Macaron Madness

Macarons, macarons, macarons everywhere!

Macarons are a delicious treat, and if you've never had one I would encourage you to make them as soon as possible or find a good store that sells them nearby.

I first had macarons when I went to France on a study abroad trip in 2013, and after having one almost every day of this trip, I was hooked. Since then my dad would try to find them and bring them to me from his business trips around the world, but they never quite hit the spot. For years I have wanted to make them at home to see if I could capture that taste from France, and this year I finally did it.

Emily is in town and she agreed to try this out with me. Macarons can be quite tedious to make, and she has always shied away from making them because there are so many steps. But we decided to just dive in, and they turned out fabulous!

We followed the recipe for vanilla macarons from this website, and the chocolate ganache from this website (but substituted with dairy free heavy cream due to allergies). The first batch turned out fabulous, and were almost exactly like I remembered! We couldn't help but take pictures of them. I asked Emily if the time spent sifting, mixing, waiting, cooking, cooling, and filling was worth it. She said absolutely, and I agree!

With our first success, we decided to try some experiments with our next batch. We made some chocolate, some strawberry, and some apricot macarons next.

We kept to the same two recipes, but added fruit preserves to the centers with the ganache holding them in place. We also added a bit of the preserves to the original cookie dough to add some of that flavor, as well as food dye.

I will have to admit we started these batches a little late. We didn't really get cooking until 9 pm. And lets just say we didn't finish until well into the next morning. But they were worth it. We started off my playing "Meet the Robinsons" on my iPad while we worked and zoomed as quickly as we could through the cooking process. We wanted to make four different kinds of cookies....but didn't want to make four complete batches. So, we cheated.

How did we cheat? Well:

1. Didn't measure precisely- we didn't;t want to make four complete batches. Because then we wouldn't be able to sleep before work meetings the next morning. So we just made 2 batches of egg white merrange, and 2 batches of sifted flour and sugar. Then we eyeballed everything and added small amounts of what we wanted each cookie to have.

2. We totally forgot the cream of tartar in both batches

3. the egg whites are supposed to age for 3 days in the fridge....we just did one afternoon at room tempurature

4. cookies are supposed to sit for an hour once piped onto the parchment paper....we were getting tired and it was getting rather late. So we just just kept checking them, and once they had a slight crust we popped those in the oven

In the end, we finally finished up making the cookies, adding the ganache and fruit preserves around 1 am. The cookies were delicious, despite our tinkering with the recipe. Suffice to say it was a great time, even with the late hour. But then again that is kind of usual for Emily and I.

I hope you guys decide to try out making macarons. The time cooking is definitely worth it, and as you can see you can also cheat a little bit to make them faster.

Stay safe, much love!

-Laura Mantooth