The Big Short and Fragile Almond Rochers

Sorry for the long absence, sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.  I have a lot of books to catch up on!  First up is Michael Lewis' The Big Short.    Most of what  I know about Wall Street  I learned from Michael Lewis.  I loved his first book Liar's Poker about the macho world of bond trading.  I was excited when he released a book about the latest financial crisis.  Lewis has an amazing ability to explain complicated financial instruments and systems, and in The Big Short, he also makes an examination of the sub-prime mortgage crisis read like a suspense novel.   Lewis tells the story of the financial crisis by focusing on a handful of people in the industry who saw the sub-prime mortgage debacle coming - and this foresight made them millions.  Lewis tells us enough about each of these characters so that we feel like we know them and care about what they have to say.   I learned a lot by reading the book, I think I now understand sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps,  CDOs, and shorting stocks.   And before the book I blamed Wall Street for the crisis, after the book that feeling is stronger, and I am genuinely shocked at the crooked and stupid game they played and angry that bonuses are back up on Wall Street yet our economy is still limping along trying to recover.  After the jump, the light and airy meringue cookies I made that were inspired by the fragile and hollow sub-prime mortgage CDOs that caused this whole mess.

As soon as I read the Big Short, I had the idea to make the almond rochers from the Tartine Cookbook.  It is a gorgeously photographed book, and the image for these cookies is a tall shaky tower of these incredible fragile and lightweight cookies.  I thought they perfectly captured the shaky situation created by bundling really bad sub-prime mortgages into securities and selling them.   My cookies did not come out looking exactly like the ones in the Tartine book - those had big cracks in them, just like our poor economy, but these were easy to make and delicious.  To be honest, they were a bit of a snooze, and if I make them again I would drizzle some chocolate on them to liven them up.

Almond Rochers

Adapted from Tartine Cookbook by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson

1 cup + 2 Tbs sliced almonds

2 large egg whites at room temperature

1 cup confectioners sugar

a pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions: Preheat over to 350 degrees.   Spread the almonds on an unlined baking sheet. Place in the oven and toast until golden brown, 7 to 10 minutes.  Let cool completely.  Then break up totally with your hands - if you are going to pipe these, you need the almond papers to be small so they don't get stuck.

Pour about 2 inches of water in a saucepan, and bring to a simmer.  Combine the egg whites, confectioners sugar, and salt in the stainless steel bowl of a stand mixer, place over the simmering water - make sure the bowl does not touch the water. Whisk together the ingredients then place over the saucepan and continue to whisk until the whites are hot to the touch, or 120 degrees.  This should take about 5 minutes.  Remove the bowl from the saucepan, put on the mixer stand, and mix on high speed, with the whisk attachment until the mixture is thick and glossy and holds stiff peaks.  Fold in the almonds and vanilla with a rubber spatula.

Quickly put the meringue batter into a pastry bag fitted with a large round plain tip, I used No. 7, pipe onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper into little kiss shaped towers.  If you don't want to pipe, you can use two spoons to drop the cookies onto the baking sheet - because the dough is so sticky, this is actually more of a pain than the piping - I swear!

Put the baking sheet in the oven, but keep the oven door ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon to allow moisture to escape so they dry out.  Bake the cookies till they puff and crack along the sides (the cracking never happened for me, not sure why...)  This should be about 15-20 minutes.    Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cook.  They keep in an airtight container for 2 weeks.