Pistachio Macaroons

These are the world's most elegant macaroons - Nigella Lawson

Maybe they are in your world, Nigella. Not in mine. As hinted in RoseRed's last post, some discussion on the issue of macaroons took place before I cooked these. I know she'd had, shall we say, issues with her chocolate macaroons. I told her I was making mine for a special morning tea so it was important they worked out. I can't say I wasn't warned.

The morning tea was scheduled for Sunday morning. The following is a faithful account of my Saturday afternoon Macaroon Experience. Take note of the following photo. It demonstrates how the fiasco macaroons were supposed to look. Pretty good looking, huh? It's safe to say I was entranced by them.

The Verdict
Unusual or substituted ingredients - I took Rose Red's advice on this. She shared with me a tale of woe that involved her once shelling bucketloads of pistachios and ending up with blisters to show for it. I bought them already shelled. You grind them up with icing sugar to make a dust, as Nigella says. Then you mix them with the eggwhites. Sounds good so far, doesn't it?

The thing is, meringue-style things are not my forte. I've kept a wide berth between me and them before now. So I did approach these with some anxiety.

Special Utensils or cookware - None. But I do think I could do with some lessons in meringue making. I'm sure I've read that you should whip eggwhites in a metal bowl. Anyone know if this is true?

I should add that Nigella says to pipe the mixture onto the tray. Like RoseRed, I found it wasn't really necessary to pipe, although I did cut a hole in a zip lock bag because I have studiously avoided needing to pipe for most of my life and have, I must say, been quite happy without the experience.


Sauciness - I was ready to kill someone by the end of the afternoon. So no, not a lot of sauciness in these. Why was I ready to kill someone because of fancy biscuits? Look at this.

I had two sheets of these things, one on baking paper, one on a silicone sheet. Both stuck to buggery. They crumbled and broke and shattered. What a waste of $10 worth of pistachios!

Not one of these macaroons came away from the sheet in one piece. Not ONE!

Repeatability - You know what? I may actually try making them again one day. I love pistachios. I love meringue. If I can get these right, they'll be a dream come true for me. But not yet. I'm not ready. I was so bummed by these. I ended up making snickerdoodles on Sunday morning at the crack of dawn, just so I had something to take.

Overall Pleasure Level - It would be a lie to say I hate these entirely. We ended up crumbling them over chocolate mousse that night and they were fantastic shards of sweet, light, nutty goodness. Can't complain about that.

So, I will rate them as a failure, because they were, even if they did taste good. Tasting good is not enough. I want ones like the pretty picture.

Honestly, I think both RoseRed and i probably went wrong in the whipping phase. According to some comments we got on the chocolate macaroons, I think we didn't let the mixture dry out out enough - but Nigella gives clear instructions not to let it dry out when whipping (ie to not overwhip). I will try again one day and whip them like there's no tomorrow.

Bells

Chocolate Macaroons

the utter gorgeousness of just one mouthful of these...reveals the rank inadequacy of language - Nigella Lawson


And that's probably true, because out of this recipe, which should have made at least 18-20 macaroons, I managed to get 10. Just one bite is all you'll get!


When Bells and I were discussing what we planned to make on the weekend, she mentioned she was going to try the pistachio macaroons, which sound fabulous. But to sound a note of warning, I had to mention the disaster that was my experience with Chocolate Macaroons - pretty much same recipe but different nuts.


The verdict:
Unusual or substituted ingredients: Not really. The recipe calls for ground almonds. I've no idea if you can buy ground almonds (I expect you can, I just couldn't see them in the supermarket) and assuming they are different to almond meal (which I think they must be, as Nigella uses almond meal elsewhere in HTBADG), I just bought whole almonds, and ground them in the food processor - that sounds right doesn't it?!
Special utensils or cookware: The macaroon mix is supposed to be piped onto the baking tray. So I got out my fab-o tupperware icing ball and used that. I needn't have bothered. The painstakingly piped macaroon mix just blurbed into a dollop sized blob on the tray. So don't worry about the piping, just use a spoon.

