French macarons, what can I say? I haven't really jumped on the bandwagon for these little circles ofenchantment. After failing once before trying to make them I'm a little embarrassed to say I kind of gave up which is not like me. They came out allwrinkly on top and just looked more like a meringue than a macaron.
I like to try and post as frequently as I can to my blog and now I'm understanding I feel like that because I actually really enjoy it, so this morning I was racking my brain to come up with a post for today. The macaron came into my thoughts and after doing some reading about them I found a recipe and got started. I must admit to rushing the recipe and again they came out of the oven peaked and as they cooled cracks appeared. Failed again....
It was still fairly early and this time I felt like trying again! I looked for another recipe and found a great tutorial about making macarons from AmberLee. Her blog, Giverslog is packed with great recipes and her own macarons looked awesome. After reading her list of tips and troubleshooting I set out once again to try to conquer my macaron misgiving. I'm happy to say that third time lucky worked for me. The biggest change I made was to leave the macarons out to dry far longer than I had been doing previously. This is the stage where after piping them onto your cookie sheet they will become dull looking and develop a skin on top. This skin prevents the insides pushing up when baking and helps keep the bubbly part called the foot around the bottom of the macaron. Previously I had been leaving them out to dry for about 15 minutes but this time I waited almost a full hour before putting them into the oven. I feel now that I can go on and experiment with some more flavors and unique fillings without the cracked meringue cloud following me. I used a white chocolate ganache flavored with peppermint as a filling for these and they were pretty darn good!
