Afternoon Tea

When I am asked to provide anything for an afternoon tea (not that I am very often, but still) my default offering is always macarons. It gives me an excuse to make them. I was invited to an afternoon tea hen do for a friend, and this is what I brought. The orange macarons are orange and vanilla flavoured and although you cannot see it on the picture, they are sprinkled with edible gold glitter - as was most of my kitchen after I had finished. The blue ones are blueberry and vanilla and are stacked a little taller than I wanted but the macaron circumfrence|blueberry height ratio was a little off. Anyway, they tasted great as the sharpness of the blueberries took away a bit of the sweetness of the macaron.

This batch are pretty damn good ones and I think they cook better if you leave them for as long as you can. I left these babies for about an hour whilst I tidied the kitchen up and de glittered myself, and I think they were all the better for it.

Where to start....

This book is brilliant if you want a good, easy to follow start up guide. The thing with macarons is, once you have the basics down, and you know exactly how long you need to leave them before the oven, exactly how hot your oven runs, how long they like to be in there etc, the sky's the limit. You can mix and match them, experiment with fillings once the shells are sorted.This book has inspiration by the bucket load. Thank you Secret Santa 2011 for a great present!

The other best thing you can do with macarons is just get stuck in. So what if it goes wrong? The unrisen, slightly burnt, cracked bits taste just as nice. I invented a bizarre dessert involving wrong macarons, ice cream and mint. Tasty!

Also, don't be afraid of getting your hands mucky. For example, I started out getting those cartoned egg whites becuase I didn't know how to seperate egg yolks and whites and, you know, it looked a bit icky trying to figure it out. I now seperate my eggs from the actual shell, the way macaron making intended and guess what? My macarons are (generally) more successful and slightly cheaper to make as I'm not spending loads on cartoned egg whites - those babies are expensive!

Macaron Me

I can't quite remember how I came across my first macaron. Maybe it was in Paris (spiritual home of said macarons), or on TV. Who knows? Either way, they appeared in my life and I thought, hey, I want to have a go at those. Those delicately coloured, perfectly circular morsals of deliciousness. How hard can they be? The trouble with me is, I like a challenge.

Since then, whenever 'then' was, I've made a fair few macarons. My bin has been the lucky recipient of many of my attempts. Family and friends have lucked out with the rest. Macarons are tricky. They are temperamental. They need just the right amount of everything at the right time. They really don't like it if this doesn't happen. They stamp their feet, or refuse to produce one. They spread out flat like biscuits or simply latch onto their place on the parchment and refuse to budge. I empathise with them far too much! 

To me, they capture elegance and sophistication of bygone eras all in a sweet little mouthful and I like that. In the world we live in, a bit of elegance and sophistication is a welcome change. Originating in Italy and France and being swept up and perfected in Paris does that to a confection, I suppose.

This blog is about my hit and miss macaron escapades. Stick around, it might be fun.