At Restaurant L’Espalier in Boston, Pastry Chef Jared Bacheller creates a small sweet treat that is wrapped and given to each guest as they leave. Recently, French Macarons inspired by the classic campfire treat ‘Smores’ have been the fair-well treat. At L’Espalier, they make their own marshmallows, and cold smoke the chocolate before making the ganache, but for the home cook, a purchased marshmallow freshly toasted at your grill or campfire will be ideal.
Since cold smokers are not in everyone’s kitchen, we’ve infused our cream with Lapsang Souchong tea before making the ganache. These wonderful macarons can be completely made in advance, but for the enjoyment of your guests, we strongly recommend that you have the macaron halves ready to fill and allow each guest the fun of toasting their marshmallows and building their cookies, just like with the classic smore. If time is of the essence, and you want to more completely relive those childhood memories, you can replace the smoked ganache with a square of chocolate, but the small amount of time needed to make the ganache will be time well spent when you taste the results.
Gourmet Smores
Ingredients
- 5 cups confectioners sugar divided
- 2 1/2 cups almond flour
- 1 tablespoon Lapsang Souchong leaves, finely ground
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 6 1/2 ounces egg whites by volume
- 3 tablespoons molasses
Smoked Ganache
- 14 ounces bittersweet chocolate chopped and measured by weight, not volume
- 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons Lapsang Souchong tea leaves
- 2 tablespoons bourbon
- pinch salt
Instructions
Make the macarons
- Sift almond flour, ground tea, cinnamon and 2-1/2 cups of the sugar together.
- Whip the egg whites with the remaining 2-1/2 cups of confectioner's sugar to stiff peaks.
- Drizzle in the molasses and continue to whip until fully incorporated.
- Transfer the stiff egg whites to a large bowl and fold in the dry ingredients 1/3 at a time. DO NOT OVERMIX. The batter should be slightly runny, but not too liquid.
- Use a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch tip to pipe out 2 inch mounds onto a baking pan prepared with parchment paper or a silpat.
- Gently smooth and shape the surface of each mound with your moistened finger or the back of a teaspoon dipped in cold water. Allow them to rest at room temperature until the tops are dry and a skin forms, around 2 hours.
- Bake at 325°F for 5 minutes, turn and bake further until they just begin to brown, another 5 to 8 minutes or so.
- Cool completely before removing from the paper or silpat. They may be stored in an airtight container up to 3 days or frozen for up to 3 weeks.
Make the Smoked Ganache
- At L’Espalier they cold smoke the chocolate for a couple of hours, but you will find the cream infused with Lapsang Souchong tea will give you wonderful results as well.
- Place the chopped chocolate and bourbon in a bowl and set aside.
- Bring the cream just to a boil in a small saucepan.
- Stir in the tea leaves and remove from the heat. Let sit until desired level of smokiness is achieved (around 20 minutes).
- Strain out the tea leaves, pressing to extract as much of the cream as possible, then return the infused cream to the saucepan.
- Bring it back up to just boiling and immediately turn it off. Pour the scalded, infused cream over the chocolate and bourbon in the bowl, stir in the pinch of salt and gently continue stirring until smooth.
- Set aside to cool to room temperature. This ganache may be stored covered and chilled for up to 5 days before using.
- When ready to use to fill the cookies, let warm to room temperature and pipe or spoon a small portion onto each macaron base before the warm toasted marshmallow is added. (Photos by Julian Landa).
- Pastry Chef Jared Bachelor at times is his own taste tester! Here we find him 'testing' a green tea and lemon verbena sorbet that he served as a palatte cleanser between courses. He served these little handmade cones standing up in a flower pot with cookie crumb "dirt" and fresh greens!
