Sunday, August 25, 2013

Macarons

You will be the death of me. In a desperate baking frenzy, I had it somewhere in my mind to give macarons a try. What are macarons, you ask? They're delectable little cookies with a lovely filling to them.

And so began the mission to look up recipes... After watching some TV with mom, and lo and behold, Anna Olson was on tv making macarons! I figured, what the heck, her recipes are usually pretty fool proof... Until this one... And then all hell broke loose. Almost everything that could go wrong with them, DID go wrong, save for the flavour.

What went wrong you ask? Well, my list of suspicion goes something like this, first and foremost, and this one I know for a fact: the egg whites where definitely whipped beyond soft peaks and were definitely on the stiffer side. Secondly, a macaron recipe measured, rather than weighed?? Shame on me for even looking at this one... Thirdly, I scoff at this, but mom *may* be onto something, the almonds that I used.

What about the almonds, you ask? Well, it really has to do with the fact that I tossed them in the freezer. Why is this a problem? My belief is that having slightly moist almonds could have been a contributing reason as to why these macarons decided to grow a mind of their own.

And so began the research. After much humming and hawing, a lovely lady sent me this link for some troubleshooting help. So far, I am LOVING the in depth explanations as to how and why things work, and once I get over the trauma of this macaron failure, I will be giving this recipe a try and seeing how that works out!