A Dalliance with a Hot Pink French Macaron

With all my pastry affairs, it’s surprising I’d never hooked up with a French macaron.   I mean, I’ve gone hot and heavy with everything from homemade Twinkies to Lady Baltimore Cake.  It was high time I experienced the lusty passion of the French Macaron.

The encounter takes place at the Institute of Culinary Education during their “Macaron Mondays” program.   Chef Instructor Kathyrn Gordon is the co-author of “Les Petits Macarons” and knows the allure of the perfectly French sandwich cookie.  She’s spent years researching and baking macarons.

Chef Kathryn walks us through the basics of macaron amour. It’s actually a simple set of four ingredients – almond flour, confectioners sugar and granulated sugar, combined with egg whites whipped into a meringue.   Yet the conditions have to be right.  Too much whipping, too much baking, or too much humidity can destroy the relationship.  Subtlety is key to any relationship

She quickly pipes out some quarter-sized macarons decorated with Jackson Pollack-style splashes of color, and explains that during the French Revolution, nuns baked macarons as a nutritious alternative to meat. Sounds like my kind of religious order.

You’re looking for a classic figure in a macaron – a shiny, thin shell, with a “foot” around the shell – that slightly rough edge that meets the filling. 

I team up with a woman named Laura who I’ve just met and we get to work.  We have our choice of colors and fillings, and she makes a passionate plea to color our macarons hot pink and fill them with strawberry guava filling.   It’s just a little frou-frou and a very Pop Art choice, but when it comes to macarons, you might as well go all the way.

Perhaps I’m besotted, but I think our macarons are some of the prettiest and shapeliest in the class.

So here’s the thing about baking macarons.  You have to be ready for a long courtship.   A freshly baked macaron tastes hard and crunchy.   You must “age” macarons in the freezer.  The cookie and the filling need time to meld and develop that characteristic soft, chewy texture.  It’s only a temporary delay.  The deep freeze does nothing to chill the desire. 

This is not a one-night stand.  I’ll be back for more.  Love.  

©2014 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved  

A Sugar High with a Cupcake Cutie

My friend Amanda knows a lot about human behavior. So she probably knew it would take me all of two seconds to agree to join her for a class on baking Nostalgic Snack Cakes at the Institute for Culinary Education (ICE) in New York City.  

Who could resist such an offer? After all, we both grew up in suburbia during the golden age of lunchbox snack treats, where nobody really fretted about a little sugar or empty calories in the diet and hyperactivity was euphemistically described as “school spirit.”  Suzy Q’s and Ding Dongs are our ethnic food!  Having already delved into the art of the homemade Twinkie, I’m anxious to expand my snack cake repertoire. 

The class is led by Chef-Instructor Faith Drobbin.   She’d laid out a sampling of snack cakes that she’s prepared in advance.   There are freshly turned Twinkies, Suzy Q’s, Funny Bones, and Ding Dongs.   

We chat about the different names of cakes generated by the longtime rivalry between snack cake giants Hostess and Drakes. Was it a Ding Dong or a Ring Ding?   What’s the difference between a Twinkie and a chocolate glazed Twinkie, called a Chocodile? Is the filling Marshmallow Fluff, or buttercream?  What’s the difference between a Yankee Doodle and a Sunny Doodle? What were Captain Cupcake’s actual super powers? The class is filled with snack cake aficionados, but I’m just a little suspicious of the woman in the back of the room chomping on a Granny Smith apple.  Who let her in?  

Chef invites us to try the samples she’s laid out.   Everyone is very polite and restrained, but after 5 minutes I can’t hold back.

“I’m going in,” I whisper to Amanda.   We divvy up a chocolate glazed, cream filled Ding Dong.   It is a heavenly, light, devils food cake, filled with sinfully good cream filling.  "Do I have chocolate in my teeth?" I self-consciously ask Amanda.   

Chef Drobbin does a fine job of demonstrating the Yellow Snack Cake recipe, and the Chocolate Snack Cake recipe.   Here’s where I have a snack cake epiphany.   Every single snack cake in the universe consists of either yellow cake or chocolate cake, with cream filling and a chocolate glaze.   No matter what the snack cake may be, the recipes for the individual components are the same.   If you master the recipes, you unlock the caloric key to infinite variations.   At this moment, I feel a little like Escoffier and Twinkie the Kid all at the same time. 

Amanda’s insight is just a little different as she eyes the Chocodile.  “I really think the key learning here is that everything is better dipped in chocolate,” she remarks.

We get ready to bake, and there are lots of questions from the class.   How do you get the goop in?   How big should we make the Twinkies?

“How big do you want your snack cake?” comments Amanda. “These are First World problems!”

