Sumac Macarons
Remember when I admitted to eavesdropping on the Mac Attack girls? Well, this time they invited me to play along in their reindeer games, and I was ecstatic!
Just a bit about the Mac Attack … it is a group of us food bloggers who want to master making the macaron. The lovely coordinators of our group, Jamie and Deeba will select a recipe and give us the challenge. This month they picked one of Helen from Tartelette’s recipes, for Violet Macarons With Violet And Vanilla Bean Buttercream.
When I am given a challenge, I always stay within the guidelines or at least I try very hard not to “break” the rules. Well, there are going to be a lot of “unfortunates” listed here. Unfortunately, I could not find the sugared violets anywhere, the only place I ever find them is Paris; but, I did find sugared mimosa flowers. Unfortunately, again, they were to hard to crack, so I decided to use sumac to give them a bit of color. Everything was going smoothly, from aging the egg whites, to whipping them to stiff peaks, to folding in my nut flour, then …… I just knew as I began to pipe my small little blobs of meringue, that this would be a fail. They were spreading across the pan like wild fire. Regardless, I decided to proceed one. Since I did not have any violets, I made a mixture of sumac and maldon salt and sprinkled it on top of each macaron before baking. Even though they were as flat as little pancakes, once they were dried, I slid them into the oven. Much to my surprise, they did grow some lovely little feet but where I had sprinkled the sumac, they sank and half of them stuck to the parchment. Since I had pretty much broken all the rules at this point, I just took it to another level and filled them with a deep dark bittersweet chocolate ganache. Despite the second macaron fail, I have to say, the flavor combination was a winner, the salty sumac really complimented the sexy dark chocolate!
I’ve yet to try these. Think I’ll continue to watch from the sidelines for a while.
OMG love the flavour combination. WOW Denise…sumac & chocolate – very sexy indeed! Maybe the tartness of the sumac berry had something to do with the ‘extra’ spread, but you got ‘feet’ and you got them looking GREAT! Thanks for playing with us…loved having you on!
Now I have got to admit that your flavors are super creative and ingenious! And so glad you made played along with us. And don’t worry, your macs will get better and better each month! And I think your macs came out so pretty!
Love the flavor combinations. Extremely creative, I will definitely have to give Sumac a try. I too broke the rules a bit. I had a terrible time finding appropriate florals here. I wish I had thought to harvest somee lavendar and violets for sugar while I had them in bloom. I am with Deeba and Jamie on this. You got your feet! Your macs will only get better
[...] people (different ones every year) get a goodie box in the mail. Since I am in the process of perfecting the macaron, I decided it would be nice to give these away, after all, if we keep eating the [...]
What a great flavour combination and beautiful macs. I didn’t realise we had to make the violet ones, whoops..I broke every rule in the book then! (Ps – love that plate)
I think they turned out beautiful, regardless of the Titanic sink. Love the idea of sumac for color. It is amazing how sometimes feet will show up when you’re sure they won’t..weird little cookies! Have a wonderful holiday!