So one of the problems with “I Know How to Cook” is that it is a translation, and like any translation, it is imperfect. Normally when cooking small mistakes are alright, but baking is difficult enough as it is without linguistic ambiguity making it harder. =\ The recipe below is the how I now interpret the original after an unfortunate experience. You live, you learn!
Hazelnut macaroons
- 2 3/4 cups hazelnuts, shelled and skinned (see below)
- 2 plus 1 egg whites, room temperature
- 2 1/2 cups sugar (I used 1/2 cup less, and it was still very sweet, so use your discretion)
To skin hazelnuts, place on a foiled baking sheet in an even layer and roast in the oven at 375˚F for about 8-10 minutes. Pour the toasty nuts out onto a kitchen towel, then fold the towel over the nuts and rub the towel against your nuts (??) vigorously to remove as much of the outer skin as possible. The skin is not really bad or anything, and it won’t all come off anyway, so this is really kind of optional. Also optional: toasting the nuts anyway… the taste of toasted hazelnuts is better than raw, in my opinion, but it’s up to you!
Preheat the oven to 300˚F and line a cookie sheet with butter-greased parchment paper. Grind the nuts fine in a food processor and place in a large mixing bowl. Whisk two of the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the nuts in smallish batches. Fold the remaining egg white in, and then add the sugar and mix until fairly homogeneous. Roll into 1-1 1/2 inch diameter balls and place on the cookie sheet slightly flattened. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. [I had to do it in two batches because our bakeware sucks, and each batch was around 20 cookies.]
And now, for the disaster! The recipe for hazelnut macaroons in “I Know How to Cook” is actually a variation on the almond macaroons recipe, and Mathiot advises the following changes: (1) Replace the almonds with hazelnuts (duh), and (2) Whisk 2 egg whites before adding them in. Unfortunately, the way I read it, I thought she meant to whisk 2 more egg whites in addition to the 3 listed in the original almonds version. So after 10 minutes my cookies had melted into a huge eggy hazelnutty sugary mess! I managed to salvage it though, by quickly spooning the mess back into the mixing bowl, tossing in something between 2/3 and 1 cup of flour, and mixing it all up again. This resulted in a new dough and I baked it for 15 minutes at 325˚F. Nothing untoward happened the second time, and honestly the cookies came out kind of great… so all’s well that ends well.
Anyway… Baking! It kind of sucks sometimes.
Since these cookies are nigh on “obscenely sweet” I thought it might be a good idea to dip them in some Scharfenberger 67% Cacao I had just obtained. Conclusion: It was a good idea. I used about two blocks of the stuff (it comes with 5 blocks). To melt, heat about an inch deep of water in a pot on medium-low until it’s thinking really hard about simmering. Then place the chopped chocolate in a bowl (preferably non-aluminum metal, glass, or ceramic) set above the water and stir it all around with a fork as it begins to melt. Turn the heat all the way down before dipping the cookies in. Refrigerate the cookies to let the chocolate set, but let them come to room temperature before serving.
Whatever you do, don’t let any water or milk touch the chocolate as that causes it to “seize” and do weird things to the texture. Use chocolate and nothing else (maybe sugar is okay, but there’s already two cups in the cookies for god’s sake).