Fluff

When I tell you that nothing else has been on my mind but my frustration with and resentment towards my recent writings, it is not true, but only a slight exaggeration. I have also been thinking about meringue. And colors!

To write about meringue seems insane. It has been the pillow of my life's sleep, a texture more familiar to me than most others. The tradition of the family meringue was, for years, one of the only measures I had for time and season. Winter smells like burning wood, feels like long-john silk, bright white mornings, and it tastes like the family meringue. The strange fluffy tear drop cookie with one very surprising ingredient specific to my family's recipe. The lecture on humidity, and the tearing of brown-paper bags. I rolled my eyes at my father and his insistent jubilance, but I would marvel at the sloppy batter, this thick wet snow just as sweet as I could bear, and sometimes more than I could. I would elbow my sister to throw the chocolate chips, and to lick the bowl. I have never, ever made these cookies on my own. I have a recipe for my grandmother's cookies which I've made on occasion and which I adore, but these cookies, my father's family meringue has been spellbound for years. Left to the family's resident Expert.

But meringue is a world, fluffly, and thick, and sweet. I am not a flitty character, but this.. this thing.. meringue, is, really, magical. A blend of egg whites and sugar frenzied into a mousey, tar-like sapcloud. The Italians, actually, do it best by first making a syrup to add to whipped whites, giving a firmness the French technique can't promise.

But what the French have done with meringue? Glorious. Decadent. Did you expect elsewise? There is a liberty to food coloring I'd never had the guts nor the opportunity to embrace and if there ever was an opportunity to embrace it, it is with meringue, in the macaron. Let it rest to say, like everything, everything else, it is a wonderful tool! The beauty of the macaron is in it's versatility. The rules are simple, and if followed will not disappoint in providing a vast and sweet canvas for creative feasting of both eye and mouth. Crunch and goo! As with the souffle, and with, I think all baking, the science and precision of consistency and texture, and temperature and timing holds the world in its orbit and allows it to spin and spin and evolve and be beautiful over and over again. Oh, what fun!

We made a dark chocolate ganache with orange zest, a butter cream with coffee extract, pineapple
compote with rum, and a vanilla bean pastry cream on macarons of both Italian and French meringue styles in red, blue, purple, green, and yellow. Can you guess my favorite?

At least now I've got something to share with my family.


*check the gallery for more photos!