Chocolate and Peanut Butter & Fluff Macarons

chocolate and Peanut Butter & Fluff Macarons

Recipe adapted from Tasty

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups powdered sugar

1 cup almond flour, finely ground

1 teaspoon salt, divided

3 egg whites at room temp

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tbsp baking cocoa powder

For the filling:

1 jar of marshmallow fluff OR 1 ½ cups of large marshmallows and 1 ½ tbsp of light corn syrup

1 cup peanut butter

Directions:

In a food processor, combine powdered sugar, almond flour, cocoa powder, and ½ tsp of salt. Process until mixed and extra fine. Sift the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl. In another mixing bowl, beat the egg whites and the remaining ½ tsp of salt with a mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually, add the granulated sugar while beating. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form. You’ll know it’s ready when you can hold the bowl over your head and the mixture doesn’t fall on you. I suggest testing it with the mixing whisk and looking for a nice tall peak that doesn’t fall over when you take the beater out before the over-the-head test. Add the vanilla and beat until incorporated.

Add about ⅓ of the sifted almond flour mixture at a time to the beaten egg whites. Use a spatula to gently fold until combined. After the last bit of almond flour is added, continue to fold until you can lift the spatula and use it to make a figure 8 without it breaking. Try not to overmix.

Transfer the batter into a piping bag with a round tip, or a disposable piping bag and cut a quarter-inch hole in the tip. If using a silicone mat, skip the next step. If using parchment paper, put a small dot of batter in each corner of the baking sheet before putting the parchment paper down, this will hold the parchment paper down during baking. Pipe the macarons onto the paper/mat, taking care to make them as even in size as possible. They should be about 1 ½ inch circles spaced about 1 inch apart. Optional: you can add sprinkles to the tops of your macarons at this time. Tap the baking sheet on the counter 5 times (just a tap, you don’t want to completely flatten your macarons) to get out the air bubbles.

Let your macarons sit on the counter at room temp for about 30 minutes to an hour until they form a dry skin over the top. Preheat the oven to 300℉. Bake macarons for 17 minutes until the feet are well risen and they don’t stick to the parchment paper. Note: if using a silicon mat, macarons might stick to the mat until they are fully cooled and may need to bake another minute or two longer to cook in the middle.

While macarons cool, make your filling. If you choose not to buy marshmallow fluff, you can easily make it at home. Combine marshmallows and corn syrup in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until marshmallows are fully melted. Stir to combine.

I like to work in small batches with the fluff as it is easier to pipe when it is warm. Warm marshmallow fluff and spoon it into a piping bag. Pipe a generous layer onto one side of the macaron. Do all the macarons at once before moving onto the peanut butter. Fill another piping bag with peanut butter (peanut butter does not need to be warm) and pipe a smaller amount than the fluff on top of the fluff. Top with another macaron. Enjoy!

Perfect Pairing: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Chocolate and Peanut Butter & Fluff Macarons

Hello friends!

I hope everyone enjoyed reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s never too late to read a good book!

I loved this book. In fact, I think it has earned a spot on my bookshelf next to my all-time favorites. For those just getting introduced to Addie LaRue, let me just give you a little info on the novel. This book is about a young woman in the early 1700s in a small town in France who makes a deal with one of the gods that answers after dark. As a result, she gets immortality, but she is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. The book starts in the 1700s but switches back and forth with 2014 in New York City, where Addie is currently and where after 300 years, she meets a young man in a bookshop who finally remembers her.

Of course, no spoilers here, so you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens. But on to our pairing!

I loved this book so much, it needed something equally as amazing to pair with it. Now, there are quite a few foods mentioned in the book, even some that are super fancy like foie gras, but I really wanted something that represented that 300-year journey of Addie throughout the book. I finally settled on something that I think is pretty cool.

A cool piece of this book is how it gives you little snippets of history as you read through the book, so I’m going to give you just a little run down on a bit of food history for a sec. I swear it’s important to the pairing.

