Over the holidays I decided that it would be a grand idea to make French Macarons as a gift for my grandfather.
For those who are unsure, macarons are those tiny sandwich looking cookies while macaroons are made of egg white, sugar, and coconut.
I used to work at an adorable patisserie called "Melita Fiore." My old boss, who is the pastry chef and owner, makes the best macarons I've ever had. I used to help filling macarons a lot so I got a pretty good idea of how to handle them in assembly, but I'd always wanted to make some of my own.
First of all I've never attempted to make these partially due to the cost. Almond flour, which is an absolute necessity in this recipe can be a bitch to find and is sooooooo not cheap.
Luckily my mother is very kind.
My first attempt was um...well
Mistake #1
looked at the part of the recipe that said to process the confectioner's sugar with the almond flour and then sift it and said "PSSSSSSHHHH WHAT DO THEY KNOW? I'VE ALREADY GOT THE ALMOND FLOUR NOT GROUND ALMONDS. THEREFORE I DON'T NEED TO SIFT ANYTHING."
Yes.
Yes I did.
Fools rush in.
Mistake #2
"LET'S JUST BUILD UP A GRADUAL SPEED WHILE TRYING TO WHIP EGG WHITES AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? LET'S DO IT IN A PLASTIC BOWL"
That was my result after literally...tens of minutes of beating those eggs. I was ready to cry in frustration.
After a bit it finally started getting somewhere and I thought "eh, good enough right?"
Not right.
Once upon a time I was not so good at following directions while I baked. Many recipes will tell you certain steps and stages to add ingredients. I tended to go "You are food. Time to blend together. Stop arguing."
While I've since learned, mostly, another part of that is making sure that each ingredient is more or less at the state that the recipe tells you to get it to.
For example, if the recipe says your egg whites should be shiny and holding soft peaks...they damn well better be shiny and holding soft peaks before you decide to ruin your almond flour concoction.
This isn't a good look. 0/10. Would not recommend.
I realized this was fucking terrible. BUT I held a hope that I could still do...something with it.
I didn't take pictures because it wasn't pretty. Suffice to say I just had a mess of a batter that was desperately trying to be macaron shells on my cookie sheet.
Not wishing to admit defeat (and having no back up plans for a present) I pressed on the next day, endeavoring to fix the mistakes I had already made.
Into the bladed death machine you go almond flour
It's still not perfect but hey, this is way better than that monstrosity of almond flecks I made before.
This time I whipped my egg whites up in a glass bowl as recommended and they immediately puffed up to size. I think I felt my heart expand with them.
And they say the Grinch's heart grew 3 sizes that day.
Ooh baby, look at those soft peaks.
And then I folded it all in together and added some yellow dye as my ORIGINAL plan was lemon flavored macarons.
It's just...it's just so smooth. So pretty. Like a ribbon.
Then it was messily into the pastry bag (still haven't gotten the hang of even semi-neatly filling those up) to be piped into tiny circles and left to "rest"
Have a nice nap babies.
Then they came out.
I almost cried.
LOOK AT THEM
LOOK AT HOW NICE THEY CAME OUT
I mean obviously there are a few imperfect ones. They've got cracks from bubbles in the crust but for a first attempt I do have to say daaaaamn.
Flawless. Who is she?
I had to snapchat about it, like ya do.
Also shout out to my phone for taking such a good close up.
So the shells didn't turn out as yellow as I had hoped they might, and I realized we did not, in fact, have lemon juice like I assumed that we did.
TIME FOR SOME PROBLEM SOLVING
I KNOW
COFFEE.
So that was the flavor I settled on. Using a cup of black coffee I made a really nicely flavored coffee buttercream. The sugar and butter really cut the strength of the flavor, giving it a nice very light coffee and cream taste.
Tastes better than it looks?
Yaaaaas
YAAAAAAAAAAASSSS
Only a few actually came out perfect, perfect. I was pretty smug and pleased with myself though.
I had a tester and it actually tasted quite good.
Some things to work on though would be that some of them were a bit larger than I would've liked. They were also a bit softer and more delicate than they should've been. Macarons are already delicate, these however were a touch more fragile.
All things that can be worked on when I make them again. At some point. In the distant future.
Eventually.
P.S.
times I wrote "macaron" or "macarons" : 7 (LEARN TO USE PRONOUNS ELEANORA)
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