September 6, 2009

MACARONS BECAUSE I LIKE YOU

I made macarons for Sean today. They were vanilla bean macarons with mixed berry filling. Mmm, mmm, good. I just finished making them and stuck them in the fridge as I find cold is the best way to taste them. He doesn't know about them yet so I'm going to surprise him later. And by that I mean I am going to tell him I baked him something over the phone. Hahaha. This is the reality when you don't live together.

For this round of macarons I used the ingredients from the Martha Stewart "Parisian Macaroons" recipe. I had to find ingredients using the US system since I couldn't find my scale and can't figure out how much 100g would be. I suppose I could have looked it up but I was having a rather frustrating day already and just wanted to bake something.

Baking makes me calm. Whenever I'm stressed out it's nice to come home to an empty kitchen and whip something up in the oven. Sometimes I have to wait for an empty kitchen though. With four other people living in this house, all of whom are older than me, I don't often find the kitchen empty so when I do, I relish in all the space and time I have to bake.

Anyway, here are my macarons that I am VERY proud of.Aren't they pretty? I made macarons with swirly tops!They didn't all turn out pretty. In fact, I ended up burning the second batch (which ended up having prettier swirls and hearts) because the kitchen ended up being too crowded with my mom puttering about. I tried to make an even number of pink and blue ones but ended up cracking a few while transferring them to a rack to cool. Ah well. At least I have a bunch in a box for Sean to enjoy.The burned ones aren't a complete waste. They are crunchier than they should be and a little brown around the edges but almonds that are a little burned actually taste pretty good! And nothing could possibly taste bad with wildberry buttercream, right?

Oh and then I decided to take them outside for a photoshoot:
I wish I hadn't burned the second batch because the hearts turned out better than I had expected. J'aime les macarons.

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