Sauciness: Nigella suggests using baking paper lined trays. As I always do with biscuits, I use my tupperware silicone sheets (have I mentioned how much I love Tupperware??!!). Well, that was a mistake. These little suckers were so saucy they stuck to the sheet. So for round two, I thought, well, maybe Nigella's right, maybe I should use baking paper. Heh. Big mistake. Stuck even worse.

Of the 20 macaroon rounds on the sheet, I could use none of them. None. See the white rounds on the bottom of each one. That's the baking paper. Completely stuck. Thanks a bunch, Nigella!
Repeatability: I am not going to bother. I do accept that maybe I did something wrong with this recipe - maybe I should have just used almond meal. Maybe I used the wrong baking paper. I did think I might give the pistachio version a try, but I'll leave that to Bells.
Overall pleasure level: This was a rare Nigella failure. I did get 10 usuable macaroons, and they did taste pretty good sandwiched with the chocolate patissiere stuff (which is basically cream, chocolate and a little bit of butter), but a failure all the same. So it's a 4.

Stayed tuned for the next exciting episode of Macaroon. Will Bells shell eleventybillion pistachios by hand? Or will she buy them pre-shelled? Will she pipe or just dollop? And how many pistachios will she eat before putting them into the mix? And the real cliff-hanger - will they end up in the bin?

Finnish Rye Bread

It's dense, dark and aromatic in an extraordinarily comforting way - Nigella Lawson

My love of bread making is well documented here. It's safe to say I'm quite passionate about it. So when I announced last night I would make Finnish Rye Bread, Sean, who is in tune with such things, noted that being the winter solstice, something dense and harking from one of the northern-most parts of the world seemed somehow fitting.

The Verdict
I chose to use the cool-rise method that Nigella mentions in the opening paragraphs in the Bread and Yeast chapter. That is, make the dough, put it in the fridge over night and let it rise while you sleep.

Unusual or substituted ingredients - Oddly enough I had both rye flour and dark muscovado sugar in the pantry. What can I say - I cook a lot of Nigella recipes and she calls for these sorts of things. So i substituted nothing.

Before going into the fridge for the night.

Special Cookware or utensils - Nigella says you can use a dough hook attachment for the kneading. I say 'don't be daft!' I knead by hand and can't imagine a time when I won't.

Repeatability - Try and stop me. This bread was amazing. The problem will be NOT making it every weekend to the point of getting sick of it. I'd do the cool rise again too. It does make it a little hard to give it the second knead in the morning but it warmed up in the sun that pours in our kitchen window soon enough.

The bread before it went in the oven - in glorious early morning light.

Sauciness - Oh yes. Making bread is my new favourite thing - has been for six months now so I guess it's not so new. But I am not tired of it. I'd make it more if it I didn't work. I'd do a lot more in life if I didn't work but that's another story.


Overall Pleasure level - Sean and I were in complete agreement. This was the best bread I've ever made. It's dense without being too heavy or too chewy. And it's marvellous dunked into soup on the second day.

Night and Day Cupcakes

This, like the cream cheese brownies, uses my favourite combination of densely sweet and smoothly sharp - Nigella Lawson

What a change from oat cakes hey! Back to the tried and true chocolate cupcakes (well, clearly not these particular ones, I've never tried them before, but you know what I mean). I do like a cupcake - a single serve size of moderate amount, portable, and very easy to eat. The problem is, how do you stop at one!

The verdict

Unusual or substituted ingredients - nothing particularly unusual, except perhaps for the cream cheese icing, which you wouldn't ordinarily expect on a chocolate cupcake. But as Nigella says, it adds a nice dimension to the sweetness of the chocolate (particularly given the loads of icing sugar added to the cream cheese, which sweetens it quite a bit).

