Ihave to admit, even before our current pandemic hit, I have always been a little over the top crazy about food storage and emergency preparedness. When COVID-19 first started to surface I began taking inventory of my basement bunker. I came across several #10 cans of freeze-dried raspberries that needed to be rotated. Fresh raspberries are a favorite at my house, but what could I do with freeze-dried raspberries. If you know me or follow my blog at all you probably know that my kitchen tends to revolve around french macarons. So, it should come as no surprise that my mind instantly went to infusing the fresh tart flavor of raspberry into these magical almond cookies.
These cookies are SO incredible that I can’t figure out why it took rotating food storage to come up with the idea!!! The flavor tastes exactly like fresh raspberry. Anyone who makes macarons knows that the recipe is delicate and that additional moisture can “break” the meringue. For this reason, pastry chefs often add artificial flavors or flavor pastes to macarons. Artificial flavorings albeit functional cannot deliver fresh flavor. Freeze-dried fruit powder, however, satisfies both the palate and the delicate moisture balance in meringue.
To make the raspberry powder simply put freeze-dried raspberries into a food processor and pulverize. Dehydrated fruit is not the same and simply does not preserve fresh flavor the way freeze-drying does. Next, sift the powder through a fine-mesh sieve to remove all of the seeds, ensuring a smooth macaron skin. Now, when it comes to incorporating fresh fruit into an already finicky macaron this is usually done in the filling or layered between the two shells. Due to the current quarantine, I decided not to brave the grocery store and make my normal raspberry buttercream with the same freeze-dried powder rather than fresh berries. The flavor was so much better that I may never go back. How can freeze-dried taste better than fresh? It is the concentration of flavor it allows the recipe to hold without adding additional moisture. This filling is so fresh and tangy, I am not going to lie, I was eating it by the spoonful.
I have to say that these perfect little cookies are my silver lining to a very stressful quarantine. They have honestly made me rethink my whole food storage. Maybe storing almond flour, dehydrated egg whites and some freeze-dried berries is all I need. I always imagined Marie Antoinette as arrogant and out of touch with the French people when she proclaimed “let them eat cake”… truth is maybe she understood food storage better than all of us!
Ingredients:
205 grams confectioners sugar
190 grams fine Almond flour
pinch of salt
6 grams freeze-dried raspberry powder
144 grams egg whites
190 grams granulated sugar
60 grams water
For Raspberry Buttercream Recipe…Click Here
Instructions:
- In the food processor prepare dry ingredients. Mix almond flour, confectioners sugar, freeze-dried raspberry powder, and salt.
- In a mixer, beat on high 60g egg whites to soft peaks.
- Add 35g sugar to egg whites mix on high.
- In a saucepan over medium-high heat bring water and 150g sugar to a boil until it reaches 230 F.
- Slowly drizzle down the side of the egg whites mixer bowl. Beat on high until the mixture is cooled.
- Mix 60g egg whites and the dry ingredients mixture.
- Add 4g vanilla extract or other flavorings.
- Fold mixture into the cooled meringue.
- Fill a large pastry bag fitted with Wilton 1A tip or equivalent.
- Pipe macarons onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Pound baking sheet on counter to release air, repeat about 5 times.
- Let macarons sit on the baking sheet for 30 minutes or until a skin forms.
- Bake at 315 for 15-20 minutes rotating halfway through
- let sit until the cookies cool and release from parchment.
- Fill with buttercream, ganache, or fruit filling.
- Let sit 24 hours before serving.
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