Falling in Love with French Macarons

My love affair with French macarons has officially begun. Last week I decided to dive in and make my first batch of macarons. Keep in mind that I had never had a French macaron before this.

Needless to say, they are not quite the ideal French macaron that you see in pastry shops. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I thought the cookies would flatten out some in the oven...they didn't.

Being the scientist I am, I had to do some more research. Reading several articles online, I now know that French macarons are apparently one of the hardest pastries to master. This made me feel a little better after my disastrous looking (yet still delicious) first batch.

Attempt #2 led me to the following recipe, which I now consistently follow. It is derived from Not So Humble Pie's recipe, but converted to volumetric measurements rather than mass because I don't have a kitchen scale:

• 2 large egg whites
• 2 tbsp + 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp + 3/4 tsp almond flour
• 1 cup + 2 tbsp + 1/4 tsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

These were my results from attempt #2 where I replaced lemon extract for the vanilla extract.

I filled these with a store bought Pillsbury vanilla frosting. The cookies definitely look more like French macarons, but still leave something to be desired.

At this point, I was determined to perfect the French macaron. I got serious with my baking and began taking notes on each of my macaron batches like a laboratory notebook...monotonous at times, but worth the trouble in the end.

I won't bore you with each of my attempts (I'm to 8 different attempts so far), but I'll give you my general findings from all of them:

1.  Don't substitute JUMBO egg white in place of the recipe's LARGE egg whites, even if you try to compensate with new calculations for ingredients. For some reason, this just wouldn't work for me. If you're following my recipe, make sure to only use LARGE egg whites.

2.  The ideal bake time/position for the macarons in my gas oven is on the middle rack at 300F for 3 min., 275F for 8 min., flip the tray around, and then let it go for another 4 minutes at 275F. Of course, this will vary for each oven (meaning I can never move, or my oven must come with me).

I put it at 300F first because this helps create the foot. And I drop the temperature down so that it can cook the insides of the cookie without burning the outside. To avoid creating an air pocket in the cookie, the insides must be baked enough that they don't collapse and pull away from the wall when the tray is taken out of the oven to cool.

My husband thought to explain this process as being similar to cooking a steak. That you want to initially sear the meat and then slowly cook the insides to perfection. I don't know anything about cooking meat, so I'm going to take his word on this :)

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Those are my only stable conclusions for now. There are a lot of other techniques that I read about (letting the cookies rest before going into the oven, aging egg whites, etc.), but I need to do a bit more research on those. I'll keep you updated as I continue on my journey with French macarons and I'll post more pictures of them.

Love Birds

This cake was made in March 2010.

This cake is from Kate Sullivan's "Fun & Fancy Cake Decorating: Tips and Techniques for Decorating Unique Cakes for any Occasion". I love this book! It shows a wide variety of techniques. My favorite part is the fact that she taught herself to decorate cakes through similar books and is now a highly respected cake decorator.

Anyways, enough for my love of Kate Sullivan...

This cake was decorated with buttercream frosting and the two love birds are made of marzipan. This was my first time sculpting anything in marzipan, and fortunately it's probably the easiest object to make.

Woven Wedding Cake

This cake was made in March 2010.

There's a large gap in my cake decorating due to traveling with work. This cake wasn't actually for a wedding, but just a way to practice my decorating technique...especially after taking about a 2 year break.

The cake is covered in white marshmallow fondant. The bottom border, the lattice work, and the flowers are done in buttercream frosting.

Cupcake Wedding Dresses

These cupcakes were made .... I have no idea :)

I made these wedding dress cupcakes for a bachelorette party. The dress for each of them is made from an upside-down cupcake. The skirt of the dress is made from marshmallow fondant and decorated with buttercream frosting. The bodice of the dress is made from sugar paste. I made at least a dozen of these little dresses, decorating each of them differently. Unfortunately, these were the only 2 pictures I could find.

Wedding Cake

This cake was made in July 2008 for my sister's wedding.

The cake is a champagne cake with a strawberry jelly + cream cheese frosting filling. It is covered in store bought white fondant and decorated with buttercream frosting and non-edible pearls.

Since the wedding was in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I had to buy most of the ingredients on the island. This is when I learned that using a sifter for the powdered sugar in the buttercream was extremely important. As a result of not using a sifter, the buttercream ended up being extremely lumpy. Oh well, live and learn, right?

The piping decorations were initially drawn on paper and a pin was used to poke small holes in the fondant to provide a design to pipe over.

Owl Perched on Light Pole

This cake was made around March 2008.

This was the first and only cake I have ever entered into a cake competition (so far). The competition was with the Chicago Area Retail Bakers Association (CARBA).

The cake is covered completely in marshmallow fondant. The only inedible items in the cake are the lights on the light pole and the horizontal pole holding the lights up. The horizontal pole is a wooden rod and the lights are large styrofoam eggs.