French Macarons. If you couldn't tell from my profile picture, I really love French macarons. The Pierre Hermes Ispahan macaron is one of my favorites in the world (I've had it in Paris and also in Tokyo). In the US, Thomas Keller's Bouchon in New York City makes excellent macarons. This recipe, inspired by pastry chef Bonbini, involves three parts: the Almondy Mass, the Italian merigue, and the buttercream frosting. If you think you can work relatively fast, preheat oven to 320 degrees first. Oh, and having a stand mixer and food scale is REALLY helpful. PART I: the Mass Ingredients for the Mass 40-45g aged egg whites 100g almond flour 100g powdered sugar 3 drops of food coloring To make aged egg whites, just set your egg whites out in the fridge the night before. Combine all Mass ingredients with a manual whisk. Add food coloring if desired. Part II: The Italian Meringue Ingredients: 57g aged egg whites 160g sugar 75g water Heat sugar and water in a pot until 230 degrees Fahrenheit.
Serve immediately! Enjoy! The Ten Commandments. Recently, I’ve gotten to know fellow Kentuckian Victor Sizemore. While his photography business has him in Los Angeles most weekends, Monday through Friday he’s a Lexingtonian and (convenient to my purposes) a consummate foodie. He bought my desserts-for-photos pyramid scheme hook, line and sinker. When I sent him a text along the lines of, “hey, if you want to turn a box of pastries into photography, let me know!”
I thought maybe we’d get together the next week or something. I had Victor Sizemore, of Mad Men in Vegas fame, en route to Table 310 to do free photography and nothing but laminated dough, a vat of caramel, and unbaked profiteroles on hand. Victor arrived at the restaurant just as I finished boxing these rhubarb St-Germain macarons, altogether about fifteen minutes after my first text. Which got me thinking about how I reached the point where I can say, “macarons save the day” when so many people experience the exact opposite. 1. What kind of quirks does your oven have? 2. 3. Kitty macarons in Cookies, biscuits and shortbreads recipes. When Life Gives You Lemons...It's Time for a Mac Attack! (Lemon Macarons with White Chocolate Ganache) Guest posts and macarons have become quite the norm recently here, haven't they? I'm actually getting a bit tired of photographing these cookies so much 8p. In fact I'd have waited weeks to post these, except that I've gotten such positive feedback on the taste of them from friends and family alike!
Plus, I've been dying to share these adorable lemon shapes with you as soon as I came across the idea on Erica's blog. Believe it or not I actually lost my Mac Mojo a bit this week and had to make these 3 times before they came out to my liking. Not only have I continued to struggle with my hot spot-laden oven but this recipe also added in a new factor of slightly adjusting the shape of the shells. Fortunately, despite my meekness in dealing with certain issues in life, that's not a problem I have with baking! As I mentioned before, a lot of my macaron issues have been the result of reducing the sugar in the shells. What do I mean? Preheat the oven to 285 to 300 degrees F. Rhubarb hello kitty macarons. I haven't been able to find rhubarb at my local grocery store lately, until one day it just showed up again! I almost did a jump for joy right there at the store!
I decided to buy extra this time because, a) we had plans to have lunch with some friends over the weekend and I wanted to make rhubarb macarons for them, and b) my cousin Angie was coming to visit again (yippee!!!) And I wanted to make her another rhubarb tart. For the macaron shells, I added a bit of bright pink coloring to match the rhubarb, and piped them out as usual onto my silpat-lined baking sheets. For the filling, I whipped up cream cheese, butter, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, and salt. Despite the slight bumpyness of the ears (from dragging a toothpick through the wet macaron batter to create the pointy ears), the Hello Kitty macarons still looked cute.