Pumpkin Season

After a hot summer, I always welcome the cooler, fresher air of Autumn.  These Roasted Pumpkin Macarons get me in the Thanksgiving mood.  After hand-piping thousands of macarons, I still love making this classic confection, but I must admit that I'm not the hugest fan of eating them.  I grew up on American style cookies, both homemade and of the boxed variety, so my palate craves a more intense crunch and chew than a tender, delicate macaron can offer.

That being said, I do love these macarons.  Filled with a fall-spiced pumpkin ganache with lightly bruleed cheeks, their cinnamon-y warmth makes them the perfect pairing for a hot apple cider.  When making your next batch of macarons, try kissing the surface with the flame of a blowtorch for an added roasty-smokey flavor that also cuts their inherent sweetness.  Just be sure to space them out on a non flammable surface beforehand, like a marble or stainless table.  As you can see from the photo below, I tried to get away with torching them on the paper lined sheet tray.  Needless to say, I learned my lesson.

Purveyor of Cute

Perhaps I spent a few too many of my formative years inside a 

Sanrio

shop, but small things made to mimic bigger things really tug on my cute strings.  These pumpkin puffs are my latest crush.

I fully disclose I didn't come up with this idea myself, but I will go as far as to say that I definitely made it better.  A small shop in Brooklyn specializing in choux puffs offers multiple flavors of their two-bite treats.  On a recent trip, I spied a pumpkin spiced puff in the form of a baby pumpkin.  "What a great idea!", I thought.  Only issue I had was the actual pastry was dense with little cream inside, overbaked, had no flavor, and was topped with a green marzipan round that I just didn't want to eat.  A tiny sliver of pecan inserted into the marzipan served as the stem.

I set out to make my own version to lure guests to our tasting table at the

NY Mag Taste

event.  Pate a choux (done right) expands into tender, globes of pastry, self-hollowing to accommodate lots of filling.  Of course, color was an integral part of making them actually look like pumpkins, so a dose of powdered orange food coloring gets worked into the batter without adding any excess moisture.  Our puffs are normally piped with a plain round tip; but knowing I wanted to replicate the striations of a pumpkin, star tip was the way to go. 

As they bake in the oven, the outer angles of the choux get hit with the heat first and set their shape, while the inner valleys blow outward, thus creating their signature pumpkin ridges. 

Once baked, they remind me of

Chinese lantern plants

.

Filled with pumpkin spice cremeux and topped with rum infused green glaze, they exlode "Thanksgiving pie" in the mouth!  But a pumpkin is not complete without its hand-piped Dulcey chocolate stem.

At the event, our pumpkins looked pretty fetching against a logo-ed backdrop of checkerboard coasters with a banner of holiday pastry porn hanging above.  Dripping candelabras added to the fall-festive mood.

Halloween Kitch

I can't say I'm much into Halloween anymore.  Probably because I've had to work on this "holiday" for at least the last 8 years of my life.  Although I do enjoy seeing everyone else having fun in their clever homemade costumes, and of course, all that mini candy.  

Now that October is upon us, we are getting the party started with these adorable Jack O'Lantern macarons.  About two and half times larger than our everyday varieties, these little guys get a spray-stenciled face and green taffy stems.  Each happy pumpkin is nestled in its own bed of raffia, and takes pride of place next to our entremets.  

Sitting happily together, it looks like a macaron pumpkin patch!