My first blog post. What better way to start a blog than by blogging about macarons! Yes, they've been the latest craze and I'm sure there are tons of websites and blogs out there that have talked about macarons. Since this is my first time making macarons, I thought that reason alone was good enough. Whaaat up!
Like many girls out there, I've been obsessing over macarons for a while. I think my first macaron experience was a few years ago at a shop called Nadège Patisserie in Toronto. The macarons I had there were delicious, but for some reason I didn't think much of them at the time. It was last summer when I really started obsessing over macarons. I went to a place called Sugar Tiers in Markham on the way home from work one day. The ones I tried there were a great introduction to my macaron obsession, but the best ones I've had yet would be at La Maison du Macaron in Montréal and Butter Avenue in Toronto. Okay, I admit, I haven't tried macarons from every single place in Toronto (where I'm from), but I figure why continue to buy macarons when I can just make them myself? So, off on this macaron adventure I went.
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| Macarons from La Maison du Macaron in Montréal |
To kick-start my adventure, I probably watched tons of videos, and read up on tons of blogs in search for "the best" recipe. I began accumulating ingredients and equipment just for these macarons (so yes, it's a big deal to me). Through research, I realized that there isn't really a foolproof recipe out there. For example, the type and temperature of your oven, the relative humidity in the air, the macaronage, and if and how long you should age your eggs, are all factors that can make or break your macarons. Anyway, I finally summoned enough courage to make these beloved treats.
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| Chocolate macarons with a chocolate ganache filling |
Ta da! I accidentally aged my eggs for one day longer than expected (about two and a half days?). The day I anticipated making them I felt the air was a little too humid and I decided not to take the risk. I used this recipe and looked towards Dulce Delight's awesome videos for guidance on the techniques. I won't go into how I made them since the links provided will probably do a better job, but I found that whipping the egg whites and the macaronage weren't as difficult as I had initially thought. The air in my condo is typically dry anyway, and so the macaron shells didn't take long to form. I recently bought two professional baking sheets just for these babies. One sheet was significantly thicker than the other and I actually thought the thinner sheet would cause my macaron shells to bake too quickly. Little did I know, it was the thicker one that caused me (and my shells) the most grief! Needless to say, there were many casualties on the thicker sheet, as in they were under done and didn't peel off my silpat as they should. Boo-urns.
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| Waiting for the shells to dry... please excuse the yellow lighting! |
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| My macaron shells with feet baked on the thinner tray and peeled off nicely. |
All in all, I think this experience was quite enriching. I found it was really difficult to tell when the shells were done because every oven is different. In my case I probably should have baked the shells longer on the thicker sheet. I even left some of them in the oven for a bit longer but was afraid of over-baking them so I took them out. The darkness of the shells from the cocoa powder definitely didn't help either. The shells that didn't make it still tasted great and would have definitely been crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Yuuuum.
