Getting Closer To Macaron Perfection

In spite of my crazy schedule the past few months, macarons have been made because #priorities. It's been an interesting journey with them thus far, but it has lead to the most perfect looking and tasting macarons I've ever achieved. But let me back up!

Back in August I made 2 batches for a baby shower hosted by my sister (something I have already sworn to never agree to again). The baking process was frought with frustration (usually involving egg separating with eggs from my sister's chickens) but the cookies themselves turned out well. I made purple colored macarons with pink Swiss buttercream filling along with teal colored pistachio macarons with white chocolate ganache filling - both were colored to go with her theme of "mermaid".

Here they are at the party (next to the delicious lime cake ... mmm ...). With this batch I mainly learned how frustrating it is to give up 2 entire nights of your very limited free time to make a bunch of delicious macarons that you won't get to eat #realtalk. But they baked up well except for the ganache being too warm when I piped it out (causing it to ooze off the sides of the cookies unattractively, ugh). I took a break for a while after that experience, but let's be real you can never stay away from making these for very long once you know how.

This past week I made some much anticipated macarons to thank some of the people who helped with my estate sale. I had some people give several days of the ir time to help me, and what better way to show gratitude than with an intricate dessert :) I've been pinning a lot of macaron flavor ideas lately, and my sister specifically requested one that I pinned - mango white chocolate flavor - and I decided to try out rose for the other batch. I was skeptical about the mango ones, I will confess. The cookies themselves are just regular almond flavor and the mango flavor was achieved by adding mango purée to the white chocolate ganache. This makes the ganache even more runny than normal, so letting it set up in the fridge was a must after the last time working with white chocolate. It all worked out well though and the flavor was much better once the ganache had cooled (when it was slightly warm it made the mix taste like a super ripe cantaloupe - so weird. For the rose batch I added rose water to both the cookie batter and to the Swiss buttercream, thinking this would bring a good amount of flavor ... only to taste the finished product and not detect even the slightest hint of rose, lol. Oh well, they still taste good. Just normal. I'll have to get some actual rose petals to grind up and put in future versions. Both of these batches were the best baking ever. I had fewer of them touch on the pan (so their edges are perfectly rounded over) and not a single one cracked in either batch! That's pretty remarkable. They also didn't crack under their "foot" (the flat part) which sometimes happens - I've now realized that happens when they are removed from the parchment while they are too warm. Lessons! The rose batch in particular have the most perfect texture I've made - the perfect amount of chewy and crispy. Oh man, so good :) I'm glad that my "Thank You" batch turned out so well for the people who deserve so much more than cookies for their help.

So that's how things have been going with my macaron addiction. It's certainly an interesting experience to make these in a small condo kitchen, but I've made it happen both times now :) I've already told my family that macarons will probably be put on hold for a while as I really want to try making some of the cakes from my latest Craftsy class, Classic European Tortes (affiliate link). So tasty looking! I think I'll start with a Sacher torte :) Anyway, if you're at all interested in trying macarons, I always recommend this class since it's how I learned and I've never had them turn out badly. I warn you - they are addictive! I have it on authority from other friends who make them now too (Hi, Brenna! lol).

Have a delicious day!

Further Adventures in Macarons

Ever since watching this Miniature French Desserts Craftsy class back in February, I've been dreaming planning new macaron flavor combinations. My family has begged for more ever since their fancy Valentine I made up this year. So naturally when the boy scouts announced their annual Spaghetti Dinner and Dessert Auction fundraiser at church, I knew what I wanted to make :)

I had to fit quite a bit of work into just one night in order to get the macarons made in time. After much deliberation, I decided to finally make my most dreamed of flavor: hazelnut macarons with milk chocolate ganache filling. Can you say Nutella cookie?! Wanting to also use some of the dried fruit I prepared months ago, I also decided to make lemon macarons with raspberry Swiss buttercream filling. First thing's first - the cookies themselves:

The nice thing about taking the Craftsy class is that I had the inside tip on how to alter the flavor of the cookies and still have them turn out ok. For the hazelnut ones, I just halved the amount of almond meal called for and added that much in hazelnut meal. I make all of my nut meals from scratch myself, and I did all the nut prep beforehand so it was not nearly as labor intensive to make them this time around. I used a few drops of vanilla extract and a combination of dark brown and copper gel to get a nice brown color. For the lemon cookies, I added 1 tsp of dry lemon peel (from Penzey's - look into it!) and a few drops of lemon extract with lemon yellow gel food coloring (a crazy amount to get a zippy color).

