Last week I was searching the internets for something pretty to paint for my watercolor class (did I mention I'm taking watercolor and yoga? It's fun to have self care classes), and I decided to look up watercolor desserts and a bunch of pretty macarons popped up. Suddenly the idea came that I REALLY wanted to learn how to make these myself.
My first thoughts as I began my endeavor on my Monday off, were something along the lines of, "WHAT THE CRAP ARE YOU DOING??!?! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN...
...THE RAINBOW CAKE...
... THE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!?!?! AND YOU THINK YOU CAN MAKE MACARONS!!!?!??!"
But I'm not a quitter! I make goals and keep them. So, with the entire internet at my disposal, I searched for an easy macaron recipe, and bought me some ingredients.
The only "special" ingredient for the whole thing was the almond meal. I kept looking for it in the baking section and turns out they keep it with the nuts. That's dumb. But, whatever.
While the over heated up, I drew some lovely circles for when it came time to pipe the cookies onto the sheet.
Sifted me some powdered sugar and almond meal. I really love doing that. I don't know why. It's just really fun.
It called for egg whites. Luckily, my grandma taught me how to separate egg whites way back in the day, so I felt pretty good about this step.
Only one casualty.
Then it came time to whip up the meringue for the cookie. I learned several things at this point:
- Meringues take a long time to whip up
- No, seriously. Like, over 10 minutes standing holding up the dang mixer. A standing mixer thing might be better. But I don't know where ours is. Oh well.
- Meringue is MAGIC. All it is is egg whites and sugar and if you beat it long enough, it turns into light, fluffy magic. Super fancy stuff, right there.
Following a teaspoon of vanilla, powdered sugar and almond meal was added and "gently folded" into the meringue. Then I had to "punch" it, which isn't as violent as it sounds, but it turns your fluffy meringue into something more liquidy to be piped onto your pans.
They had to set for about 20 minutes until they were ready for the oven. I left them white since I didn't want to have to worry about food coloring on my first try.
Cook that egg-milk-sugar mixture!
I tasted it after folding in the butter and I was really dissapointed. It tasted, well, like butter. Then I realized I had forgotten the vanilla. That made it MUCH better. I also added coconut and food coloring (PINK!!!).
The cookies came out of the oven looking fabulous. They even had the little frilly things they were supposed to have!!
I put my pink coconut butter cream on them with a little bit of raspberry jam.
They look like little peanut butter jelly sandwiches!! XD
Pretty, pretty, pretty.
Some got a little smooshed, though. so they didn't get to sit on the plate with the pretty ones.
I was a little nervous trying them, but they turned out fabulous!! Even my mom said they were delicious. When I came down the next morning to put one in my lunch, I found she had finished off the rest that we hadn't eaten the night before!
I'm going to visit my grandparents in California this weekend, so I decided to make some to bring with me!
Since I felt more comfortable making the cookies, I decided to add some food coloring to the mix and make the cookies pink and purple!
I didn't care too much for the butter cream, so I made two different fillings this time: a raspberry cream cheese, and a lemon-lime curd. The lemon-lime curd was DEFINITELY the better of the two. I'll be taking that with me to fill the cookies I set aside to take to the grandparents. :)
Aren't they pretty! My piping needs a little bit of work, but I'm getting closer to a pretty little macaron!
And this takes care of number 24 on my 30 before 30 list: Bake GOOD cookies (all by myself!!)
For my next baking adventure, I plan on trying to actually make chocolate chip cookies that taste good. My friend sent me a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and I'm going to try THAT one out. Maybe it's not me; just the recipe!
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