.: relentless baker :.

The barely edible scones didn't squash my baking spirit (well it did for a few hours...). If anything, I wanted to tackle a slightly more complicated baking project: macarons. A bit ambitious for someone who can't bake without disaster, but what the hell. Never know until you try it, right? This time I made sure I have all ingredients are available. I got the recipe from David Leibovitz' website because he already tried several baking techniques and this one was the no-fail-guaranteed-it-will-look-like-macaron-so-help-me-God recipe. I did switch the cocoa powder with Starbucks' mocha powder. (caffeine+sugar! woohoo!) At first everything fell according to plan...

Then I bang my head on the cabinet door and drop my egg yolks into the bowl of egg whites that I separated earlier. What a coincidence that the egg whites bowl was just right there?! So I redid the egg whites and that was why we ate egg foo young for dinner that night. :p

I used double layers of parchment paper because some people commented that their macarons stick to the parchment paper and cracked when they tried to remove it. My piping job was inconsistent so the sizes sort of varied. After a few minutes in the oven I was so pleased to see the 'little feet'. However this was done closer to 10-12 minutes as opposed to 15-18 minutes as mentioned in the recipe. I tried leaving one batch for 18 minutes and they cracked.

I use the chocolate ganache filling using Ghirardelli's bittersweet 70% chocolate bar, but maybe next time I'll use the 100% cacao unsweetened because it balances out the sweetness of the macarons (5 cups of sugar is too sweet for my taste)

And voila! The rugged, natural-looking macarons.