January 14, 2023
I went hunting for ways to use up bananas that didn’t involve bread, and naturally found my way down a rabbit hole of puddings. I’m not southern, but I’ve lived around enough of them in DC to understand the value of a good banana pudding, and to know I wasn’t willing to work that hard. No buying Nilla wafers, no baking my own. I wanted something less than weekend project but a notch above emptying powder from a box. Serious Eats is a go to for searching for specific recipes in any genre, and dessert queen Stella Parks didn’t disappoint. Not described here (not a bake), but her recipe for a banana custard a quarter cup of cornstarch in excess of banana ice cream base left me with 10 egg whites to kill.
Spare egg whites usually means soufflé in my kitchen, a surprisingly easy (with use of a machine instead of brute strength to do the whisking) and versatile weeknight dinner. But I’d been itching to try Steve Dunn‘s recent four page spread aimed at foolproofing the macaron in Cooks Illustrated. Sunday project with the kids? You bet.
I’ve never made macarons before. And if you’re thinking trying for the first time with four kids 7 & under (mine + one friend) is a bad idea, you underestimate the amount of mess four unsupervised kids can make in the same amount of time, and the amount of confidence I place in Cooks Illustrated writers. Surely Steve would be a faithful guide!
Besides, the prospect of tinting sugar with colored food gel is a supremely enticing promise, capable of inducing my children to clean up several messes made prior to embarking on l’aventure macaron. That is reason enough to take on a cooking project.
Mostly, it’s fun. It’s Sabbath, it’s drizzly. There’s nothing else I have to do. Why not enjoy the luxury of squandering an afternoon getting pink meringue all over my kitchen?
We diligently followed each step of Steve’s guide, comparing our progress to the helpful photographs accompanying the recipe. At each stage, so far so good. We were really doing this! Macarons were happening! It was only at the point of piping the trouble became apparent.
If you’ve watched the British Baking show, you’ve seen the silicon mats with pre-drawn circles. I don’t have one. I have parchment paper and shot glasses, which two seven year olds and a five year old laboriously traced, as many as they could fit on two sheets. But it was only in piping the batter the woeful inadequacy of my size estimation skills became apparent. A shot glass is, in case you haven’t learned the hard way, bigger than you think, and certainly bigger than the delicate morsels Steve was guiding me toward. To say nothing of the difficulty of coaxing even lines of perfectly traced circles out of the lovely group of helpers pictured below. They have so many other things to offer, but precision tracing, not currently a skill.
By the time I’d baked them, then filled our supersized macarons with nutella and set them back on parchment paper to admire from a distance, they looked plausibly macaron-like, zoomed out enough to obscure their size. The tops were domed, the little feet were frilly, they had a crisp and an squidgy bit, and had admirably kept their color. Really, they were just … large. Like what you’d expect an American to do to something chic and French. None of the cuteness of what should be dainty two-bite cookies, but a problem that bothered my children not at all.
And to be fair, it’s not only easier to fill 12 macarons than 30, but extra large macaron are really just an excuse to eat…more macarons. Well deserved rewards for my kitchen helpers.
Recipe: Macarons, Cooks Illustrated, January 2024 (print) (website recipe here).
Modifications
Intentional: I tried to follow his recipe as precisely as I could.
Unintentional: Super-sized!
Results: Not as hard as I feared they’d be, but much messier. My piping leaves something to be desired, and the pre-printed silicon mat would be a game-changer. But for a first time with kids, pretty strong effort!
