Lets get this party started, spring. We're tired of this dreary, cold, and wet weather and it's time for spring to, well, spring into action!
Paul came back from his fabulous trip to Paris a few weeks back and now he just wants nothing but to be back in Paris. He ate great food, drank great wine, and walked all over Paris.
While there, Paul stumbled upon Ladurée and bought 6 macarons early on in his trip. They were so amazingly good that he recommends that if you're going to Paris, you NEED to stop there. I texted him asking to bring me back a dozen; alas, he couldn't find the store again and didn't bring any back. *cue dramatic music*
Paul showed me all his pictures of Paris that he posted on his Instagram account, under the hashtag #parisitshappening
So we decided to try our hand at making our own marcarons. It's been a long time since I attempted to make macarons and this was Paul's first time. *cue scary, breath taking music!*
Macarons' seem really daunting to make. There are a lot of steps and many people have blogged tips and suggestions when making their own macarons. Do you sift the dry ingredients or do you just mix away. Do you let them sit and dry before baking or do you just throw them into the oven and hope for the best. And did you know that there are two types of macarons?! There are: French and Italian. What's the difference? Well, that's a good question.
The French method has fewer steps and fewer tools needed. It does call for "aged egg whites" and more wait/dry time for the macarons before and after they cook.
The Italian method is much more involved and you'll need to multitask while cooking. You'll need to make a sugar syrup, but the wait/dry times are less. Usually in the Italian macarons' you use an Italian buttercream as well.
We decided to look through old copies of Food and Drink magazine, online, and pinterest to see if we could find a recipe that a) seemed easy enough and b) that we had all the ingredients for. The Sweet Spot's, Earl Grey Macarons with Blueberry compote buttercream; sounds good, right? I checked my pantry and we substituted a couple of things from The Sweet's Spot's recipe: Instead of Earl Grey tea we used English Breakfast, instead of the recommended blueberry compote buttercream (which is a fancy way of saying Italian buttercream); we just made a standard blueberry buttercream (because the egg whites weren't whipping into peaks!) *cue lots of swearing!*
So we learned a couple of things from today:
1) When making macarons, you need to schedule yourself lots of time to make them. Don't do what we did and decided at 7:45 that we should bake.
2) When the recipe says to let the piped macarons sit before baking; you let them sit! One tray sat for 15 minutes (which is longer than the recipe calls for) and the second tray we just threw in after piping. YES, you should definitely let them sit. The sitting process allows for the macrons to develop a "shell" that gives them a smooth top and will give them the "feet" around the bottom edge.
If you don't let them sit, your macarons will show the piping marks, will fall a bit when cooling, and won't form the "feet" around the bottom edge.
3) To try and make the macarons similar in size, we traced a shot glass onto the back of the parchment paper. Technically this would be a great idea if Paul was better at piping; but this was all experimental.
4) We don't have a solution for this one; but our egg whites wouldn't form peaks. We tried the Kitchen Aid stand mixer, the hand mixer, and even using a whisk. Nothing seemed to work. OK, out with the Italian buttercream and in with a regular buttercream - which I am an expert at making.
Would we make these again... No. We'd rather buy them from an expert who knows exactly what they're doing and we'd rather do what we're both really good at doing: eating macarons!!