 Two days later, I had to fill them. I made Swiss buttercream with the class recipe and I added a little over 1 tsp of powdered raspberry (homemade - I'll show you below) to the sugar before cooking. I also ended up with the perfect raspberry color by combining burgundy and pink gel food coloring (it was pure luck since I just guessed, lol). I squirted a little buttercream onto a macaron to taste test and I wasn't happy with the amount of raspberry I could taste. I wanted more zip (though it should be said that it was a nice flavor, just not strong enough to compete with the lemon). Since I still wanted my macarons to look pretty with the Swiss buttercream (and since I already made the stuff, I was going to use it, dang it), plus since I knew that straight raspberry jam would overpower the lemon and I wanted a nice balance, I decided to get creative and put a dollop of my homemade raspberry freezer jam in the center surrounded by a ring of Swiss buttercream. It looked pretty interesting before I sandwiched them :)

And once they were all squeezed, no one could tell :) They just tasted amazing. I made milk chocolate ganache for the hazelnut ones using the recipe from the Craftsy class. Aren't they pretty?! I love that they are mostly smooth but that you can still see little bumps on them from the ground nuts. I'm proud to report that my macarons were the highest grossing dessert in the auction! I split them into plates of 1 dozen and all 5 plates added up to $125, which basically means I got retail for my cookies :) I"m glad I could do a little something to help get my brother to scout camp. While I had sampled a few while making the ones I donated (I mean ... I had to make sure they were edible, right?!), the next day I found myself pretty bummed that there were no macarons to munch on after all that work. But being that it was my day off and that I still had a bunch of filling left over, I decided to make another batch that was my third choice of flavors to try out.

First, let me back up - I decided to get all food-nerd after making my first batch of macarons and dry out my own fruit to make powder. The Craftsy class talks about how you can buy freeze dried fruit and grind it up, but I'm cheap and I already had fruit and a dehydrator so I decided to make my own flavorings :)

This was really easy to do. I made 3 flavors to start: strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry (I have since added blueberry to my lineup). The raspberries and blackberries (and blueberries) couldn't have been simpler - I just laid them out on a tray and turned on the dehydrator. After reading a lot, I turned it to 98 degrees and I left it on for a few days just to be sure they were good and dry. For the strawberries, I had to hull them first and then I sliced them with my mandolin slicer, then I laid them out on a tray to dry. I left all the berries in there the same amount of time, but the thinned out strawberries were definitely the first to dry out.Once they were fully dry, I decided to follow some other precautious advice and I put them in ziplock bags and put them in the freezer overnight just to make sure any bacteria was completely dead. From there, I just put the dried fruits one group at a time through my coffee grinder (which I bought just for the purpose of grinding spices and fruits like this since I don't drink coffee - and I got it for $5 brand new through a girl on a Mommy Market Facebook Group, score!), and then put each powder into little plastic containers from the Dollar Tree. Anyway, all that is just to say that it definitely requires patience, but you can make your own flavors using literally any type of fruit you want and it's much cheaper than buying freeze dried and grinding.

