Each time I start a recipe of macarons I get that awful feeling in my stomach-that tightening and feeling of dread. I hate to start baking with that dread. I'm of the belief that your mood and spirit effect the end results of what you are baking. I want my love of baking and my passion for baking to infuse itself into the results-not the bad juju of dread ! So when I started this month's challenge I decided that I wasn't going to start baking until I put myself into macaron nirvana . Watching the meringue go around and around in my Kitchenaid helped me to meditate and relax and think nothing but good macaron thoughts. I was so occupied with having a positive outlook and feeling good about this macaron experience I wasn't paying attention to the amount of batter I was making. Hmm 3 1/2 cups of powdered sugar seemed like a lot from other recipes but I knew this was the Italian meringue method so I just chalked it up to the recipe. As I was watching the meringue, I kept thinking hmm that's a lot of meringue. And I mean a full to the rim lot of meringue whisking around in the bowl I looked at the yield on the recipe...50 macarons. 50, really, how large is Francois making his macarons ? Because by the time I finished my baking I ended up with almost 150 !! Thank goodness we have a BBQ this week at work-guess what I'm taking for dessert ??
Making that many macarons tired me out so I saved the ganache for tonight. I just finished filling all 150 of them and I'm macaron'd out ! Can anyone out there tell me the secret to nice smooth even macarons-I know a great deal of it is practice but seriously I sifted my almond flour and powdered sugar 3 times and still ended up with quite a few bumpy macarons. Que sera sera..they still tasted wonderful. But any advice would be greatly appreciated.
3 comments:
Beautiful! Can't wait to see your lemoncello recipe!
Those are perfect and amazing. I'm so jealous! Mine looked so frumpy.
What are you talking about?!? These are PERFECT! I loved the bit with you dancing around the oven because I did squeal and shot a bit when I saw feet. Sieving mine did little good until I gave the almond meal and cocoa a few turns in the Vita Mix. That eliminated the biggest bits of almond flour and my bigger bumps.
I'm so glad I'm not alone in feeling anxious when I start making macarons! Thanks for baking with me (and sorry it took me so long to stop by and see the beautiful results!)
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