Marissa inspires me to try all sorts of baking adventures I never would have embarked upon by myself. This time, a quick AllRecipes.com search for something tasty made from both cocoa and hazelnuts resulted in the splendor of the haselnussmakronen.
As we reviewed the recipe, I noted that it sounded an awful lot like a hazelnut version of the traditional almond macaron, a treat I've meant to try baking ever since enjoying my first bite at Pix on my birthday. Upon closer inspection of the name of the cookie, we realized that haselnuss means hazelnut, which would allow us to incorporate the native Oregon filbert; makron means macaron, which would let me try my hand at a new delicacy, and en means plural, which ensured us that there would be plenty cookies to go around.
After much hemming and hawing over exactly how to execute each step of the recipe (meringue can be scary, you know), our resulting dessert was a great success.
Next stop: vanilla custard. (Gotta do something with those egg yolks, after all.)