Chef advises us that with the proper recipes, pans and techniques we can create a fine facsimile of any iconic snack cake.  Yet they won’t taste exactly the same.  Ours will taste better, because we’re using butter and eggs.  

We start baking and needless to say, as the day proceeds, our vegetable intake is minimal, and our carbohydrate consumption is close to astronomical.

We prepare Chocolate Snack Cake for cupcakes, Ding Dongs and Chocodiles. At times, we find ourselves engulfed in a cloud of cocoa, but when it all comes together, the batter is dark and glossy.

We decide to double the batter for the Yellow Snack Cake Mix.  This is a bit of a no-no, and Chef is somewhat peeved. When we’re done, we actually have enough snack cakes to host a birthday party at PS 143 in Queens.     

Amanda becomes quite accomplished at injecting cream filling into the cupcakes.

And, we perfect the high art technique of snack cake glazing. 

Some of it resembles Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory. At one point, a blob of icing lands on Amanda’s big toe.  She has worn flip flops to the class.  I really need to talk to that young lady about proper kitchen attire.

The final touch?  We express our inner doodler, by applying the squiggle of icing on the top of the Hostess Cupcakes.    We have prepared enough empty calories to power an army, and we box up our cakes and head for the subway.   I have a sugar hangover. Amanda complains that she’s thirsty and she has a tummy ache. She returns home to consume a large helping of animal protein, and enjoy the adoration of her daughter who has been waiting all day for treats from Mom’s class.  

Me?  Well, we were such a well frosted, high producing team that I think we may have a future in snack cakes. I think our next class should be, “How to Make Your First Million by Hosting a Neighborhood Bake Sale.” But first, I'm planning my next marathon bike ride.   

©2013 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

I’m Old Fashioned

I’ve never seen the Tom Cruise movie “Cocktail” and that’s probably a good thing because I’m an old fashioned kind of guy. That’s why the course “Classic Cocktails,” taught by Anthony Caporale at The Institute of Culinary Education had immediate appeal for me.

Imagine a Saturday night “getting wet.” Don’t worry – it’s a bartending term that aptly describes the action behind the bar. As Caporale says, when you’re mixing cocktails it’s inevitable that things are going to get wet and sticky. Caporale has been in the spirits business for years. He’s a high-energy instructor with a high proof mix of tips, tricks and fascinating anecdotes about the classic cocktail. I’ve already taken his excellent course on Whiskey, Bourbon and Scotch. You can get a taste of his approach at his Art of the Drink website.

Did you know the art of the cocktail emerged during Prohibition? Yes, folks started drinking more because alcohol was illegal, and they started adding things like fruit juice and bitters to mask the taste of some pretty poor quality booze. Fortunately, our tastes and techniques have evolved and mixing cocktails has become an art. Within minutes, Caporale provides the basics on colorless and brown spirits along with a couple of dashes of history and economics, and then gets us started on pouring techniques. Skilled bartenders don’t measure – they count and pour. With a proper pour spout and the right technique, you pour a ½ ounce of liquor per second.

Our source material for the course is six basic cocktail recipes found in David Embury’s “The Fine Art Of Mixing Drinks,” a bartending Bible first published in 1948. Embury was a pioneer in the field of cocktail culture. Caporale adds a modern twist. He’s got a degree in engineering so he’s very good at breaking recipes down into components so you understand the formula, technique and the approach instead of obsessing over a specific recipe. As he explains it, every cocktail starts with a base spirit, and then a combination of mixers, sweetened liquors, fortified wines, or sweet and bitter ingredients are added. The key, he says, is balance. He’s not a fan of the super sweet cocktails popularized in recent time in the United States.

We are each positioned at a station equipped with a tin shaker, an array of bar tools and easy access to a lot of ice. Once we get through a few warm up rounds of pouring, mixing and shaking we get to work and shake up a Dry Gin Martini (the only way to go with a Martini):

A Manhattan with Bourbon and Sweet Vermouth:

An Old Fashioned made with Dewers White Label whiskey on the rocks:

A Rum Daiquiri, which is much simpler and tastier than the super sweet blender concoction we often think of:

A Side Car made with Cognac, Triple Sec and lemon:

And, a Jack Rose made with apple “jack” brandy and rosy-colored Grenadine:

The mixing and shaking gets fast and furious at times. So how do I fare? Well, I’ve already hinted that I’m not Tom Cruise. My pouring aim is off at times (you need to get the spirits into the cocktail shaker, not all over your sleeve) and my Manhattan Cocktail, which I’m pretty experienced at preparing, comes out a bit watered down. But, my Dry Gin Martini is sublime, and I think I’ve discovered a new favorite in the Side Car.

Cheers to Anthony Caporale for shaking up a spirited evening of insider techniques and classic cocktail lore!

©2012 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved