French Macaron

Aren't they beautiful??  Almost love at first sight!

Well, it looks like winter is still upon us in San Diego.  It's kind of strange...we would usually  be out of winter by now... I mean, we are shy a few days from March!  It makes me even happier than I was able to make my macarons last Thursday!  The weather was beyond perfect on Thursday for macaron making!!  My baking buddy, Mai, had wanted to order some French macarons for her baby sister's birthday.  I was more than happy to oblige!  I can always use the practice!  And for those of you who've made macarons before, you know it's not a spur of the moment kind of thing.  It takes careful planning and timing with the weather to create beautiful macs.  See, if only I can get my hands on one of those copper KitchenAid mixing bowls...well, I can then make macs even in cold, rainy weather (like today).  Kind of.  Or at least, I can attempt to make perfect macs in rainy, stomy weather if I had that copper bowl....Ok, I'm digressing.  Anywhoo, back to those macs.  I had perfect, perfect macs!  I usually don't brag too much on my baked goods, but these macs were meant for bragging.  These macs baked up so perfectly, that they slid (slid!) off my silpat!  I only  had a little problem with my first batch of macarons and figured out that if only I had baked them for one minute longer, they would have slid off like my next two batches..Ah, live and learn (and know thy oven!)  Have I redeemed myself from my Hello Kitty macaron blunder??  I should hope so!

The color scheme ordered was black and purple.  Mai said her sister looooves nutella, so had wanted a batch filled with nutella filling.  The other was filled with a raspberry filling.  So, I ended making a black chocolate shell with black sugar crystals with a nutella Swiss meringue buttercream.  I'm not completely sure what happened, but after I filled the macs, I put them into the refrigerator to mature...the filling kinda collapsed and didn't come all the way to the edge of the macaron shells.  Although, I did put less filling than what is called for in macarons...but I think they taste better without a mouthful of filling.  It could just be me, but I think when the filling comes all the way to the edges, the ratio of filling and shell is just off (to taste), but it looks nice.  However, I think mine is just as fine too...pretty enough!

This light purple is my very fist batch of the day.  This batch is where I figured out I needed about another minute in the oven too.  The majority of these macs came off the silpat without a problem, but there were a few in the middle that needed that extra minute (those ended up with more filling since the middle got stuck to the silpat!).  I also found that I have problems with mixing colors.  This is nothing new that I didn't know, but man, you think I'd be smart by now and realize that getting colors (such as plum purple) means I actually have to combine more than one color together.  You see, I bought "regal purple" hoping that I'll get a nice dark purple without having to mix colors.  Yep, not quite...I ended up with lavender instead.  I think I'm a tad bit light handed on the food coloring, so that didn't help with my quest at darker colors.  I guess it doesn't help that I get a bit grossed out by the addition of too much food color (ie red velvet, black macs...yeah, those black macs really grossed me out, but they were actually really very good!)  And because I kind of messed up on this first batch of macs (not the right color and needed extra baking time), I decided to make an extra batch of darker purple (I was actually going for plum and actually mixed the two colors to make plum, but, again, I underestimated the amount of coloring needed for all that egg white!)  But overall, the three color worked well with the over all look of the table!  

Isn't this a gorgeous table setting for the sweets?  My sweet friend Mai is a genius with her creativity!  Everything she touches turns into elegance!  She truly has the talent to make even a brown paper bag look nice!  And not only does she do beautiful set ups, she bakes and cooks too!  Great job Mai!  Perfect macarons made even more perfect through beautiful table setting!  I hope you all enjoyed this post!