Macaroons or Macarons?

First: I did end up finding a new whisk attachment for my ancient mixer.  I cannot wait for it to come in.  In the meantime, I borrowed Betsy's.  Thank you Bets!  Come on over for some macaroons as payment ;)


Today, after hearing my mother vehemently swearing because she forgot to tell my sister to pick her up some coconut macaroons from Gerrardo's,  I decided that I would make her some!  When I Googled a recipe, I found quite a confusing mix of recipes.  Apparently there are macaroons,  and there are macarons.  The macaroons that I was looking for are made mostly of coconut, sometimes dipped in chocolate, and are white.  The macarons that I was finding (and sometimes spelled macaroons, to double my confusion) look like mini sandwich cookies and are many different colors.   Apparently, they both start off with egg whites and sugar, but differ from there.  So, if you areas confused as I was, here is what I found out by researching the macaroon/macaron quandry (thank you thekitchn.com!) :

Macaroons:

THESE are macaroons!

These are the easier cookie.  Once you have your meringue, you fold in sweetened coconut, and drop tablespoons onto a cookie sheet.  Once they are cooked, you can dip them in chocolate if you so choose.  They are cripsy on the outside and chewy on the inside.

Macarons:
Once you have a meringue, you fold in confectionary sugar and ground almonds.  The batter is very fluid and gets piped onto a cookie sheet.  A buttercream frosting must be made, and you use that to sandwich two cookies together.

A bit poopy-looking, but delicious!

Now that that is all cleared up, I was making macaroons today (although macarons definitely intrigue me... ).  They were shockingly easy and quick, and come out great.  The only bad part was Mom insisting that she needed them to be dipped in chocolate, which I did not have.  I was wearing sweatpants and fluffy slippers and was not looking forward to going out, but she was begging.  She came up with the idea of melting a Lindt chocolate bar (for some reason, we have a huge amount of them).  I tried to tell her that you need high-quality chocolate mixed with lots of butter to make a dippable chocolate - I recently read a whole article on this in  my Foot Network magazine - but she insisted, so I tried.  It ended up looking a little bit like someone pooped on top of each cookie (after eating hazelnuts... because the candy bar was a chocolate hazelnut one), because as I expected, the chocolate seized up, but hey: if you shut your eyes, they taste amazing!  Why does it seem like I say that all the time?   Oh well! They were a big hit with Mom and her macaroon cravings.

After that, I made an enormous double batch of my good old herbed focaccia for tomorrow's pot luck lunch at work.  We have a professional development day, and I thought homemade bread would be pretty impressive for my coworkers.  Unfortunately, the lunch is the only 45 minutes of the day that I am looking forward to, so I hope the focaccia goes over well!

Giant focaccia bread!  It's almost as big as my pastry board!

Recipes:
Chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons
Herbed focaccia

Italian Night

Holy cannoli, I am exhausted tonight.  I came home from a long Tuesday with 22 11-year olds who are totally feeling the full moon, and did not have too much planned.  However, I wanted to make stuffed shells, and someow an Italian night began taking shape in my mind. Maybe it's that I am currently reading the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun, enjoying the recipes far more than the prose, or maybe it's that I have been trying to be better about making whole meals instead of just a main course.  All of a sudden, I was planning not only the stuffed shells, but some sort of side salad, bread, and pizza!

Italian Night Dinner!

First I made the bread, since it takes longer with the rising and all.  I made my old fall-back, herbed focaccia.  This is the third time I have made it since my blog began - the only recipe I have made three times! That definitely means something.  So easy, so quick, so delicious!  It went perfectly with the rest of the meal.  I still think that this is the best bread for anyone who is nervous about trying to make bread.  It's pretty hard to mess up, and with the fresh herbs (I used fresh rosemary and thyme, and dried oregano and basil), it just has amazing flavor.

Then came Mark to the rescue with the side salad.  He whipped together a gorgeous Caprese salad; he even bought special thick and gooey balsamic.