So, for my own batch I decided to make strawberry macarons :) Mmmm... To do this I just added a little over 1 tsp of powdered strawberry to the nut meal and pulsed it in the food processor. I also added a few drops of imitation strawberry extract (I wasn't happy that it was imitation, but it was all I could get locally and I already had some) along with pink and red gel food colorings. I used my remaining raspberry Swiss buttercream and some of my remaining milk chocolate ganache to fill them and basically had a personal macaron party :)

Aren't they pretty?! The strawberry/raspberry combo was my favorite - I call them Straspberry :) Don't get me wrong, the milk chocolate filled ones were certainly no disappointment either, ha ha. And I did share these with my family. They came out just perfect - nice and chewy. Man, I love macarons.

So, I thought I would share my recent macaron making endeavors. It will sound cliché, but it's entirely true what the class says - once you start making these, you will just want to make more all the time. Every time I make them, I find myself wishing it was possible to make more batches to try new flavors right then. I've found I can only handle 2 batches at a time since they have to be mixed separately then have everything cleaned in between. Once the nuts and flavors are all prepared though, it made it much simpler to go from batch to batch. I weighed everything out at the beginning and just grabbed each ingredient as I needed it, which made for lots of little dirty bowls, but thankfully I have a ton of ramekins :)

I now have several other flavor plans in my head waiting for the next time I feel the urge - I think that blueberry macarons with lemon curd filling would be a magical experience, don't you? And maybe a pineapple macaron with coconut Swiss buttercream? Or something with lots of citrus - like orange cookies with lemon curd or vice versa. And I still have yet to make any with rose water or lavender, which I've wanted to make since I first watched the class. I'm open to flavor suggestions too if you have any fantastic ideas! Hmmm... all this flavor talk makes me want to make more, lol. I definitely recommend the Miniature French Desserts Craftsy class - but watch it at your own risk! It seems to start an obsession!

*Class links are affiliate links, but all opinions (and macarons) are my own!

Adventurous Baking: My First Macaraons (and a Craftsy Class Review)

The night before Valentine's day, I was suddenly in the mood to try some fancy baking. With my budget what it is, I couldn't afford to buy gifts for all the people who I want to show some love to - but I CAN make things for people. It's not feasible to knit or crochet something for everyone, but baking is a great way to include a lot of people in your efforts :) I've had the Miniature French Desserts class on Craftsy for a while now, but I had not watched it at all (a sin, I know). At first I thought I'd make madeleines, so I watched the video for them - after watching though, I decided that wasn't fancy enough, lol. I've made madeleines before, so that's nothing new. Macarons though - now THAT would be fancy. You can buy macarons locally, but they seriously cost like $4 per cookie (again, not do-able for me), so I decided to dive in. I watched the class, readied my materials, and got to work.

Before I began the actual making of macarons, I had to get my materials in order. I'm not a big fan of buying almond meal or almond flour - it's expensive and I don't use it particularly often. One of my favorite recipe books, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts by Alice Medrich, tells you basically how to make your own, so I've done it many times just making the small amount I needed for my favorite cake from that book. So I knew I had to blanch the almonds and pulverize them into meal with the food processor. This time though, instead of just making a tiny amount, I decided to make meal with all the almonds I had on hand. The blanching takes the same amount of time regardless of how many you throw into the pot, it's just a bit more time consuming to get the skins off. If you're at all curious and don't know what blanching means, it helps separate the skins from the nut so they slip off easily. You just boil a pot of water, throw in your nuts for 1 minute, drain them, then squeeze each nut and the nut will just pop right out of the skin - it's super easy, just time consuming to do. I bet kids would love it though. Anyway, so I made almond meal first, and then I thought how delicious pistachio macarons would be. I had a bag of pistachios on hand, so I looked online to see if there are any tricks to shelling them - sadly there seems to be no trick. You just have to crack each one open by hand. Ever diligent, that's what I did - I cracked each nut open by hand, blanched them, laid them on a towel and rubbed them to help release the skins, peeled the skins off all the way, laid them out on a pan in the oven to dry out for 5 minutes, then ground them up in the food processor. This seriously felt like it took forever, but i was on a mission at that point and would not be deterred.

