Monday, November 30, 2015

Are macarons are my Waterloo?

A few years ago, while out shopping at an outlet mall with my husband, we discovered a little french bakery that was selling these adorable little sandwich cookies called macarons.  We have since found several other places that sell them. One place is called Le Macaron.  We fell in love with these cookies.  They are a French sweet meringue-based confection made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, ground almonds and food coloring. They are filled with either flavored icings or jelly/jam.  When I first saw the name Macaron, I thought I was going to be getting a coconut based cookie - which I don't like. To my delight, I bit into a crispy, chewy, delicious little cookie.  I was hooked.

Since there are no places nearby that sell macarons, I've been toying with making my own for a while.  I bought a macaron kit with a mix and a macaron kit with all the tools needed for success in making them.  Today I decided to try making them.  I love to share both successes and failures in the kitchen.  Macarons turned out to be a FAIL.

Here is a short before baking video:


While they were baking, I could see that the macaron dough had run together.  Here they are after I took them out of the oven:



















Due to the running of the dough, I could only get ONE actual macaron.  It was delicious.  Here it is:

So, it is back to the old drawing board.  I will be trying this again.  Stay tuned and see if I have success or more failures with macaron baking.