Once in a while, I feel like I'm up for a baking challenge. It was one of those days when I finally decided to give macarons a try. Moreover, my macaron cheat mat (which comes with little macaron wells to facilitate the piping) from TANGS had been sitting in my kitchen for quite a few months, and would likely sink further into the depths of my baking drawer and fade into oblivion if I didn't start to use it soon!
Macarons are notoriously difficult to make, so I tried to follow my macaron recipe book instructions religiously. It helped that the author provided pretty detailed step-by-step instructions, but didn't help that I still managed to forget certain steps in the end (when I remembered and did it, it was probably a tad too late).
Many things - and the most disturbing one for me was the colour of my macarons! I don't think you can tell that these were supposed to be Earl Grey white macarons - as my oven turned them a beige/light brown colour during baking! This seems to happen everytime I make meringue-only things - similar to the plight of my pomegranate meringues.
As for the other flaws - the 2nd most obvious one was that they had no feet (ie. the petite ring along the circumference of each macaron shell that gives macarons their unique look). I also overbaked them slightly and so the texture came out wrong - crunchy instead of the soft melt-in-mouth texture :(
The only thing that made these macarons still edible was my earl-grey infused chocolate ganache. Looks-wise, they looked more like whoopie pies and reminded me of little chocolate hamburgers!
But because they are supposed to be hard to make - I was not too devastated about my failed attempt. I will definitely try to make macarons again - when I feel like I'm up for another challenge :)
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