I give you a condensed history of the Macaron: yes those delicious little meringue cookies with various fillings. The first written recipe appeared in France in the 17th century, the same century our dear Addie was born. They became popular in France during the French revolution by two nuns who baked and sold the delicious cookies to survive through the time. Macarons gained popularity in the United States in the 2010s, matching up perfectly with Addie LaRue in 2014.

Addie’s journey and the journey of the Macaron are pretty similar. Kind of cool right? So the Perfect Pairing for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is, as you probably guessed, Macarons, but I couldn’t just pick any flavors to go with this book! I wanted the flavors to represent the journey just as much as the macaron itself.

We learn in the book that Addie loves chocolate, so I decided a chocolate cookie was the way to go, but I didn’t want just any old buttercream or ganache for the filling. No, I had the cookie that represented the France part of the story, so I wanted a filling that represented the American part. And what is more American than a fluffernutter? I’ve done some research on this, and the fluffernutter is pretty uniquely American. Even regionally to the northeast. What is a fluffernutter for my non-northeastern friends? A fluffernutter is a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, and it’s delicious.

And so, officially, the Perfect Pairing for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab is Chocolate and Peanut Butter and Fluff Macarons. We taste-tested these several times, and I can assure you, they’re just as amazing as the book. 100% a Perfect Pairing.

Now, making Macarons can be tricky, and I’ll be honest, the first time I set out to make Macarons, it took me several tries before I had an edible batch. So don’t worry if you don’t get it right on the first try. Also, mine never turn out perfectly and they still taste good, so don’t worry too much if they aren’t magazine-worthy. If they taste good, they are good!

First things first, I gathered all my ingredients:

1 ¾ cups powdered sugar

1 cup almond flour, finely ground

1 teaspoon salt, divided

3 egg whites at room temp

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tbsp baking cocoa powder

I also got what I needed for the filling:

1 jar of marshmallow fluff OR 1 ½ cups of large marshmallows and 1 ½ tbsp of light corn syrup

1 cup peanut butter

The thing about the marshmallow fluff is that if you forget to buy it or just don’t want to buy an entire tub of fluff, it is super easy to make your own fluff. All you need are some marshmallows and light corn syrup. Warm up in the microwave and stir. Bam. Fluff.

The first step in making these Macarons was to make sure all of my ingredients were ground super fine. You don’t want any lumps or large pieces in your dry ingredients because the more fine the ingredients, the smoother your cookie. I took my powdered sugar, almond flour (which was already finely ground), cocoa powder, and ½ tsp of salt and put them in my food processor. I ran it until everything was mixed well and I could see everything finely ground. Then I took everything from the food processor and put it through a sieve and into a large bowl, tossing out the clumps that were left behind in the sieve.

After that, I went to my mixer. I used a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but you can also use a hand mixer for this step. I put my three room temperature egg whites and the rest of my salt in my mixing bowl and beat on a high setting until soft peaks form. You can tell it is a soft peak when you take out your whisk and a little peak forms but kind of falls over.

After you have soft peaks, I turned back on the mixer and gradually added in my sugar. You have to add the sugar in gradually instead of all at once because if you just dump it all in there, it will take all the air out of your mixture, leaving you with a flat mess that won’t rise. Once I added in my sugar, I kept beating until stiff peaks form. Stiff peaks are a lot like soft peaks but when you take out your whisk, they stand straight up. You can also test your stiff peaks by holding your mixing bowl over your head. If it doesn’t fall out and cover you in a white mess, congrats, you have stiff peaks.

I added the vanilla and gave it just a quick beat until it was incorporated. Then came time to mix in my sifted dry ingredients. I added 1/3rd of the dry ingredients to my beaten egg whites and folded them in. You only do a third of the dry ingredients at a time because just like the sugar, adding everything at once will knock all the air out of the eggs and you’ll end up with flat hockey pucks. I folded the dry ingredients in and then added another third of the dry mixture and repeated the process. After adding the last of my dry ingredients, I very carefully continued folding the mixture until it was all incorporated. A good trick to tell if your batter is mixed enough is to take your spatula out of the mix and try to draw a figure 8 with the batter as it falls off. If you can make a figure 8 in one single go, it’s mixed enough. Try not to overmix, because overmixing can lead to pancake cookies, instead of risen Macarons.

