Edit: Updates #1
First off: These are very much a work in progress. If I make any adjustments that help, I'll post updates on my blog. I might play around with the sugar-to-almond-to-liquid ratio and the temperature of baking as well as the baking conditions. The taste is spot on, the texture is 7 out of 10 (less "chewy" inside). The look is probably 7 out of 10 as well (The feet aren't as pretty and the tops aren't perfectly smooth). I may yet play with adapting other macaron recipes instead of the one I used as a base.
First off: These are very much a work in progress. If I make any adjustments that help, I'll post updates on my blog. I might play around with the sugar-to-almond-to-liquid ratio and the temperature of baking as well as the baking conditions. The taste is spot on, the texture is 7 out of 10 (less "chewy" inside). The look is probably 7 out of 10 as well (The feet aren't as pretty and the tops aren't perfectly smooth). I may yet play with adapting other macaron recipes instead of the one I used as a base.
I've been trying to think of what to bring to the next vegan bake sale. I made some egg-free marzipan but there's tons of that stuff floating around. I decided to be a bit more ambitous: Vegan French Macarons! Now there has been some work on this before. But I wanted to avoid using egg replacer as I've heard the taste isn't great and sadly that last beautiful link is recipe-less. Sigh. I was going to have to do it on my own!
I did some research on vegan meringue and I noticed one common theme was the use of a modified soy protein called versawhip 600 K (the 500 version isn't vegan). Its really popular amongst enthusiasts of molecular gastronomy for making foams. Pretty cool stuff!
Note, if you stop before mixing the versawhip+syrup mixture into the almond/sugar mixture you basically have a really cool vegan marshmallow fluff. Seriously! You might consider making high hat cupcakes with it! Or fluffernutter sandwiches! Or, as my friend jk suggested, mixing it into homemade vegan chocolate ice cream adding a coconut milk caramel swirl and chocolate chips and you now have vegan phish food!! Now these haven't been tested by me, but they're just ideas that I'm putting out there.
I played around with adapting the macaron recipe from the LA Times. My reasoning was as following: egg white are made up of mostly water and a bit of protein so I wanted to maintain that ratio. I replaced the water from the egg with plain old water (though a flavored liquid should(?) work too) and the protein came from the versawhip -- though I added less because versawhip is much better whipping agent than the protein in egg whites. From there it was pretty simple.
I would normally add vanilla to these babies, but there's some talk that versawhip + alcohol don't play well. It might be worth folding into the batter along with the egg whites though.
I suspect with a more skillful hand -- by which I mean better piping skills - someone could really make some awesome macarons with this recipe. Plus, it's much simpler than any of the others I've seen out there!
Makes about 20 filled macarons or 40 tops. Since there are no eggs involved, this recipe is easily scalable to any amount you like! They'll keep for a few days in an airtight container but they are quite delicate.. they didn't take very kindly to being transported in my bike basket but then again I didn't take too many precautions.
76 g water (about 1/3 cup)
6 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup + 4 tsp almond meal
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon versawhip 600K
1. Preheat oven to 350F and take out too cookie sheets and nest them inside each other. Line the top one with parchment paper.
2. Mix the almond meal and the powdered sugar. Grind the mixture VERY finely. A coffee grinder/spice grinder is the best option as I found the food processor just didn't do a good enough job. Also, sifting once or twice won't hurt either.
3. In a saucepan, mix the water and sugar and combine over low heat just until all the sugar is dissolved. Should take a minute or two max.
4. In a stand mixer mix the dissolved syrup from the saucepan (sugar + water) and the versawhip.
5. Keep mixing until STIFF peaks form - this may take quite a long time.. upwords of 10 to 15 minutes just be patient!.
6. When the mixture begins to climb up the bowl and hold stiff peaks, cut the mixing. At this point you basically have your marshmallow fluff. Pretty cool!
7. Add half the fluff to the ground almond/powdered sugar mixture. Fold into mixture. Again, it won't look promising and be very stiff and hard to fold on. Have faith and carry on.
8. Add the remaining fluff and fold just until combined. Once combined, fold 2 times more and that's it. You want to just barely "lighten" the mixture.
9. Place the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a half inch tip (or cut the end off a ziploc bag)
10. Pipe onto parchment in nice, uniform rounds about an inch or so in diameter. The batter should be quite stiff, so you might want to smooth out the tops of the macarons with the back of a spoon so they aren't so "peak-y". Allowing the piped tops to hang out for a few minutes may also solve this problem in a more natural way. You can also try banging the baking sheets against a counter to help them settle.
11. Bake for 4 minutes, then quickly open the door to let out some steam. Bake for another 4 minutes and check. You'll probably assume disaster when you see that the guts of your macaron have spilled out into a strange mess, but do not despair. Bake for another 2 min or so and then pull from the oven when tops are nice and firm). You do not want to "brown" the bottom of the macaron.
12. Allow to cool. Once cool, you should be able to pull off the "whole" macaron and leave behind the leftover "guts". The bottoms should remain in tact.
1. Preheat oven to 350F and take out too cookie sheets and nest them inside each other. Line the top one with parchment paper.
2. Mix the almond meal and the powdered sugar. Grind the mixture VERY finely. A coffee grinder/spice grinder is the best option as I found the food processor just didn't do a good enough job. Also, sifting once or twice won't hurt either.
3. In a saucepan, mix the water and sugar and combine over low heat just until all the sugar is dissolved. Should take a minute or two max.
4. In a stand mixer mix the dissolved syrup from the saucepan (sugar + water) and the versawhip.
5. Keep mixing until STIFF peaks form - this may take quite a long time.. upwords of 10 to 15 minutes just be patient!.
6. When the mixture begins to climb up the bowl and hold stiff peaks, cut the mixing. At this point you basically have your marshmallow fluff. Pretty cool!
