Daring Bakers Challenge - French Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

This challenge was not a vegan friendly one. In fact, the hostess pretty much said, Vegans, I don’t know what to tell you. Unlike American macaroons, French macarons are basically meringue sandwich cookies. Now I did previously have success making egg replacer meringue, but that was folded into a cake batter. This time I would need to fold almond flour into the meringue and bake it. Instead of agonizing over forming a perfect replica in vegan form, I decided to just have fun with my vegan interpretation.

I made meringue and tinted it orange. These will be Halloween cookies.

It freaks me out to use too much food coloring, so my orange is rather pale.

Rather than grind a whole cup of expensive raw almonds into flour, I used 1/3 cup ground almonds, 1/3 cup ground peanuts, and 1/3 cup ground….

Banana chips!

I folded the flour mixture into the meringue and piped the batter onto baking sheets and baked as directed. I have never eaten macarons so I’m not sure these are the proper texture. I can tell you that I ended up calling them *pillows* because they were super fluffy and soft with a slightly crisp edge.

I made a chunky peanut butter filling. Before I show you my final product, this is what real macarons look like:

Photo from davidlebovitz.com

Knowing I could not create anything remotely equal to those gorgeous cookies, I grabbed a few chocolate chips and created these little monster treats.

They are gluten free, tasted good, and were fun to bake, and they're spooky, right? So I count this challenge as a success. Also, please see Hannah’s perfectly successful vegan macarons – amazing!