Promises after promises…….i finally plucked the courage to sink into the deep end to attempt the formidable macaroon. Did I succeed? I guess I could say I did with a 10% success rate (or in plain terms… 8 decent looking macaroons) I think that is perhaps the reason why the patisseres charge exorbitant prices for their macaroons.
I guess I could have predicted that a disaster was going to happen when it took 45 minutes to sift the almond meal, icing sugar and cocoa powder. It took so long because my icing sugar and cocoa powder were in lumps and I had to spend a fair amount of time trying to shimmy it down the strainer. My eggs became another hint for me that this macaroon attempt would be an epic fail. I had bought a carton of eggs without noticing that 2 of them had cracked. I am normally pretty cautious with my egg purchases but I think that this may have slipped under my radar.
The recipe from Pierre hermes book about chocolate desserts became my inspirational guide. Numerous food bloggers that have attempted making macaroons have stressed on the importances of macaroons having feet. Macaroon’s feet basically describes an outer layer rim that that forms when the shells are baking in the oven.
Out of the 3 trays that I baked only 1 tray could be deemed decent enough to be used. was contemplating on giving up after the 1st tray and see whether it was worthwhile making the ganache. The 1st tray had only 1 shell that was not cracked.
The 2nd tray was a goner. Upon placing the last tray in the oven, I decided to google the average temperature to bake a macaroon. It is said to be around 150 degrees. The temperature was lowered and it worked like a dream. It finally looked that something was shaping up in the oven.
I also had the healthiest dinner that any one could have dreamt of ( Macaroon shells). It kept me on a sugar high till the effect wore out on me and I was starving by 10+ in the evening.
The end result of my effort had resulted in a mountain of cracked shells which could probably have been mistaken as chocolate cookies because they were pretty crunchy.
It was a big question on what was possible to sandwich between my 16 precious shells. I no longer wanted to make the ganache. Jam would have made it too soggy. Nutella would have made the end product to be too sweet . Peanut butter would had made the macaroon to be too rich. The last resort that may have seemed possible was black sesame paste. It was a perfect marriage- Chocolate macaroon shells sandwiched with black sesame paste. I had a small lil’ celebration in my mind as I tasted the finish product. I couldn’t believe how well it had blended together.
The precious macaroons were packed away to be given away to my taste tester. It passed the taste test. Whoooooooopeeeee….It also resulted in my tester giving me suggestions on what fillings to use the next time round. However, the next time round will need to have me improve my success rate to be above 50% so that I can move on to the next step of learning to make the ganache.
I WANT!!!!!! PIERRE HERME!!!!!!!!!!