Mac n' Freeze!

Bonjour! How is everyone going? For my first baking project today, I decided to start with one of the most famous French delicacies and my personal favourite- macarons! I was a little nervous going in considering how much talk there is about how difficult it is to make macarons and no one usually gets it right the first time around, or the second or third, for that matter. But baking macarons is something I have wanted to master for a long, long time now so it seemed only fitting to start the challenge with this. It was not a smooth ride and I lost my patience more times than I care to admit, and at the end the result was not what I was expecting!

I followed the recipe from Allrecipes.com and the ingredients I used for the amount I made are listed below:

• 1/4 cup pure icing sugar

• ¼ cup all-purpose flour

• ¼ teaspoon salt, divided

• 3 drops lemon juice

• 1 egg white, room temperature

• 1 tablespoon caster sugar

• ⅛ teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2 drops red food coloring

Buttercream:

• ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened

• ¾ cup pure icing sugar

• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

• ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. At first I combined the all-purpose flour, icing sugar and a sprinkle of salt in a food processor and pulsed it three times for a more refined mixture. Then I sifted this mixture through a mesh sieve into a medium sized bowl and put it aside.

Note: The original recipe uses almond flour , but I only had all-purpose flour at home so I decided to go with that. If almond flour is used, the proportions will still remain the same.

2. Next, I separated the egg white from the yolk and beat the egg white, added a little bit of salt and lemon juice together in a bowl, with an electric mixer for 30 seconds on medium speed, until the mixture was frothy. Then I added in the caster sugar and vanilla extract and beat the mixture until stiff glossy peaks formed, as seen in the picture below.

Note: The cream of tartar is used to acidify and stabilise the egg whites so that stiff peaks are formed faster. Since, I did not have cream of tartar at home, I did some research and realised that equal amount of lemon juice can also do the trick as it is acidic too.

The stiff egg white mixture

3. I folded in about half of the flour mixture into the egg whites very gently, until nearly combined. Then I added in the red food coloring. I added the rest of the flour mixture and folded in carefully until the batter was uniform and held together.

4. I transferred the batter into a piping bag with a round tip and piped it in circles on a baking sheet. Now generally, a silicone macaron mat is used when piping out the batter. Since I did not have one, I used a regular baking sheet on a rectangular baking tray and greased it with some butter. Hence, my macarons did not turn out to be perfectly round. After tapping the tray 3-4times to release any air bubbles, I let the macarons sit in room temperature for 30minutes to dry.

5. In the mean time, I preheated the oven to 150 degrees Celsius. And, I made the buttercream by beating butter and icing sugar together using an electric mixer until creamy. Then I added heavy cream and vanilla extract and beat on medium-high speed until combined.

6. I put the macarons in the oven and baked them for around 20 minutes, until they had a risen surface. After that, I let them cool off in room temperature for 15minutes.

This is where things went wrong. When I picked the macarons up, I realised that they had the texture of a sponge cake and not like the hard cookie-like texture macaron shells usually have. This meant that I had to do it all over again but first, I needed to figure out what I did wrong the first time. Just as a reference, this is what they looked like.

One short nap and two hours of research later, I realised some of the mistakes I had made. Firstly, I needed to add in the food colouring to the liquid egg white before beating because when I added it after it was beaten and frothy, the liquid food coloring messed up the texture of the egg white mixture. I may have also under mixed the egg whites, which is why my macarons did not dry in time to be put into the oven and were rather wet and runny. I also realised that in the middle of the baking process I needed to let to open the oven door to let off steam and then close it again.

So, I made a second batch of macarons with the same ingredients and proportions, just correcting my mistakes from last time. This time, I added in the food coloring to the liquid egg whites before beating and I beat them properly for around 2 minutes, until glossy stiff prominent peaks were formed.

The batter for the second batch

I made sure my macarons were absolutely dry to the touch, before putting them in the oven, which took about an hour and a half and I opened the oven door midway. Annnnnd, another failure! Even though, the macarons were cookie-like this time, they did not rise and were somewhat hard. The surface of the macarons did not turn out to be smooth either.

After having an hour long existential crisis over this and debating whether I should put it up on the blog or not, I decided to go ahead because I still wanted to write about the experience and share it. Although, I sincerely apologise for the disappointment. I know this is not what you expected when you first started reading this post and trust me, neither did I!

After taking the macarons out of the oven, and letting them cool off. I piped the buttercream onto one half of the macarons and stuck the other half to it. I did the same for the rest of them. And this is how they looked like:

I know they are not perfect at all, but I am getting there! They resemble more closely to an ice-cream sandwich rather than a macaron, if even that! But, we should all be kind to ourselves during these tough times and so, tonight I have decided to be kind to myself and and enjoy the 'macarons' that I baked. To get the most flavour, it is best to refrigerate them after assembling for 24 hours so that all the flavour can get absorbed into the macarons.

Thank you so much for reading my first post and I apologise for the let-down. I will keep researching and perfecting my craft and soon, I plan to give baking macarons another try. And, when I do, I will definitely share my experience here. Please do give me tips if you know what went wrong or what I should do to make it better because I would love that! I hope you will stick by your girl and her clumsy baking skills. Till then, au revoir!