Developing An Unhealthy Obsession

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So there I am in my kitchen with my bowl of almond flour and meringue and I grab a spatula and start to combine my mixture and it instantly deflates with a dramatic 'poof' and I'm left with a bowl of syrup. Confused, I look at my spatula and it's somehow slathered with butter... oil in my meringue...

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Then I wake up filled with anxiety over my failure.

Oh come on! Macaron nightmares?! What is that nonsense!

They are just cookies, after all. Little blobs of egg white, sugar and almond flour, hard to get much simpler than that. Yet, they seem to be messing with my head already.

So full disclosure, before last week I had never made a single macaron. In fact, before delving into the food-blog community I had never even understood the significance of the cookie trend. I had even wandered around Paris, ignorantly passing Laduree without a second thought. Of course, within days of really delving into the food blogging community, I understood.



The first thing that pulls you in is their seductive rainbow of colors. Then you begin to understand the attention required to execute the perfect cookie anatomy: the frilly foot, the delicate egg shell like dome. You get a clear sense of the challenge reading the trials of other bakers and the euphoria of their successes.

I thought to myself: "I want that"

I wanted those cookies. I didn't want to eat them--I've always thought macarons were a little too sweet--but I wanted to make perfect macarons.

From then on there was no hope for me. I had the macaron bug.

So I started researching and reading everything I could find online to arm myself before attempting the notoriously temperamental cookie. Then late last week I started separating eggs. Preparing my bowl of egg whites to sit at room temperature on my counter.

My microbiologist husband and I discussed this:

Mr. Humble: Everything grows in eggs. This is not a good idea.

Me: It's basically standard practice. I don't see people keeling over left and right from macarons.

Mr. Humble: Everything grows in eggs! That slurry there can produce a complete chicken!

Me: I like chicken.

Mr. Humble: How about a big bowl of salmonella? Streptococcus faecalis... Escherichia coli?

Me: I knew you'd be like this...

Mr. Humble: Countertop abiogenesis! In three days something is going to crawl out of that ooze.

Me: Yea, and you're going to eat it!

Three days later I made my first batch of macarons.

I don't think I've ever sat in front of my oven and stared through the window the entire time something baked. I was terrified... what if there were no feet. Worse, what if they just turned into a heat-hardened blobs... What if I couldn't do macarons.

I had seen the photos, the failures, the cookies with awkward flat chests, the feet-less lepers, the pools of ooze. I'd have to post them, then everyone would know my shame. Ms. Humble can't make macarons.

Boy, I've never been so happy to see feet. I figured I might have a shot at making decent macarons.

I'll even share my first three attempts with everyone. Feel free to point and laugh! The pink ones are particularly sad.

Virgin attempt: 3 day aged eggs. Sucre-cuit method. Not bad, but not great. Do the feet project a little too much? Regardless the bottoms were a little too sticky. Need to get a better feel for my ovens...

Second attempt: 24 hour aged eggs. Worst yet.

For some reason I thought I could play with an Italian meringue recipe, adjusting the sugar syrup by reducing the amount and replacing it with rose syrup. Bad idea. The macarons were too flat. Tasty, but flat.

Master the basics before you start messing around, duh. The rose syrup might not of been the culprit though, I could have over-mixed these... or it could of been my meringue. This batch lacked the same volume as attempt #1 so I could also lay some blame there. No sticky bottoms this time though.

Third attempt: 24 hour aged eggs. Getting better. No sticky bottoms. Good shell, texture and interior.

My next attempt will be today, with 3 day old eggs. Doing both the sucre-cuit and french meringue method. We'll see how they turn out...