Macarons first attempt!

Ever since I tasted the very first macaron in my life at Laduree in Paris, I’m hooked… I love the texture of these phenomenal cookies and the taste is just well…. to die for!

Last year I was in France with a friend and we found this little bakery in Dijon where they had macarons, so – you guessed it – we had more then our share of them. At that point I thought that it would be really cool to try and make them myself at some point in time. So I told my friend (who does not cook at all) who started to laugh and told me that was impossible…

I admit that the prospect of making these beauties myself was indeed a bit daunting and not something I would attempt to do lightly, but it had been done before right and I am not one to not take on a challenge. Still it is now almost a year further and today is the day I am making my first attempt at a macaron. I am saying attempt on purpose since I already know the outcome… 🙂

It all started quite well I think; I had bought the ingredients the day before, split my eggs, mixed the almond and the icing sugar, made my sugar syrup and thought I had done all the things correctly untill I put everything together and you just know that the batter is too thin…

Putting the stuff in a piping bag and then making rounds all equal in size proved to be another challenge I did not master at all! I didn’t have the right size tip but I don’t think that I can blame the tip for everything else that went wrong (I would love to do that though…!!) If it was only the size that would have been wrong, I could have lived with it, easily! No problem…

I let the mismatching size macarons sit outside for about an hour, which apparently is necessary to harden the shells a bit. So I did and then popped them in the oven at a 145 degrees C. I sett the timer for 15 minutes but when I checked after 15 minutes they still seemed very fragile when I took one out of the oven. It broke immediately. So I left them in the oven a little while longer, but as it turned out – none of that mattered! I could not get them of the baking sheets. I tried a knife, I tried a cake knife, I tried to rub the blade in oil to make it more smooth, but whatever I did… no success. So this is how it all finally came of the sheet…

I was planning to bring them to my parents in law tomorrow when we go there! O haha… I already see their faces before me when I present them with this sugary mess… I guess I have to make something a little bit simpler tomorrow, so at least I have something!

I emailed the queen of macarons, Helen aka Tartelette, with a cry for help and apparently I have used an Italian recipe for meringue instead of a french one.

Don’t think I will give up!! My friend will no doubt laugh herself silly when I present her with the last picture of how my first adventure into the world of making macarons ended. But at some point I am going to have to prove her wrong. Even if it takes me 10 batches of failed macarons (who by the way, despite their apparent look, where still very tasty. I have a sugar overdose now!)

So again, I present you with failed attempt numbero uno!