Sooooo, I've had it in my head all summer to try and tackle a pastry that's known to be difficult. That was without counting for the extra difficulty of veganizing it...
The egg replacer I buy (
Orgran) has a egg replacer meringue recipe on the back. So I thought I'd take that, adapt it with the macaron recipe from
Cakecrumbs, and take 1/4 of the quantities for a test run.
Here are the quantities I used:
- 31 g almond powder
- 34 g icing sugar
- 13.5 tsp egg replacer
- 0.28 tsp pectin
- 134 mL ice cold water
- 1 tbs sugar
I pretty much followed the
recipe for the meringue, mixing the egg replacer and pectin and water, beating, then adding the sugar and beating some more. Then I folded in the almond powder/icing sugar mix that I had sifted. I tried piping them onto a baking sheet (and they ended up running a bit, but oh wells). They rose nicely in the oven. I let them cool a bit before filling them with a rose-flavored, vegan pastry cream/custard (soymilk, sugar, cornstarch, rose water, and 2 drops of red food coloring).
My 2nd tray had sat too long in the mixing bowl and began to clump up... so they were very ugly, but still tasty (in a way, they were tastier, being crunchier).
My mom and I shared one on spot, which had more or less the texture you would expect for a macaron. But I had read somewhere that they were better after an overnight nap in the fridge, so I left the rest alone overnight. My mistake. They turned soft in the fridge and were not nearly as palatable. I stuck the rest back in the oven a bit and it helped, but next time, I'll fill them with ganache or something, and eat them right away.
Today, I wanted to give it another try, seeing how I doubt I'll have time to try again next week (it's getting near the time to go back to my university, where I only have a toaster oven for baking). I halved the recipe I used yesterday, and messed up greatly by forgetting to halve the water (even though I
did reduce it to about 100 mL)....... As can be expected, they were nowhere near the desired result.
These were flat and runny, so much I didn't bother piping them onto the tray, just plopped the watery batter onto the tray with a spoon. I figured there was no point filling them, so we're having them as crunchy and airy cookies.
This is definitely something to try again. The recipe is definitely on the right path. I just need to keep from getting distracted, and maybe tweak a thing here and there (and improve on my piping... the first tray was not full of uniform, round macaron shells as I imagined in my head).