So, once my nuts were prepped, I started making the actual macarons. The class is seriously so helpful with this - I had never tried actual macarons before, but I have never been good at making anything with a meringue. I always tend to over-whip my egg whites and then my baked good won't rise. With the very specific signs of what to look for in the class, I had no such troubles. Colette Christian tells you what your mixture should look like at each stage and it really was very accurate. Piping them was not hard, but again needs to be done in a specific way to get the right result. My first batch I piped a bit too tall, so a lot of them cracked :( But they still tasted amazing, so it was a good learning experience. My second batch came out much better. The class tells you techniques for everything from stirring to whacking out additional air at the end, and letting them sit so that they rise and how to tell if they've sat long enough. Really useful stuff, honestly. All this wonderful instruction came together to give me a wonderful result on my first ever time making these, so I call that a good class.

So here are my macarons :) The pink batch came first - they are just the almond recipe in the class, and they are much more cracked - not terribly so, but just less perfect looking. Size wise they did come out more like they are supposed too. The green batch was the second and for that I just used half almond meal and half pistachio meal. This batch came out with very few cracks (yay!), but I made them too small. The class includes a piping template in the recipe that you are supposed to print out and set on your baking pan before the parchment paper, so you can just follow the lines and pipe each one the same size. Sadly, my computer seems to have resized the document to fit the page better, so mine turned out really small. This wasn't that big a deal since they still tasted fantastic, but it's something to keep in mind when printing out the sheets.

Next I had to decide on a filling. The class gives recipes and videos on how to make a white chocolate ganache, salted caramel, and Swiss buttercream fillings. I loved the idea of the caramel and ganache, but I didn't have all the ingredients  for those. Swiss buttercream it is! It's hard to believe now that I had never made Swiss buttercream before this. It really wasn't difficult at all, and the result it amazingly silky and delicious. I decided to make the filling purple so it would look pretty and Valentine-y with the green and the pink cookies. I matched up similar sizes of cookies, piped one side, then squeezed them together. Et Voilà! Macarons!

Isn't it cute?! I was a little too thrilled at this point, lol. It's just so nice when your efforts turn out well on something this time intensive. At this point, I had to try one for myself. I had never actually had one before! And let me tell you - whoa, these things are delicious. I can absolutely understand the hype, and after making them myself I also understand the price. 

And of course I had to grab some of my more perfect looking ones to take a fun photo :) They're so pretty and just feel fancy. The texture was lovely - the outsides are nice and crisp, but the insides kind of give as you bit them, and then you hit the silky buttercream. Mmmmmmm...

I had some small treat bags on hand, and I had a lot of people I wanted to give these too. Everyone just got a few, and I used some of my lesser-used craft items to make little fancy tags and I tied them on with scraps of pin yarn.

All my little bundles :) You can see here how many of the pink ones cracked, lol. Oh well, they still tasted amazing. As the class promised, I am now totally addicted to making macarons. Now that I have a bag of almond meal ready to go in the freezer, they won't be nearly as much work next time. I can see this happening again very soon! I want to experiment with some fancy flavors like rosewater and orange blossom water. But even just to make a whole box of plain almond ones wouldn't be bad either, lol. In a way it's good that i made these for a holiday because it meant I couldn't just eat them all myself, ha ha.

So those were my Valentines I gave out :) I had fun handing out my pretty pastel packages to my friends and family. Everyone seemed to enjoy them, which is always a plus. All in all, I have nothing but good things to say about the Miniature French Desserts Craftsy class. I have no doubt that this experiment would not have turned out near as well without what I learned in the class. I'm actually excited to make madeleines using her method as well and see what it can add to my game. This class is certainly worth it even if you only wanted to make macarons, which makes the other desserts like added bonuses for the price :)

Here's a little Valentine's bonus for everyone - the card my mom gave me, lol. It says Hogs and Kisses inside. Mom Valentine's are basically the best.

I hope you all had a Happy Valentine's Day!

*The Craftsy links in this post are affiliate links, but my sister bought me this class and all opinions are 100% my own.