Some time ago, I ran across a recipe for Chocolate Macaroons with Chocolate or Caramel Filling that I knew I wanted to try, but I put it on the backburner for a few months. I love macaroons. My favorites are probably those at Miette at the Ferry Terminal Building in San Francisco (they also sell some amazing nougat, the inspiration for my heartbreaking failed nougat-making efforts earlier this year). I am also a big fan of the macaroons at Bouchon Bakery, where the macaroon flavors are seasonal and always interesting (and, they refer to this cookie by its proper French name, "macaron.")One reason I kept putting off making this recipe is that the fillings must be made at least one day ahead, and I repeatedly forgot to plan ahead an extra day whenever the idea to make macaroons crossed by mind. On Sunday evening, I made a batch of caramel filling and a batch of chocolate filling and put them in the refrigerator to chill. On Monday night, I made the macaroon batter, which involved only 4 ingredients (powdered sugar, almonds, cocoa, and egg whites), but required a lot of quality time with my food processor. The recipe instructs you to put the batter in a pastry bag and pipe out walnut shaped mounds to bake. I knew that there was no way that technique would work for me; my pastry bag piping skills are terrible and I couldn't possibly make pretty or evenly-sized macaroons this way. So instead, I used a #60 sccop and made nice, round, uniform macaroons with no fuss and no muss. (I got 64 cookie halves this way.)
When it came time to fill the macaroons, my chocolate filling had developed a very bizarre grainy and wet texture (particularly strange since the only ingredients were milk, butter, and chocolate), and so I filled most of the cookies with the caramel (which looked nicer, but didn't taste as good as the chocolate), and only used the chocolate filling to fill the few that were left over. I'm going to try this recipe again and see if I can get a smoother, sturdier chocolate filling version. In any case, these cookies were tasty enough, but they looked even better! What beauties!Recipe: Chocolate Macaroons with Chocolate or Caramel Filling from epicurious.com.
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