I tried not to be offended when Nick came in from Wal-Mart angry that they were out of breadmakers.  Breadmaker?!  Isn't that what I am?  He said he wanted it to make pizza dough, and so that was my next recipe.  I knew that it was basically just a yeast dough, so it was really quick to whip that up.  The pizza would fit in perfectly with my Italian night, too!

By far Nick's best pizza... not just because of my great dough!

Last came the stuffed shells.  I made spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed shells, and they were absolutely delicious.  Such good flavor from the ricotta, spinach, parmesan, and mozzarella!  These will definitely reappear soon.  I think they would be great with some chopped basil added in to the spinach, but we were out, after putting it in the Caprese and the pizza.

How pretty are these shells?

Now that I have been on my feet cooking for about 4 hours, I would say it's time to take a break!  But I certainly recommend everything I made tonight for your Italian night dinner! (Can you tell I taught a lesson on advertising recently?)

Recipes:
herbed focaccia
pizza dough
spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed shells

Out of Commission!

This is my apology entry!  I haven't posted in a while.  Part of the reason is that I am out of commission (more on that later) and the other part is a slight tantrum I took Tuesday night....

So, let's get right down to it.  To Tuesday night, and my temper tantrum.  I decided to make dinner, and since Kenzie was home sick thay day, I told her to get the ingredients for ricotta gnocchi.  I had pinned it on Pinterest, and Laura had made it and said it was delicious.  I love gnocchi, and I was intrigued by the sage brown butter sauce, and I have a love for all things gnocchi, so I was excited.

I decided to triple the recipe.  Laura said that one recipe did not make a ton, and we had about 8 people for dinner!  So... I tripled it.  It took forever to roll out the dough, cut them, and fork them to make them pretty (this step makes me sick now... so much work, all for nothing...) and then it was time to put them into boiling water.... annnnd they completely disintegrated.  Immediately.  It looked like I was attempting to boil polenta.  I started to panic, and Mark attempted to calm me down by trying to pan-fry a few of them (what a good man), but they were beyond all help.  We ended up scraping lots of food down the disposal, which I really hate.  What you should be inferring is that throughout this fiasco, I was crying and swearing and generally handling things quite poorly.  I do not deal well with my own mistakes, and I read over that recipe over and over again, and still cannot figure out what went wrong.

Ironically, Laura had made the gnocchi again the same night, and doubled it, and it worked just fine.  My theory had been that the tripling somehow ruined the recipe, but obviously that is not it.  I used skim ricotta, but she used part skim.  The only thing we can think of is that I used pre-grated parmesan cheese, and she used the real deal and grated it.  We figured that has more moisture and helps the gnocchi to stick together.  I am not sure if I can emotionally handle trying again, but I really do want to eat them, so we'll see.  Laura says it is a good lesson to learn that the first time you make a recipe, you follow it exactly.  She's such a know-it-all (just kidding!  Love you LG!)  In the meantime, I might have to make more ricotta blackberry muffins...

Then yesterday I made herbed focaccia.  I had made this back in December, and it is an amazingly easy yeast bread that comes out deeeeelish.  Kenzie was craving something salty and warm and soft (she has strep) and that was all I felt up to doing (my back was bothering me).    Yet again, it came out wonderfully.  Perhaps this time it is even better because I used fresh rosemary and thyme.  I really recommend this bread!

And now it brings us to today.  I actually just called out of work tomorrow because my back is so bad!  Don't ask what I did: the answer is nothing.  It started bothering me yesterday, and as time went on, it hurt more and  more until today I am crippled!  I have had to just sadly flip through food magazines and take the day off from the kitchen.  This explains the lack of photos in this post.  Just take it from me that the bread looks good.  I'd have to stand up and walk to get photos, and that is beyond me right now!

Recipes:
Ricotta gnocchi in brown  butter sage sauce
Herbed focaccia