Once I got it all properly mixed, it was time to pipe my Macarons. I just used a disposable piping bag and cut a hole for a tip, but you can also use a reusable piping bag with a round tip or you can make a piping bag out of parchment paper. Here’s a tutorial if you want to make one out of parchment paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnczzbPnzYo

Now, I used a silicone mat to make my macarons. It has circles on it to measure out the macarons for me so that they’re all the same size. It is absolutely not necessary to use a silicon mat, and honestly, sometimes using silicon mats can be tricky because you sometimes have to adjust the cooking time. If you don't, they can still be wet in the middle. If you decide not to use a silicon mat, simple parchment paper will work perfectly. Go ahead and pipe a tiny bit of Macaron batter onto your baking sheet in each of the four corners and then lay your parchment paper on top of it. The batter will keep your parchment paper in place. Then pipe your Macarons. Try to make them all the same size, about 1 ½ in circles spaced about 1 inch apart. I added sprinkles just after piping. This is completely optional, but if you want to add some kind of little topping like sprinkles, now is the time to do it.

Once I got my cookies piped, I gave the baking sheet 5 gentle taps on the counter. This is to get out any big air bubbles. But you don’t want to wack it super hard or do it too many times because you don’t want to knock out all the air in your Macarons, just the big bubbles.

After I got my Macarons all ready, I had to let them dry. Drying is an important step. They need to dry for 30-60 minutes and you want to make sure that they form a nice skin on the tops. I let mine dry for about 35 minutes before they went into a 300℉ oven for 18 minutes. If you use parchment paper, the cooking time is 17 minutes. You want the Macarons to have well-risen feet (the bottom section of the cookie that isn’t smooth) and not to stick to the mat/paper. Again, if working with a silicon mat, sometimes you have to cook them a little longer and then let them cool a couple minutes before they will come cleanly off the mat. For beginners, I highly recommend parchment paper.

When your cookies are all cooled, it’s time to fill them! I tried different proportions of the peanut butter and fluff and found that too much peanut butter can really overpower the flavors of everything else. So what I suggest is a 2:1 ratio of fluff to peanut butter. I put a very large helping of fluff on and only about half the amount of peanut butter.

I used piping bags to pipe both the peanut butter and the fluff onto my Macarons. I suggest pairing up your cookies beforehand, finding cookies that best match each other. I also suggest working in small batches with your fluff and warming it up before putting it in your piping bag. It can kind of be a pain to pipe when it is room temperature, but when it’s warm, it is more pliable and pipes easier. I piped one side with fluff and the other side with peanut butter and then put them together for a delicious treat!

I have to tell you, I made these Macarons a few times trying to get the recipe just right, and every time, especially the last time, they disappeared extremely quickly. If you’ve already read Addie LaRue and want something delicious to remind you of the book, if you’re just diving in and need something yummy while you read, or a book club meeting and it’s your turn to host, I highly suggest The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue with a side of Chocolate Peanut Butter and Fluff Macarons, or as they are now called in our house, Addie LaRue Macarons!

Enjoy! Because no one should read on an empty stomach!

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Fluff Macarons

Recipe adapted from Tasty

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups powdered sugar

1 cup almond flour, finely ground

1 teaspoon salt, divided

3 egg whites at room temp

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tbsp baking cocoa powder

For the filling:

1 jar of marshmallow fluff OR 1 ½ cups of large marshmallows and 1 ½ tbsp of light corn syrup

1 cup peanut butter

Directions:

In a food processor, combine powdered sugar, almond flour, cocoa powder, and ½ tsp of salt. Process until mixed and extra fine. Sift the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl. In another mixing bowl, beat the egg whites and the remaining ½ tsp of salt with a mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually, add the granulated sugar while beating. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form. You’ll know it’s ready when you can hold the bowl over your head and the mixture doesn’t fall on you. I suggest testing it with the mixing whisk and looking for a nice tall peak that doesn’t fall over when you take the beater out before the over-the-head test. Add the vanilla and beat until incorporated.

