Oreoboros

On macarons.





Again.

After my little vegan interlude, I once again returned to delicate egg whites and white chocolate delicacy.

I could lie to you, and pretend that my latest undertaking was plain sailing, and came together like one of the A-team's plans. Because who doesn't love it when a plan comes together?

But this week, I have not known as much success as I would have liked; I have been a fool worthy of pity. I began with the intention of making lime and ginger macarons - an intensely limey biscuit and a mild, sweet ginger cream. Sadly, it was not to be.

The first batch was a failure. I used a lime syrup comprised of the zest and flesh of a lime, but not the peel. Unfortunately, I was unaware lime zest's incredibly high pectin content (the substance in fruit which causes jam to set), indeed, Internet research quickly conducted by The Vegan put the figure at around 30% (30% of what is any one's guess, but on the same scale an apple was 1-1.5%). This led to a firm gel, rather than a syrup. Excellent, if I was aiming for haribo, but somewhat less useful for making macarons.

The second syrup was at least liquid by the time it ruined my egg whites. Apparently, the low pH lime syrup was not best friends with the delicate egg whites, and the resulting mixture was far too runny and moist. Despite my best efforts to salvage them, these macarons came out far too chewy and soft to be of any use, and failed to rise correctly. They did at least offer a fantastically limey taste, and my polite cohabitants still happily ate them. After this catalogue of failures, I decided to call it a night.

The next day, I started again. Having failed to marry lime and meringue, I decided that I would emulate Pierre Herme, le Marquis de le Macarons, and have a go at one of his most recently unveiled flavour combinations, wasabi and grapefruit. I also made the executive decision of putting the grapefruit into the cream and the wasabi into the biscuit - after the previous day's citrus sabotage, I couldn't face another molten meringue mess, and distinct lack of macarons.

The manufacture of this batch was pretty much as I have already detailed - the wasabi was a paste added at the last stage of mixing, and the filling is the white chocolate ganache, flavoured with grapefruit, and thickened slightly with icing sugar. The chocolate "rose" was made by melting chocolate, spreading it thinly on a sheet of greaseproof paper, scraping it off with a knife while still malleable and molding it with my fingers.



(this post's title an original witticism from The Vegan)