Tart, Pie or Custard?

 I was meeting some good friends for dinner on the grill and offered to bring a dessert. Other than having been raised to never show up empty handed, I wanted to knock out another cookbook from The Challenge.  I have a plethora of cookbooks from the Hermes House Publishing and I have slowly discovered that some of the recipes can be repeated from book to book depending on the theme. Looking into the Desserts cookbook, I decided on a recipe that made me think of macarons.

I love macarons. I am not talking about macaroons, which are the coconut and egg white things that are chewy and for the most part forgettable.  I am talking about french macarons, which are a delicate meringue almond sandwich cookies that are often filled with hopes and dreams, or possibly a jelly or ganache.  The Almond Custard that I found looked like it had all the ingredients that belonged in a macaron recipe.  I have made macarons a couple of times, and the reason that they are crafted from angel tears, is because it takes the patience of a saint to make them.  There is a lot of precision and timing involved in making macaron cookies. The Almond Custard looked a lot simpler to make, and if it tasted like a macaron with half the work, it would certainly be something that I would try again.

Following the instructions exact produced a dense tart-like pie thing. It would win no awards in the beauty department in the way that desserts would go, but it did taste good.  It is more of a custard than I would have expected given the amount of ground almonds that is in it. It is not a replacement for a macaron, but it was not bad.  My preconceived notion that this would taste  like a macaroon ruined some of my appreciation for this tart like pie custard.  I think that if you were looking to make something a little less fruity as a dessert and a bit rich, I would recommend this recipe.  The fruit is understated, because you only use about two tablespoons of what ever jelly you like and it adds a delightful texture to the custard.

Lesson has been learned. Just because the ingredients are mostly the same, it does not mean that the out come is going to be the same.   To me this was a lesson in being judgmental and I am going to try and have a more open mind in the future with recipes and I should probably me more open minded in general.