Alsatian Almond Macarons (Passover Friendly)
Macarons have been the “It Girl” of the cookie world for a few years. From Laduree to Pierre Herme, those ethereal rainbow-hued confections have inspired odes, tributes, and a million macaroon bakers, and have lead to dawn line-ups stretching down the block waitng for stire opening hours I know more than one pint-sized baker who has presented his or her parent with the recipe and demanded a macaron-baking session.
We are not making those today.
The macarons I grew up with those are the fancy macarons’ more earthbound cousins. Every Passover, my Grandmaman would haul out her table-clamped hand-cranked nut grinder, load in a never ending stream of almonds, turn the crank, and produce a fluffy pile of hand-milled almond flour. When, in my 20s, I was given a copy of the recipe, it did not come with the nut grinder. Fortunately, I found that commercially ground almonds work exceptionally well and are very easy to find.
The miracle of this recipe is the crisp outer shell and the chewy, candylike interior, all achieved with a minimum of ingredients and equipment. In fact, it is less of a recipe than it is a formula – one that you can multiply out as many times as you need in order to achieve maximum cookiedom. So whether you are baking just for yourself or for a party or 30, this formula works out beautifully.
And to amp it up even more, swipe the macarons through the raspberry sauce from the Chocolate-Hazelnut Torte recipe…It is amazingly good.
Alsatian Almond Macarons
Yield: 10 cookies
Ingredients:
¾ cup (70g) almond meal (NOT blanched)
½ cup + 2 Tbsp (70g) granulated sugar
1 egg white
pinch of salt
DIRECTIONS:
- PREHEAT AND PREP: Preheat oven to 280°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
- MIX: Combine all ingredients.
- PORTION: Scoop batter into approximately 1 Tbsp balls and place on prepared cookie sheet.
- BAKE: Bake for 25 minutes, until outer “shell” is dry and cookie comes off the parchment cleanly and bottoms are golden brown.
NOTE:
- Recipe can be multiplied infinitely. It is easiest if you use the grams calculations to do so.
- When you scale up dramatically, you can use liquid egg whites if you want to cut back on wasted egg yolks. 1 large egg white = 30g, so please scale it out appropriately rather than following the chart on the carton. You may want to under-measure as boxed liquid egg whites are more runny than freshly cracked egg whites and will make for a stickier, runnier batter that doesn’t hold its shape as well.
