theoddsock.comhome of the internaut

Last week I had a mad moment after cooking up a batch of risotto for Jon’s dinner and decided to try making these macarons that are/were all the rage. Mine didn’t develop the frilly feet but no matter they were snarfled up pretty quickly.

Today, in a fit of pique while doing some work I decided to try making them again but with Pecan instead of Almond, as Jon is more of a pecan fan. I also ended up following (sort of) the recipe used by Deepa when she subsequently made a batch of macarons – one tweets about food and a bunch of us end up cooking.

I pointedly didn’t age my egg whites – I just am too old for that kind of faffiness  I just want to get on and generate washing up.

I also forgot to whip/beat the eggs *before* adding the 50g of caster sugar. Don’t know if that was the reason for the lower level of viscosity than I was expecting.

• 3 egg whites
• Maple Syrup
• c 180g of Pecans ( I used one 150g bag and a little bit more)
• 50g caster sugar
• 175g caster sugar
• Ground Cinnamon

I ground my pecans in my multi-mixer dodah until they were as fine as possible – they weren’t as a fine as the ground almonds you can buy but it didn’t seem to matter

In Bowl 1, with the hand mixer I beat the eggs (with the 50g of caster sugar) until it was a stiff as it was going to get – it was still runny may have been my eggs tho

In bowl 2 I mixed the pecans with 25g of maple syrup and 175g of caster sugar and some generous dashes of ground cinnamon.

With the hand mixer I slowly mixed in the nut/sugar mixture until it was thoroughly blended.

With the piping bag  I piped out very un-Martha slodges on to a silicone mat.

Let the splodges rest for about 15 mins before backing at 150c for about 15 mins.

They came out rather flat but with a nice crisp top and gooey middle – but as we say about my Mum’s Goo Cake: You can’t spell good without ‘goo’

Last week I discovered the Domestic Sluttery (what a fantastic name!) site and their recipe for Blueberry Boy Bait; I am still meaning to try the lebkuchen recipe. The blueberry laden treat went down a storm with Jon and seeing as it is me I’m going to make another batch, this time with a mix of blueberries and raspberrys. By rights I ought to try using some the semi-feral raspberries we have at the end of the garden. However, they have been somewhat neglected and need some TLC.

Verdict… NOM

My variation on the Domestic Sluttery recipe is as follows

• 200g Wholemeal Self raising flour
• 50g Self raising flour
• c. 175g raspberries – it was a punet of big juicy ones from Spar that were marked down by 50%
• c 150g Blueberries

All the raspberries went into to the batter along with some of the blueberries – the remainder of which went on top.

To be honest I think you could successfully make this with nearly any mix of berries – for a nice winter berry treat and to some degree the more the merrier!

I used a swiss roll tin to bake in and at 180c in a fan assisted oven it was done in about 20 minutes – time for this and then test with a tooth pick in the centre �- comes out clean, it’s done. Then you just need to restrain yourself while it cools otherwise you may do your self some serious damage by way of molten raspberry