used to coat the candies is a bit on the bitter dark side. While this isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think it paired well with the matcha ganache or the macadamia nut turtles. The white chocolate ganache had all sorts of problems staying firm enough to coat. The real winner out of the entire batch was the caramels.

Since this was yet another chocolate making experiment and my ganaches didn’t work out as I intended, I’m going to forgo the recipes this time. After we manage to eat about all one hundred or so of these, I’ll try another batch and refine the recipe. Here’s a parting shot of all the candies in reserve:

For those who are looking for more on chocolates:

• David Lebovitz writes about his Paris chocolate adventures
• Chocolate Alchemy writes about making artisan chocolate in the Pacific NW
• Artisans Sweets writes about her boutique candies and pastries

I admit, macaron madness has fully infected the foodgeek household. I must have made at least 7 batches of macarons trying to get a recipe to come out. I’d have entire pans of cracked cookies, pans that only half of them cracked, and others that were perfect.

What did I learn from all of this?

• Do not fold the ingredients like you would a cake. The batter needs to be deflated a good deal to get that ‘flows like magma’ consistency.
• Drying the macarons out before they are cooked provides insurance. While it may not be necessary, I found that the dried batches I made almost never cracked and always formed a proper foot.
• I tried several oven temperatures, for the most part, they all worked. I settled on 335°F because it was what worked the best in the end
• If you add coloring, do so to the egg whites at the end of beating and before folding in the dry ingredients.

With all of the mistakes I made, there was a good deal of success. At the end of all of my experiments, I was able to produce four sheets of uncracked macarons. With those four sheets, I managed to come up with four separate flavors: chocolate, lemon, raspberry, and banana caramel.

This recipe has evolved a little bit, here’s what I’m using now:

Basic Macaron Batter

65g almond powder
85g powdered sugar
2 egg whites
30g granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 335°F

Place almond powder and powdered sugar in a food processor. Process with metal blade until thoroughly combined.

Beat whites in a bowl with an electric mixer at high speed. As the whites begin to foam, add sugar in a slow stream while mixing. Continue mixing at high speed until whites reach stiff peaks.

Fold almond mixture into egg whites in two additions. The mixture will deflate quite a bit. Continue folding until mixture is fully combined and shiny. (and flows like MAGMA)

Immediately fill a pastry bag fitted with an 11mm round tip and pipe into rounds onto a baking sheet lined with a silpat baking mat.

Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the countertop to flatten the macaron.

Leave macarons out to dry for about 30 minutes or until they do not stick to your finger when touched.

When macarons are sufficiently dry, place in the oven to bake. After about five minutes, a ruffled skirt should develop around the bottom edge of each macaron. Rotate the baking sheet by 180 degrees, and bake for another five to seven minutes.

Check to see if macarons are done by grabbing the top of one macaron and trying to shake it. They are done when the top barely slides against the skirt. If they are not done, extend baking time by two minutes intervals, checking after each extension.

Move silpat to a cooling rack. After macarons have cooled enough to touch, remove them from silpat and place upside down on rack. If they do not easily come off silpat, place in freezer for a few minutes and try again.

A friend of mine on IRC commented on the macarons I made a few weeks ago. He was saying they reminded him of a Swedish almond cookie, the biskvit. I did a little bit of research, and learned that these cookies are more commonly known as Sarah Bernhardts.

These pastries were invented by a Danish pastry chef who wanted to honor the actress. The classic recipe consists of a chewy almond macaroon with a chocolate mousse filling, all dipped in a chocolate glaze. I strayed a little bit from the classic recipe; I used chocolate French buttercream for the filling and tempered chocolate for the coating instead of the glaze that is suggested. Here is my interpretation of the pastry.

Sarah Bernhardts

Almond Macaroon
(makes about 60)

400g almond paste
200g sugar
3 egg whites

Preheat oven to 375°F

Beat almond paste and sugar in an electric mixer

Add egg whites, one at a time, and mix until smooth

Pipe small mounds (about 2cm) on silpat or parchment-lined baking sheet

Bake at 375°F for 10 min or until lightly browned

Let cool on silpat/baking paper

Turn paper over and peel off the back of cookies

French Buttercream

300g sugar
100 ml water
6 egg yolks
600g butter, room temperature

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and heat to 240°F

While sugar is cooking, place yolks in bowl of mixer and mix at high speed

When sugar reaches 240°F, turn the mixer to low, remove sugar from heat and

Pour in a slow, steady stream into mixer

Continue mixing until mixture turns pale yellow and is cool to the touch, about 10 minutes

Turn mixer to low and add butter in three or four parts

Continue mixing until smooth

Assembly

Flip macaroons over so the flat side is up

Place buttercream in pastry bag with a plain round tip (size of tip is not important)

Pip a small dome of buttercream on each cookie

With a soup spoon, smooth buttercream into a dome

Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes or until buttercream has hardened

Dip each cookie in tempered dark chocolate

Cookies will keep in the refrigerator for about a week or the freezer for a few months.

A few weeks ago I ordered a few new chocolate molds from Chocolat-Chocolat online. They seem to be of high quality, two from a French maker and one from a Chinese maker. I was itching to try them out, but did not have any couverture in the pantry. Luckily, it’s the holidays and Whole Foods had a huge display of couverture to choose from; I chose Scharffen Berger 60%.

Making chocolates lies somewhere between science and art. The science is in properly tempering the chocolate so it will crystallize properly. The art is in getting them to look nice and taste good after you extract them from the molds. For now, I’m just going to concentrate on the science.
There are a few methods for tempering chocolate; I chose one of the quickest and easiest, the seeding method. The basic idea is to melt about two-thirds of the chocolate and bring it to about 120F then add unmelted, chopped chocolate to cool the chocolate to 92F. These two steps are pretty easy to do; the hard part is keeping the mixing at 92F once you get it there in the first place. This usually entails several visits to the bain-marie to keep the temperature as constant as you can. Once you get to this stage, you’re ready to fill the molds.

Filling the molds is easy, albeit a bit on the messy side. Basically you just ladle the chocolate into the molds, slide a spatula or pastry blade along the top to clean off the excess chocolate, then let sit. After a minute or so, turn the whole works upside-down and tap the molds to remove the excess chocolate. Once that’s done, you put the mold upside-down on a piece of parchment and chill until solid. Next, pipe in your filling of choice, apply another layer of tempered chocolate, and remove the excess with a pass of a spatula and let set. If everything was done properly, in a few minutes your candies will pop out of the molds.

Since this was my first try, I’m choosing to omit a finished product. I’ll consider this an experiment; I’ll show the final products in part two.

To Be Continued…