Macaron Making: Finally a success!

They looked so lovely I didn’t wanna eat them.

First snow (was hailing actually…) yesterday! Was stuck on the traffic for 45 mins on the way home from Metrotown! Anyway, I’m just happy we are getting a white Christmas. So after a shopping spree yesterday, May and I decided to make some Macarons to break our diets. I’ve done it twice before, and didn’t get them right both times… sad. But this time, with the lemon curd filling recipe from my cousin and the shell recipe from May’s sister- it was a great success (some were cracked but at least a good portion was lookin’ good!). Will try to increase the hit rate to over 90% next time though!

My first time baking these last year…. just realize the colors were kind of Christmasy.

Yeah, the ones I made for the first time looked just like cookies(too hard), and the rims were burnt. And it’s obviously that it wasn’t done right, because they didn’t rise at all! It’s pretty quick to make (one hour) but many things could go wrong in the process. Not using aged egg whites (some say its required, I didn’t for the first two times), batter overly mixed, mixture dried out, or forgetting to take ’em out of the oven (like we did this time lol)… and sometimes they are so delicate that they crack when being touched! However, the biggest failure last time was not having edible fillings at all! I tried to make cocoa and orange buttercreams before but they were too watery. So we ended up just eating the plain shells- the taste was right, but what’s the point making ugly macarons?

Much better this time =)

We started pretty late at night (around 10) and finished everything in about 1.5 hour… the hardest part that took the longest was posing the macarons for photos lol

Warm in the oven…

The most exciting part in the process was to stare into the oven and see the feet rise! The sizes were not even but that was because we were using spoons instead of a pipe and we still gotta practice more!

The lemon curd

Our lemon was huge, and we didn’t want to waste any… so the curd was a little bit too sour, but I liked it this way because it balanced out the sweetness of the shells. Too lazy to make buttercream even though my cousin gave me the recipe for that.. so just the curd.

The last batch… forgot to take them out of the oven.

We halved everything in the shell recipe and got 49 shells at the end. Since we had left over egg yolks, we used those to make scramble eggs with Natto… Then we forgot to take our last batch out of the oven! Some were cracked really badly, so we just ate them plain.

Anyway… all we needed were several good ones to fake in the photos XD

Seriously, I hope people who have eaten our creations don’t get sick… because we spent a good hour playing with them, piling them up and taking photos.

Our hands are clean… we actually ate most of them anyway ;P

 

We added a drop of yellow food coloring, but that it looked more pinkish than yellow… probably because of the lighting

Just posing…. cup was empty.

And Macarons can be used as an alternative to poker chips!

Hehe, my turn to WIN this time!

OK, we didn’t really play… it was already 12am then, had to go home and let my brother try them. At least his stomach isn’t sick this morning!