le French Macarons.

Friday Evening I tried my hand at French macarons. These petite beauties are all the rage right now.

And so after trying one for the first time, reading the ingredients: egg whites, sugar, powdered sugar, and nut flour (I mean, really, how could anything not be delicious with those ingredients! nut flour as a base for anything is always so good), and being completely inspired by other women venturing into this baking art I decided to try it.

So I went to my go-to baking diva Cristie at The Table Runner. I had already studied her latest "mac" blog post, but had just a few questions before I began. I'm so glad I called her because she gave me tips such as:

• Make sure your nut flour is very fine. (I ground my blanched almonds as fine as I could then ground them further once I added the powdered sugar).
• Don't double the batch before you test it out a few times- different ovens vary in how they cook the macs and changes might need to be made in baking time/temperature for your particular oven.
• Macs really do look better with some color and spunk. I was going to omit any coloring but they really do look fun and fancy with some.
• Add a little flavor to the cookie in the middle of beating the eggs (this goes for color as well) I added 1 teaspoon almond extract.
• Pipe the macs on parchment paper with a pattern underneath- this was extremely helpful as my macs would have been a wide assortment of overconfident sizes without the pattern (pull the pattern out before baking).
• Add sprinkles or sanding sugar before baking.
• The macs are done when they pull off easily from the parchment. If they are sticking at all they are not done yet.
• Pipe instead of spread ganache and fillings as macs are pretty delicate.

I used this recipe on Passionate About Baking.

Cristie has even more tips on her blog post. She is in a group called Mac Tweets- a group of dedicated French macaron bakers. They have challenges and stuff and I kind of want to join!

Also very helpful was Bonnie's macaron post on City Home/ Country Home. She has some wonderful pictures of the process.

All in all I'm very happy with the end result of my macs. They were a bit lopsided but they did have some "feet" (the ruffle on the bottom) which made me happy. I filled mine with a milk chocolate ganache.

Dashing Boy ate a bazillion of them and said they were the best. In fact, he almost made himself sick he ate them so fast. I'll definitely be making these again!