Try, try, try, try...and try again.

It seems that during my 5 month hiatus from the kitchen, I forgot how to bake macarons.

Of course, the thought of pulling macawrongs from the oven flashed through my mind as I walked to the kitchen, but I had already baked nearly 20 batches - surely it would be like riding a bike for the first time in years?

All the motions felt right. Sifting the ingredients over and over still felt tedious. My wrist and shoulder still ached as I whipped my egg whites until they defied gravity. I still felt the anticipation as I skillfully succeeded in tried really hard to pipe perfect rounds of batter on my Silpat, followed by the embarrassment and defeat as I actually pulled not one, but four failed macaron batches out of the oven yesterday.

Well, fifth time's a charm...kind of. The trademark frilly feet were there fresh out of the oven, but they kind of disappeared over night. Either way, I had one ugly batch for every month I neglected my macaronage technique.

Unfortunately this semi-pretty batch only yielded 11 macarons, so I'll have to take some chocolate macawrongs to Easter lunch with me.

Strawberry and Chocolate Macarons with Rose Cream Cheese Filling







...hopefully, my family doesn't mind too much :)

Happy Easter, readers :)
<3<3<3

Yup, more macarons!!!

I think it's FINALLY safe to say that I've figured out the tricky nature of macarons. A post on my pistachio macarons will follow shortly :)

Anyway, sit tight kids. It's story time again.

During my dramatic, emotional, and macawrong-filled journey, I found an inspiring website that I absolutely adore. It's called Mactweets, and if you haven't been there yet, you need to check out all the great themes and pictures that are submitted on a monthly basis.

As many of you know, October is breast cancer awareness month. I, for one, am tired of the stupid statuses that people have been posting on Facebook (especially the recent one about where we like to put our purses), because does that REALLY raise an awareness for breast cancer? Probably not.

While many of you may argue that macarons and breast cancer awareness aren't really synonymous, I think they're a lot cuter and classier than those Facebook statuses. Run and tell that, homeboy.

So how does breast cancer awareness tie in with Mactweets? Well, they're hosting the month of the pinkarons in honor of October's theme! I hope it's not cheating, but I made my sister these delicious pink macarons at the beginning of October...I hope I still qualify!

Here are my pink macarons with Rose Cream Cheese filling. Simple, but delicious.


And here's hoping that someday, we'll have a cure!

Happy baking :)

My remedy...

I love gloomy weather, because it gives me a good excuse to bake.

My dear sister and bro-in-law got me a Silpat mat. I decided to experiment today, and I made these little rays of sunshine.

Chocolate macarons with (leftover) rose cream cheese filling.

YUM.

The feet didn't rise as much as I would have liked, and I'm wondering if the Silpat absorbed too much of the heat? Maybe I don't need to stack baking sheets anymore. I will do my research and keep experimenting.

Happy baking, all :)