Whew, these past couple of days
have been busy and I was nearly late for my New Year’s Eve get together today
because of my macaron making, but it was all worth it because they turned out
pretty good for my first time (well, first time making them completely on my
own with this recipe). To gain a better understanding of the rest of this post,
look up any vanilla macaron recipe that you would like to use (make sure it has
some good reviews!)
The toughest part about my
macaron adventure was learning how to use my food processor. It took me an
embarrassing thirty minutes to put it together. I used a Cuisinart 6 cup food
processor and after putting it together, it was actually super easy to use and
quite efficient too! For the purpose of making macarons, you really do not need
a specific food processor, but it should be able to hold about 6 cups. Anything
smaller and you will get nothing but skewed results and frustration (like I did
when I tried to use my Magic Bullet the first few times…).
It is important to make sure you
get ALMOND FLOUR and run this almond flour through the food processor a couple
of times (despite the fact that the almond flour is already quite fine). All of
the dry ingredients need to be quite small as you do not want any lumps or
bumps on your macarons.
Just to further clarify, almond flour is only made up of almonds. I
almost purchased almond meal at the supermarket and when I asked the cashier if
almond flour was the same as almond meal, I created huge confusion for a group
of young girls who were very willing to help me. I felt so bad because they
were so sweet! Oh well, lesson learned. Almond flour is not the same as almond
meal as almond meal tends to contain other nuts as well. I have tried making my
own almond flour in the past. It is totally possible to make your own almond
flour, but it takes so much time and preparation that it is probably just
easier to splurge on the $17.00 600 gram bag of almond flour.
I used the Italian method for the meringue portion of the recipe and it
worked like a charm! After adding the dry ingredients to the meringue, I found
that the mixture was still quite thick. You don’t want the macaron batter to be
too thick because then your batter won’t be smooth on top. I mixed my batter a
little bit more and although it seemed a little thick still I decided that I
didn’t have any more time to wait! I needed to pipe these little treats (in
future, I’ll make sure I have set a little bit more time than four hours). I am
pretty confident in my piping skills, but even I couldn’t get rid of that
little swirl from forming on the top. I slammed down the pans after all of my
little macaron shells were piped, but they still weren’t completely flat on the
surface. I later learned that this was because I did not deflate the meringue
enough when I incorporated the dry ingredients to form the batter so for next
time, I will make sure that I deflate the mixture a bit more. From what I can
remember from watching my macaron teacher, the batter felt like a cross between
a stiff meringue and waffle batter—not too stiff, but not too soupy either.
I was very nervous about baking my macarons because my oven isn’t the
best for accuracy. It’s about ten degrees hotter than what the temperature
gauge reads. Feeling confident that I had already gotten this far, I bravely
set my oven to ten degrees lower, put my pans inside and clutched my detailed
recipe close to my chest as I closed the oven door. Will I get feet? Will I
not? Those questions were running through my head. When the oven timer beeped,
I held my breath as I opened the oven door and....
I had feet and not only that, but
they weren’t burnt! I felt so vindicated and proud that the next few pans were
a breeze. I managed to finish all the shells before I was off to my New Year’s
Eve party with my fiancé and friends. It turned out to be a great night. It was
a great party, but that could’ve been because I was gloating about my macaron
shells all night.
I will fill you in on fillings
tomorrow.
Beautiful
Baking Fellow Sweeties
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