I'm not sure if it is proper cooking etiquette to do this, but I pretty much always cube my butter and soften it in the microwave - otherwise it is never soft enough to blend properly (I always forget to take it out of the fridge hours before I'm going to be cooking!) - am I the only one who does this?

Special cookware or utensils - none, except a food processor - this is a very easy recipe, pretty much bung it all in the magimix and whiz until blended. Ok, it's a little more complicated than that, but not much! As always, Nigella suggests using a muffin tin. She must have very small muffin tins. I used a patty cake tin and got the recommended 12 cupcakes, plus two muffin sized ones. If I'd used a muffin tin, I think I would only have got 8 altogether - not enough for a work morning tea, which is what these were for!

Repeatability - I would definitely make these again - nice light cupcakes, not too rich or heavily chocolate but luscious enough with the cream cheese icing to feel special.

Sauciness - mmmm, I enjoyed scraping the food processor bowl clean on these babies! (who doesn't, when they cook cakes?!). With the icing, I made only half the recommended amount, which was plenty for all of these cupcakes, unless you like your icing an inch thick!

Nigella recommended decorating with a chocolate coated coffee bean, or shaved dark chocolate. Not having any coffee beans on hand, and not feeling like I could be bothered with shaving dark chocolate, I was pretty happy to leave these as is. And I think they worked perfectly just so!

Overall pleasure level - both the cooking and the eating was good on these. I'm giving them an 8.5!

Oat Cakes

There's something very satisfying about making such good, plain fare as oatcakes - as if you're doing something sober and basic and not entertaining yourself with fripperies - Nigella Lawson

I've been away this weekend and at 4pm this afternoon thought, 'Bugger! I haven't made anything for the blog!' And I know that RoseRed's been away so she probably hasn't either.

So I sat down to find the easiest, quickest thing to make in the book, other than Snickerdoodles, which I've made ad nauseum since I first made them.

A-ha! Oatcakes! An easy solution to the problem. Four ingredients, no fussing. Perfect.

Not exactly. Sean's first comment on taking a bite was, 'so what are they for exactly?' It went downhill from there.

The Verdict

I have to say, not even Nigella sounded very excited about these in her pre-recipe blurb. Ususally she goes on at length about the wonder of her chosen recipes. I have to wonder why she included them.


Unusual or Substituted Ingredients - I just happened to have some almost out of date medium ground oatmeal in the pantry. No idea why. I've never used the stuff. Other than that, no special ingredients. Bi-carb, oats, salt and butter (although you are given the option of using lard, and Nigella urges you to try it. Sorry Nigella, this was a last minute decision. I don't carry lard in the house as a rule!)


Special Utensils or Cookware - None at all.

Repeatability - I don't think so. Unless someone can tell me in the comments how these go just fabulously with this or that. They taste, I'm afraid, like pressed cardboard. They're Scottish, I believe. I'm not aware of any Scottish cuisine that's set the world on fire. Apologies to any Scots reading.

Sauciness - zero. Again, I have to say they taste like pressed cardboard. Nigella says making them is sobering. I'll say this for them - tasting these things is a reminder that we can all have moments in the kitchen where we look at what we've done and think, 'how on earth did this ever seem like a good idea?'

Overall Pleasure Level - Taking the shot below was the greatest pleasure I derived from this recipe. I had to do something with them. Cooked, they look just like that photo above of the cakes just before I put them in the oven. I'm giving these 2 out 10. They weren't a failure. They were just pointless. Am happy to stand corrected if someone can tell me there is a way to make these edible by pairing them with something else.

Snow Topped Spice Cake

Photo courtesy of Sean - he thought the bundt tin deserved a portrait. He was right.

This cake - fruitless, light but aromatic - is the perfect replacement for the standard Christmas cake - Nigella Lawson

I made this for our Christmas in June celebrations last weekend. I think it was the standout part of the meal.