Add about ⅓ of the sifted almond flour mixture at a time to the beaten egg whites. Use a spatula to gently fold until combined. After the last bit of almond flour is added, continue to fold until you can lift the spatula and use it to make a figure 8 without it breaking. Try not to overmix.

Transfer the batter into a piping bag with a round tip, or a disposable piping bag and cut a quarter-inch hole in the tip. If using a silicone mat, skip the next step. If using parchment paper, put a small dot of batter in each corner of the baking sheet before putting the parchment paper down, this will hold the parchment paper down during baking. Pipe the macarons onto the paper/mat, taking care to make them as even in size as possible. They should be about 1 ½ inch circles spaced about 1 inch apart. Optional: you can add sprinkles to the tops of your macarons at this time. Tap the baking sheet on the counter 5 times (just a tap, you don’t want to completely flatten your macarons) to get out the air bubbles.

Let your macarons sit on the counter at room temp for about 30 minutes to an hour until they form a dry skin over the top. Preheat the oven to 300℉. Bake macarons for 17 minutes until the feet are well risen and they don’t stick to the parchment paper. Note: if using a silicon mat, macarons might stick to the mat until they are fully cooled and may need to bake another minute or two longer to cook in the middle.

While macarons cool, make your filling. If you choose not to buy marshmallow fluff, you can easily make it at home. Combine marshmallows and corn syrup in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until marshmallows are fully melted. Stir to combine.

I like to work in small batches with the fluff as it is easier to pipe when it is warm. Warm marshmallow fluff and spoon it into a piping bag. Pipe a generous layer onto one side of the macaron. Do all the macarons at once before moving onto the peanut butter. Fill another piping bag with peanut butter (peanut butter does not need to be warm) and pipe a smaller amount than the fluff on top of the fluff. Top with another macaron. Enjoy!

Never pray to the gods that answer after dark: Review of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Let me start by saying this book was a MASTERPIECE! I absolutely loved it. It’s on the longer side and took a little bit more time to get through, but this one is seriously going on my bookshelf next to my all-time favorites. If you haven’t read it yet, run, don’t walk, to pick yourself up a copy. Preferably at a small, local bookstore.

Three of the things that make this book head and shoulders above other fiction novels are the premise, the characterization, and the writing. First of all, the premise is unlike any other book I’ve read before. A young woman makes a deal with a devil? A god? Debatable. Anyway, and finds herself immortal but unable to be remembered by anyone. The book starts in a small town in France in 1698 and goes through time as Addie does to New York City in 2014. It goes back and forth throughout the book, but it isn’t confusing as it does, which is nice. This whole new premise is what piqued my interest in the book in the first place and I have to say, it did not disappoint.

The second thing about this book is the characters. The characters in this book are so well developed. I find that in a lot of books I read, I’ll find flaws in the characterization where the author is having a character do something or say something or prefer something that just doesn’t make sense with the characterization they have been building. I have to tell you, that is not the case with this book. These characters are so beautifully crafted, I was honestly a bit blown away.

The last piece of this book that was just astounding was the writing. Not only does this book have historical context in it, as Addie goes throughout 300 years of history being forgotten, but the way V.E. Schwab can make everything flow while also making you feel like you are there seeing and experiencing everything is amazing. I also had SO. MANY. FEELINGS. while reading this book. I mean, the writing was just spot on.

I also made a little observation, and perhaps this is just the nerd in me, but one of my all-time favorite movies is Labyrinth was David Bowie. V.E. Schwab actually references the movie in the book and I saw so many parallels between the Goblin King and Luc, the dark god, and Addie and Sarah. I wonder if it was a bit of an inspiration to V.E. Schwab, and I am here for it. Did anyone else catch this?

I made so many predictions while reading this book about what I thought was going to happen next, how I thought things would play out, how I thought it would end. It never went how I thought it would, but I liked how it did go so much more than how I guessed it would. Simply, this was a wonderful story.

Overall, I’m wondering if any other book I read in 2021, will take my heart as much as this one has. It will be quite a task. What did everyone else think of our February 2021 Book of the Month?