Macarons!

Hmm so I had previously eaten loads of macarons while in Europe, watched the MasterChef episode on the Macaron challenge, helped out with piping of macarons but had never made macarons myself before.

So for Mother’s Day I thought it was timely to give it a go. With book in hand (thanks to my friend who gave it to me for Christmas) I picked a basic vanilla macaron biscuit and decided on a cherry buttercream filling.

I have to say man this recipe requires patience. The whipping of the egg whites and making of the biscuit mixture was pretty simple but I had to make sure I followed the recipe precisely because getting it right determined whether or not you got that macaron base.

So when I put them in the oven and glanced at them 10mins later, I was elated to see that the base had formed! It was a bit strange though as the top of the biscuit slid from the bottom, however that was fixed with a few more minutes in the oven.

With biscuit done it was time to get onto the butter cream filling. I’d made butter cream before for other cake recipes, but this one involved an entirely new technique. After a gazillion hours of whipping the butter and looking at all the other ingredients curdle, I thought instant fail. However, after some more persistence (the recipe said keep going) the butter cream looked a bit better but was certainly not the thickness in consistency that I expected. I decided to have some macarons with butter cream filling and the rest of it cherry. The cherry filling looked foul and I wasn’t certain whether it was edible and worth feeding to the family (I did not need food poisoning on this day). But again I kept mixing and in the end the cherry butter cream tasted quite nice.

Assembling the macarons was fun, well not fun but I enjoyed seeing the final product. It actually looked real!
Although some did looked quite deformed, but all in all I thought it wasn't too bad for a first try.

Would I make this again? Oh yes I would, it was actually yummy to eat and they all disappeared quite quickly. I just need to improve my piping skills (atrocious), butter cream making skills and avoid overcooking things.

Lessons learned: butter cream, patience, piping