The Verdict

Unusual or substituted ingredients None really. Just the usual Nigella favourites like Dark Muscovado sugar and a range of spices that are fairly common like cloves and all-spice. What's special about the cake though is the mixing in of 6 large eggwhites right before it's ready to bake. It makes the mixture look like honeycomb and creates an amazing lightness in the final product. For the first time ever, I'd like to add, I defrosted eggwhites I'd frozen (according to adivce from Nigella I'd picked up somewhere along the way. Who knew I'd actually ever remember to use them?)


Special Untesils or Cookware Oh yes. A whopping great big and expensive bundt tin! I've always wanted one and so must confess it was part of the reason for choosing this cake. Nigella didn't use one with a funnel and in the end I went with one, despite my reservations. RoseRed and the woman at the specialty shop assured me, at the last minute, that it would be ok. It was.

Repeatability Oh yes. I'd make this again in a heartbeat, Christmas or not. In fact, I'll be making it again next month when my sister comes to visit, since she had to miss out on this meal for reasons beyond her control. Not only that, but when you spend a fortune on a cake tin, you want to use it as much as possible.

Another portrait by Sean.

Sauciness This cake is divine. It's rich, but not too rich, and luciously decadent. It also looks wonderfully impressive, I think.

It slipped almost effortlessly out of the tin - here it is, above, freshly tipped out and then photographed by Sean, who thought this cake was a great opportunity for cute photography. I was worried the corrugations in the tin wouldn't translate to the cake. But they did, even the little diamond shapes on the top that you can sort of see above. It was a delight in every sense - oh except for the extra long lunch break I spent trying to find the tin. But you get that. We must suffer for our art at some point, I suppose.

Overall pleasure level Look at how it scrubbed up! Even me, with my very, very mediocre cake decorating skills, managed make it look quite passable. I added the holly for Christmas but might fill it with berries or something some time. I absolutely loved this cake. Best I've had in recent memory - and it's got some stiff competition, let me tell you.

Bells

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake with Sour Cream Icing

For some reason, this is the only chocolate cake my daughter likes ... the sour cream provides a wonderful mouth-filling smoothness - Nigella Lawson

Oh, another attack of the hyperbole, Nigella. I thought this cake (or at least, my version of it) tasted too much like packet cake (maybe that's why your daughter likes it!!). The cake was just a little dry (quite surprising for a cake with sour cream) and the icing was too icing-sugar sweet, for my tastes anyway. But fortunately, it is still quite edible (hey, it's chocolate cake after all!) and our friends' 3 year old daughter quite liked it. Especially the icing!

The verdict

Unusual or substituted ingredients: Only unusual in that it uses sour cream. Oh, and golden syrup in the icing (I love golden syrup).

The recipe also calls for golden caster sugar. I think I've seen that here but I couldn't find any on the weekend, so I used regular caster sugar. Maybe that does make a difference?

Special utensils or cookware: None - very easy to make in the KitchenAid. Called for 20cm tins - as you know, I only have 22cm tins. So it just meant the cakes came out a little thin. Oh yeah, and they stuck like a b*tch, even though I buttered and lined the tins. So, should there be a next time with this cake, I'd butter and flour and line the tins. Or possibly use spring form tins. One or the other. You can't tell from the photo below, but the top cake (the upside down one) lost it's bottom. Fortunately, I could get it out of the tin in one piece and "stick" it back into place (badly).

Repeatability: Probably not. I like my chocolate cakes richer than this - more like the dense chocolate loaf. But it's an easy cake to make, perfectly acceptable and a little lighter - probably a good choice for kids, especially smaller kids.

This was the top cake (just after I placed it on top of the bottom cake). Lucky for thick icing which hides the cracks underneath!

Sauciness: Don't lick the bowl from the sour-cream mix. Do lick the bowl from the icing. I think that's all that needs to be said! (Really, it's probably only me that needed that advice in the first place!)

Look, I even got the splayds out for this one!

Overall pleasure level: I hate to say this, for a chocolate recipe, but this is only a 5 for me. Although I do have to admit, it did taste better the second day!