Macaron Madness!

Were we mad to make French macarons? Everyone said "they're tricky."

 "You'll have to do it several times to get it right." "They take awhile."

Well, they are a little tricky. And they do take awhile. 

But boy, are they ever fun to make!

My friend Kate and I decided to tackle these sweet delicacies sometime last year. 

Then, in this post, I said "My project of the month was to learn to make French macarons.

Which, I might add, Kate reminded me of near the very end of the month!

So, we gathered together our almond meal (which we pulverized through a sieve), 

powdered sugar, food coloring, eggs, cookie sheets, mixers and more and 

settled into her kitchen to experiment!

We started out with a video by "Beth," explaining the trickier parts of the recipe 

and then opted to use her basic recipe (versus the recipe in the January

 'Martha' and on her website here.) Basically, the reason was because Beth used 

almond flour instead of processing your own almonds to make almond flour. 

Apart from that I think they are similar and next time I'll try Martha's recipe with the 

almond flour and see how it works.

We whipped the heck out of those eggs! Then for the first batch -- raspberry ones -- 

added a plethora of mauve coloring (which really looked wretched until it was blended.)

When done, it was an interesting shade. Definitely mauve. Next time, I'd use a ton

 of red to get pink. (Some of these photos show our second batch, which was a 

sunny yellow. Much prettier.

Then we folded in the almond/powdered sugar mixture, folding till it was the 

consistency of molton lava!

We piped dots of the cookie mixture onto parchment sheets. Then you give them 

a couple of good bangs to get the air out and into the oven.

And then we waited! While we did that, we whipped up our buttercream and 

made another batch, this time, yellow! Then with baited breath we pulled them out! 

Would they have legs?

 

One is always looking for "legs" (that little crinkly part) on the sides of the macarons --

 and no cracks. One or the other indicates under or over mixing. We aced it!

 

Then came mixing up buttercream and flavoring it. We flavored the raspberry 

with syrup left over form my Easter Pavlova and used lemon extract for the others. 

We also made a lovely chocolate ganache. Kate piped it in and topped them!

Voila!

I think we may have overbaked a bit -- not because they were at all burned but a 

little too crackly or flaky on the top when you bit into them. But today, I refrigerated 

them, then removed them after some time and they tasted more "authentic." It's s been 

a long while since I've had a real macaron from France, so my memory could be off!

 No matter what -- they were delicious!

Now, if only I was enjoying them in Paris!

Today I am linking with Pink Saturday posts at Beverly's.