So I know these aren't the traditional holiday cookies you're used to seeing this time of year. You know, the pale yellow, icing topped confections? Or the dark brown, spicy, iced wonders? Or the colorful mouthfuls of butter? Well I'm rebelling in this cookie post. I'm not posting a SINGLE picture of those! Because. Just because . . . I felt like it . . .
Well also I have an insane weekend of cookie making ahead of me. And when I say insane I mean insane. Here's the email I sent to Medium Well yesterday venting about my cookie marathon:
Dad needs four dozen cookies for a cookie exchange (I'm making gingerbread men) and then he needs 2 dozen for the Christmas party (sugar cookie santas) both on Dec 19th (wednesday). Then mom needs a cake for her office cake contest and I'm planning on making a gingerbread Spanish style church (bc their theme is a southwest Christmas) with cake in the middle (to hold it up) also on Wednesday the 19th. I'm having a Christmas party at work and I've offered to make some dessert for that (I don't know what I'm making for it yet though, prob not cookies! lol) but that party is . . . you guessed it, Wednesday the 19th. Oh and Dad is also going to go to his old office for their holiday party this Friday and wants to bring sugar cookies.
Sooooo. I need to bake two batches of sugar cookies (that will make 48) and two batches of gingerbread cookies (that will make 60) so I can decorate them in stages and be finished by Monday night so they have time to dry and I can bag them up on Tuesday to send to work with dad on Wednesday. I also need to bake a third batch of gingerbread in the shape of the church so I'll have time to decorate those walls, put the pieces together, and let it harden before mom has to take it to work on Wednesday.
Plan:
1. make sugar cookie dough (twice)
1a. put dough in fridge
2. using same bowl, make gingerbread dough (three times)
2a. put dough in fridge
3. take out sugar cookie dough and bake
4. take out (2) gingerbread dough and bake cookies
5. cut out walls and roofs and bake
6. commandeer the basement ping pong table as a staging area for cookies.
7. make three batches of stiff frosting and store in air tight containers until cookies are cool enough (and I have energy enough) to decorate.
8. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Did my sister who is taking a final this morning really need to worry about my cookie craziness? Probably not, but I didn't make her read the email! It was just there in case she wanted to peruse the interworkings of my weekend plans (in which she will probably feature).
So, because my mind is shutting down whenever I think of a Christmas cookie and all the work it will entail, I'm devoting this post to cookies I made a few weeks ago. Macarons! NOT Macaroons, MACARONS!
Macaroons are crescent shaped cookies dusted in powdered sugar. Macarons are light, airy almond cookie sandwiches. I had a random craving for macarons one day and decided to make them.
(whenever I have a random craving I normally move mountains to make sure I can make that recipe that night. Let's not dwell on the fact that by the time I've finished making the recipe I'm too mentally exhausted to even enjoy the fruits of my labor . . . )
Thing is, I've never actually EATEN a macaron that I haven't made.
Wow, that sentence didn't make much sense did it?
Let me re-phrase. I've made macarons twice and I've eaten the macarons I've made but I've never eaten a macaron that someone else has made. So I'm not giving a recipe since I'm not sure I even made these things correctly. I don't want to say what I did and have someone make them the way I said and be like Blech! What was she thinking?!?! This is the worst French inspired cookie in the whole world! All the Frenchmen/women of years past are rolling in their graves! French pastry chefs everywhere are having a moment of silence to mourn the atrocity of my lack of pastry skills!
So if it's not perfect, you can't blame me!
Lol I thought they tasted fine btw.
So here's how I made them. The recipe is pretty easy, it calls for sugar, almond meal (I tried to food-process my own almonds when I tried this recipe in college because I had them and didn't want to go to the store for almond meal. It turned out ok but was a bit chunkier than was strictly acceptable . . . ), and egg whites. Now the egg whites are tricky. Every recipe I've seen calls for the egg whites to sit out on the counter for days. As in up to a week. These French people take their food a wee bit too seriously. You know I bet that someone years ago just forgot to put their eggs back in the fridge and decided to make cookies with them anyway and got an ok result so, to save face, they told everyone they MEANT to do that and if you don't do that your cookies won't be as awesome.
In other words, I didn't do that.
Call me a germaphobe but the thought of leaving raw eggs on the counter for days makes me squeamish and I start having visions of my last bout with food poisoning (not pretty). Maybe it's necessary? Like I said I haven't tried a real macaron so I'm not an expert. I did let my eggs sit out and get to room temperature. That's gotta count for something.
Anyway, you then beat the eggs and fold in the almond meal and sugar and such and I added food coloring because that's the way I've always seen them made. I put the mixture (it will be runny, not resembling a dough at all) into a pastry bag and plopped circles down on parchment paper lined baking sheets.
And I let them sit for an hour. This is a step I actually followed because it made sense that the tops have to harden so it can create a nice shell.
Then I baked them and they pouffed up! I was so proud of myself!
Now you have to let them cool COMPLETELY. Like for an hour at least. I get impatient and want to pop them off immediately but they will stick to the paper and it will not be pretty. They are ready to come off when you can tap them with your finger and they move.
Now to make the sandwich part of the cookie.
Normally you would make a chocolate ganache (I personally think that white chocolate ganache would taste delicious) but who has time for that! So instead, I went with the closest thing to ready-made ganache that I wanted to eat . . . .Nutella! Just stick a spoon in the nutella jar and instead of eating it straight off the spoon like you normally would, spread it on the flat side of one macaron and add another macaron to the other side to create a sandwich.
Tada! Pretty as a picture! Magazine worthy scrumtiousness!
Btw, has anyone ever noticed that your food looks better the closer the camera is to the food? A whole plate of cookies? not as cool as half a cookie at an angle (at least in my opinion).
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