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Okay so here’s the thing, I’ve been interested in having my own business for a while now. My parents have always encouraged me to really get in there and make something of myself. One day when I was visiting them, my mom brought home some delicious Macarons from her trip to Canada. They cost somewhere around $2.50 each but completely worth every penny. Mom said, ‘Rachael, perfect the Macaron and you could have them be your delicious treat for the center of your business.’ So here we are, round 1 in the ‘Perfect The Macaron’ journey (because the first attempt didn’t count).

I’ve never really been a cook or a baker. I actually really hate cooking unless I’m doing it with family and even then, it’s a struggle. However, when it comes to the mouth watering Macaron I just can’t help myself; I love it. You are probably thinking, ‘I hope she did more research this round based on what happened during the first attempt.’ It’s true. That attempt was indeed an epic fail but I accept that because now every time after that is such a great improvement! Low standards. Big results.

My Life –>79416cb5b8603ed11f71ae7af84d7081book_cover

Okay, lets get down to it. I’ll set you up. We are at my parents’ house so, different oven and different atmosphere. New obstacles yay! I was also given a cook book that my friend gave me for Christmas called,  ‘Les Petits Macarons’ by Kathryn Gordon & Anne E. McBride. This book is extremely informative and has all sorts of advice when it comes to these delicious treats. If you are passionate about Macarons like me.. you should definitely consider purchasing it! The more reading material and recipes the better!

So we began making the Macarons just like last time but we had more time this round [score]. Though, as we are beginning the process, I decide to look at the new book I just got. Reading the way Kathryn makes them is definitely different! The recipe she has compared to the recipe I have in my kit for the French Macaron is slightly adjusted by adding salt, aged egg whites and cream of tarter. What, where did those ingredients come from.  What is cream of tarter (says the non-baker)? How do you age egg whites? So many questions I had. But unfortunately I didn’t have the cream of tarter so we just stuck with the kit recipe for the shells that we used for the first attempt including the brand of the Almond Flour.

Again, this isn’t a ‘how to’ post so I don’t want you to think I’m trying to teach you because I still don’t know what I’m doing. So, we ended up doing some of the tips in the book like the amount of time to ‘crisp’ and the amount of time to cook for one tray. We decided to make another batch on a different tray without the stencil that was provided by the kit (because we only had one) so we could see the difference with crisp time and bake time. We put them in the oven, checked on them and OH NO. The 2nd tray was spreading and extremely flat!! The other ones looked okay. We brought both trays out and the first tray were so thin about 1/4 inch thick cookies that had a very pale tan color. The 2nd tray was same in color but they all collided together. The second issue with that tray was none of the cookies would come off the tray!! They were all stuck… guess we weren’t eating those. Fail #2.

Here are the pictures of Round 1 of Perfect The Macaron:

(I did not manage to get a picture of the ones on the 2nd tray that had no parchment paper.) Scroll over picture for details.

Tiny and Thin
Grainy, pale and spreading
burnt bottom
No Feet
The batch
The brand of Almond Flour

What are the findings?

In my opinion, don’t be afraid to try new ways to see what works and what clearly does not. It is kind of fun to see such drastic differences. The craziest finding was, when they say to use parchment paper, you should probably use it otherwise no Macarons for you! 🙂 This round we also did not get any feet, they were extremely thin and they were very pale (ugly) in color. I’m thinking could, aging the egg whites, using salt, and using cream of tarter really make a difference even though my recipe doesn’t call for it? Could it have been the different oven because as you can see the Macaron looks burnt. It was also raining the day we made them, could it be weather damaged the process?

This is such a rewarding challenge because you can see each time you do it you learn something new! One day eating them will be the reward.

Thanks for reading!

Au Revior!