7. Add half the fluff to the ground almond/powdered sugar mixture. Fold into mixture. Again, it won't look promising and be very stiff and hard to fold on. Have faith and carry on.
8. Add the remaining fluff and fold just until combined. Once combined, fold 2 times more and that's it. You want to just barely "lighten" the mixture.
9. Place the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a half inch tip (or cut the end off a ziploc bag)
10. Pipe onto parchment in nice, uniform rounds about an inch or so in diameter. The batter should be quite stiff, so you might want to smooth out the tops of the macarons with the back of a spoon so they aren't so "peak-y". Allowing the piped tops to hang out for a few minutes may also solve this problem in a more natural way. You can also try banging the baking sheets against a counter to help them settle.
11. Bake for 4 minutes, then quickly open the door to let out some steam. Bake for another 4 minutes and check. You'll probably assume disaster when you see that the guts of your macaron have spilled out into a strange mess, but do not despair. Bake for another 2 min or so and then pull from the oven when tops are nice and firm). You do not want to "brown" the bottom of the macaron.
12. Allow to cool. Once cool, you should be able to pull off the "whole" macaron and leave behind the leftover "guts". The bottoms should remain in tact.
13. Fill with whatever you like, here I'm showing you them filled with Dulce de Leche. Again, I can't recommend Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World enough, I'm sure any of the "butter" cream recipes in that book would be lovely here!
12 comments:
Cute .. and looks yummy too .. keep it up ..
Wow. Well done! I too have been down the failed vegan macaron road and then decided to just wait until bittersweet published her recipe. If I can get my hands on some of this versawhip stuff, I will try it out. Will be following your updates closely...
Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks. A few more notes: All of my attempts have come out hollow. I thought maybe my pieces of almond were still too coarse so I tried sifting it, but still hollow. If you fill them, and let them sit they will get a slightly chewy interior and a crisp exterior so all is not lost.
ALSO: do not attempt on a humid day, all my attemps to recreate EXACTLY what I did failed on a humid, foggy day here in the Bay Area. When I made them on a hot, dry day it was perfect. (Though less fun to bake! who likes hot ovens on hot days?)
I'll probably pick up this project again towards the end of the month. Will have to think more about why they're always hollow...
thank you so much yse! yours is the only credible vegan macaron recipe i could find in hours, maybe days of searching. the one at vegweb is absurd! i think it's hilarious that everyone's still waiting for bittersweet's recipe. lot of responsibility for like a 20-year old. they're even writing about it in france!
i made my first 2 batches yesterday, both consummate macaron-rookie failures. one batch was too runny hitting the sheet, and the other batch turned out cracked and HOLLOW. now i feel i must fix this slight against the macaron gods.
the versawhip (http://www.lepicerie.com/catalog/product_702660_Versawhip_600K.html is cheaper, but you have to buy 1lb bags) is a stroke of genius. i am wondering if the plain soy protein isolate powder we have at trader joe's will work, too. i tried agar first, and it was a joke.
what i learned that may help:
1) sift the hell out of that almond meal. eliminate any grains of meal bigger than fine sand, and do so with extreme prejudice. coarse almond flour will sabotage you later.
2) yse was not kidding about the versawhip being beaten for 10-15 minutes! i let mine go for 12 minutes in my KA Pro 600, at 8 speed. the meringue was VERY sturdy. but apparently cracking is resultant of over mixing, so we have to keep trying til we get just the right mixture. i assume yse, you also beat your meringue at one of the highest speeds in your mixer?
3) the xanthan gum is not a bad idea to stabilize the meringue. in the egg-bearing recipes, they use a pinch of salt. i may try that, and also oetker's whip-it.
4) if your macarons are hollow, it's likely the baking sheets need to be double, triple, even quadruple-stacked. most recipes recommend doubling, and they are not even accounting for thinner home baker sheets, much less vegan egg replacers.
5) apparently the folding stage is fraught with peril: too vigorous mixing of wet and dry can result in flats and cracks. too lightly, we may get some bubbles all the tapping in the world can't help.
6) piping may also require a measured hand: my babies got more watery as i went.
7) alas, even the oven temps are contentious; i see recipes for 300 F, and 350 F, and lots of stops in between. i tried 330 F and 300F. more work in that area.
sorry this is so long, but we picked a tough cookie to make. at this point for me, it's as much about bragging rights as desire for the cookie. we're making one of the toughest cookies to get right, AND we're doing it under tough dietary and ethical restrictions.
Did you ever try this with regular soy protein isolate? It's so much cheaper than versawhip! I am about to order some versawhip, but if the soy protein isolate would work, I'd rather save the $$ as it sounds like some experimenting is going to be necessary here!
Hi Rosie, I did once try with regular soy protein isolate but w/o much success. But macarons are so fickle that I won't say for certain it would never work.
oh , i really have to try this!!
thanks!
please do, if you end up making any alterations/improvements let me know. I've been meaning to revisit this post but haven't gotten the chance yet.
what is the versawhip 600K? i live in gothenburg , sweden and havn't heard of it. do you think i can order it somwhere?
so, based on your recipe, yse, i developed a workable, imitable vegan mac recipe. you did a lot of the initial leg work, and i think the versawhip was YOUR innovation. thank you very much! here's my version:
http://veganfordracula.blogspot.com/2010/11/vegan-macarons-v-10.html
just an easy peasy thing to get that vanilla flavor inside your macarons:
make flavored powdered sugar by leaving a vanilla bean (even if its a hollow/ used one..) in the sugar pot for some days til weeks.
the same way like making flavored sugar.
...
: )
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