Pinched Orange Macaroons (photo MarthaStewart.com)
This morning while I was making breakfast I had the TV on to Martha Stewart. She had on as one of her guests the pastry chef from the Four Seasons, Patrick Lemble, and they made Pinched Orange Macaroons.
They are beautiful, aren’t they?
Small, light and almond!
I jumped onto the internet and raced over to look at the recipe. It calls for a pound of almond paste. How much does a can of Solo almond paste weigh?
To answer that question I pulled up the Solo website to see if they had an indication as to the weight of a can of their almond paste. Sadly, no.
So I pulled up the Solo recipe for almond macaroons to look at it alongside the Four Seasons recipe. The Solo recipe calls for 1-1/4 cups sugar and one can almond paste, Four Seasons calls for 1/2 cup confectioners sugar and one pound almond paste, both use whites of two eggs.
Now I like to take several different recipes and take a bit of this from one and a bit of that from the other, but the volumes here were too different for me to simply make the Solo recipe and toss in the almond extract and Grand Marnier from the Four Seasons recipe.
Are you like me in that you would rather eat broken glass than get involved in the hideous phone systems that protect most corporations from the public?
Yeah, well, I called anyway. I have a Jones for almond macaroons.
What a pleasure the call turned out to be!
The first woman I spoke to was able to tell me that the almond paste is 8 ounces but she wasn’t able to say whether that was volume or weight so she transferred me to someone in the recipe department.
The next nice woman was pretty sure it was by weight, but she wanted me to talk to Larry the chef to make sure.
What a great guy!
He said, yes, one can of Solo almond paste is 1/2 pound, so for the Four Seasons recipe I would need two cans. Great! But then I wondered whether the Four Seasons recipe as posted was accurate — I mean, TWICE as much almond paste? Larry said that it sounds right, the Four Seasons macaroons would simply be less sweet than their recipe. My heart be still!
Larry and I had a nice chat about their website. When I asked about the absence of photographs with their recipes, he told me they are working on that and will have photos up soon. I also told him about the recipe index being incomplete and he said he would run over and talk to the website people about getting that corrected. I mean, if the almond twist recipe is not in the index what else is not in the index that I should be making?
It was such a pleasure talking to the folks at Solo. They clearly take their mission seriously. Thank you Solo for making such fine products and allowing the public to speak directly to your kitchen!
And particular thanks to the three Solo staff people who were so helpful and generous with their time this morning.
Solo almond paste rules!
(See also “Almond Twists” and “Almond Twists Revisited“)
Somewhere Else Altogether 