French Classics Made Easy (55 page)

1 cup (100g) sliced blanched almonds

1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F with the oven rack in the middle position. Heavily butter two baking sheets.

2.
In a small saucepan, melt the 3 tablespoons butter and remove from the heat.

3.
In a small bowl, combine the sugar, egg whites, and vanilla and, without beating, mix together with a whisk. Stir in the flour with the whisk until smooth. Add the melted butter and stir with the whisk until smooth. Using a rubber/silicone spatula, fold in the sliced almonds.

4.
Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet. With the back of the spoon, spread each thinly to about 3 inches in diameter (you will see the baking sheet through the thin layer of batter), leaving 2 inches between each cookie.

5.
Bake until the edges are browned, 4 to 7 minutes.

6.
Using a long metal spatula and working quickly, remove the cookies from the sheet and invert them into a French bread (baguette) pan. (If you don’t have a French bread pan, you can lay them over a rolling pin.) If the cookies harden before you have a chance to remove them from the baking sheet, place the sheet back in the oven for 20 to 30 seconds to soften them.

7.
When cooled, remove the tuiles from the baguette pan or rolling pin. As soon as one batch is finished, bake the next.

8.
Serve the tuiles on a doilied platter in overlapping rows. If you are not serving the cookies for several hours, keep them dry in an airtight tin or jar, because humidity can render this thin, crunchy cookie limp, sticky, and chewy.

S
HAPING
T
UILES

You can make these cookies by cooling them on a rack and serving them flat, but part of their glory is their shape. Special
tuile
molds do exist, made up of four or five U-shaped sections, but I have found that French bread pans, especially the baguette size, do the job equally well. You can also form the
tuiles
on top of a rolling pin, or over the side of a wine bottle, but it is not as easy as turning them into the bread pans. If you like these cookies, it is worthwhile buying the bread pans solely for the purpose of forming them.

1.
Spread the cookie batter thinly to about 3 inches in diameter, leaving 2 inches between each cookie.

2.
Quickly remove the cookies with a long metal spatula.

3.
Invert the cookies into the baguette mold or lay over a rolling pin.

MADELEINES

Madeleines are little tea cakes that are good served with fruit or ice cream for dessert. They are classically made from a pound cake batter that is baked in small, shell-like molds appropriately named madeleine molds.

However, I deviate from classic madeleines by using the technique I use for making génoise rather than that for pound cake. As with génoise, folding the melted butter into the batter can be difficult, even for professionals, for the butter is heavy and rapidly collapses the batter. Softening the butter to the consistency of creamy mayonnaise, as I have instructed, makes this procedure easier and the results lighter and more delicate than the denser pound-cake variety.

MAKES 2 DOZEN

3 eggs

8 tablespoons (1 stick; 115g) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

½ cup plus 1 tablespoon (120g) sugar

Grated zest of 1 small lemon or orange or ¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ teaspoon baking powder

¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (120g) all-purpose flour

1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F with the oven rack in the middle position.

2.
Place the unbroken eggs in a large bowl filled with hot tap water.

3.
In a small saucepan, begin to melt the butter over low heat. When the pieces are about half melted, remove the pan from the heat and stir until completely melted; the butter should be the consistency of light cream. Set the saucepan aside. When you are ready to use the butter, it will have cooled further and should be the consistency of heavy cream or light mayonnaise.

4.
Brush two madeleine molds well with about 1½ tablespoons of the melted butter.

5.
Remove the eggs from the bowl, pour out the water, and dry the bowl. Crack the eggs into the bowl and beat with the sugar and zest (or vanilla) until they triple in volume, 5 to 8
minutes. The batter should be very thick. It will fall slowly from the beaters and stand on the surface.

6.
Mix the baking powder with the flour and sift it, one-third at a time, onto the batter, folding gently after each addition. Stop folding while a little of the flour is still visible.

7.
Gently fold one-third of the batter into the creamy butter. Pour this butter mixture back into the remaining batter and fold gently no more than 8 to 10 times. The batter will begin to fall and you may see streaks of butter. A completely smooth batter is not necessary.

8.
Spoon a heaping tablespoonful of the batter into each of the buttered molds, filling each three-quarters full. (If you have beaten and folded well, you may have a tablespoon of excess batter.)

9.
Bake the madeleines until golden brown, 13 to 14 minutes. Unmold immediately and cool them on a wire rack. If the cakes do not fall out when inverting the mold, give one end a firm tap on the countertop. Although madeleines are best eaten within hours of being baked, they can be stored in a cookie tin for 3 or 4 days, or frozen for up to a month.

BIARRITZ

After the almond tuiles (
page 252
), these are my favorite French cookies. Most versions are made using only almonds, but I use half almonds and half hazelnuts for a more unusual cookie. I also bake my cookies on a baking sheet that is only buttered, instead of buttered and floured, producing a slightly thinner cookie than the original. If your cookies are too fragile and break often while you are coating them with the chocolate, bake your next batch on a floured cookie sheet. The cookies can be frozen for several months.

MAKES 5 TO 6 DOZEN

⅓ cup (50g) blanched hazelnuts

⅓ cup (50g) whole blanched almonds

Butter, for baking sheets

½ cup minus 2 teaspoons (100g) sugar

7 tablespoons (100g) unsalted butter

¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 egg whites

¼ cup (40g) all-purpose flour

8 ounces (230g) semisweet chocolate

1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F with the oven rack in the middle position.

2.
Place the hazelnuts and almonds in a rimmed baking sheet and roast until the nuts are lightly browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Allow the nuts to cool, about 15 minutes.

3.
Increase the oven temperature to 450°F. Lightly butter two baking sheets.

4.
In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts and almonds with the sugar until a powder forms, about 45 seconds. Add the butter and blend until smooth, about 30 seconds. Add the vanilla and egg whites and blend until the batter is smooth, about 15 seconds. Turn the processor off and add the flour. Process quickly, on and off, to mix in the flour, about 5 seconds.

5.
Using a pastry bag fitted with a ¼-inch (#1) plain pastry tube, pipe out mounds about the size of a quarter, or drop scant teaspoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving 1 inch between the cookies.

6.
Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned. Remove the cookies with a long metal spatula to a rack to cool.

7.
Melt the chocolate (see “Melting Chocolate,”
page 294
). When smooth and cool to the touch, use a knife or small metal spatula to coat the flat side of each cookie with a thin layer of the chocolate. Place the cookies on a plate or pastry rack. Chill until the chocolate hardens. Serve cool or at room temperature.

B
AKING OR
C
OOKIE
S
HEETS

There are many different types of baking or cookie sheets available. There are coated and uncoated sheets, light metal and dark metal sheets, thick and thin metal sheets; and each will affect your baking differently to some degree.

Nonstick coatings are excellent in that they usually eliminate the steps you must normally take to prevent sticking. These coatings are easily damaged, however, and care must be taken not to cut on their surfaces. For recipes where cutting is necessary, an uncoated sheet is needed.

Light metal (mostly aluminum) sheets bake cooler than the dark ones, and in most cases are the ones I have used. If you are using a dark sheet, it will probably be necessary to reduce your oven temperature from between 50 to 75 degrees to prevent burning.

Most thin sheets buckle when they go into a hot oven, and although this normally doesn’t cause any major damage, it is always disconcerting when it happens. When buying a baking sheet, try to find one that is sturdy and not too flexible.