Be Conspicuous: French Macarons ~ Is Conspicuousness Edible?

Dear Colourful Candy Bums, enjoy life and let us Be Conspicuous!

My macaron journey has been quite magical. Macaron fairies may have been there to sprinkle some fairy dusts and blessed my macarons and made sure they were there to see them grow stunningly beautiful holey feet!

Let me bring you back to year 2012, the year where it all began.

Before I started brewing macarons, I made sure I watched thousands of videos of people making the naughty, temperamental sweet devils. Each time I watched, it only made my urges to achieve what others have even stronger! I also read tonnes of articles about problems people encountered when giving lives to the devils. (Yes, they are wicked like THAT!)

With the immunity in mind, I, the ultimate magician, heated the cauldron and started beating the egg whites, the French way.

Basically, meringue making has 3 types: The French, the Italian and the Swiss way.

The French way, by far, the easiest way, if you are planning to bake your meringue in the oven, go ahead and use this method. The French way requires no heating of any of the ingredients for the meringue. All you need to do is just whisk the stabilised egg white to soft peaks then add caster sugar gradually and whisk until firm peaks.

Stabilising egg white: It is recommended to use lemon juice or cream of tartar to stabilise egg white. As long as the pH is not 7 the egg white is stabilised and the peaks form is firm enough for folding later on.

The Italian way, slightly tricky. If you are planning to kill all the germs in the egg white and not letting it go into the oven, by all means, do it the Italian way. This requires heating up the sugar with water mixture, making a sugar syrup and slowly pour it into the beaten, soft-peaked egg whites. Pouring the hot sugar syrup into the egg white will slowly cook the egg white/ kill the bacteria, but not to the extend of making scrambled egg.

The Swiss way is not easy. It requires much skill and control of the heat. You beat the egg white on a bain-marie or a water bath. So, as you're beating the egg white, it is being cooked as well. It is said that the Swiss meringue has the most stable meringue.

Then, I so happily added liquid-based blue food colouring into the meringue and combined it well. It turned out to be a little to the cyan/turquoise colour! I was sad-mad!

Then I mingled in the almond flour + powdered/icing sugar into the meringue and slowly scraped the bottom of the bowl clockwise, while turning the bowl in the opposite direction. This process is crucial to the success of your macarons. Folding the the dry ingredients into the meringue (called macaronage) is to incorporate all the ingredients well, but the same time, not to beat all the air out.

You have just spent like half of the time earlier to beat air INTO the meringue and now you cannot just beat them all out again, right?

I folded until the macaronage reached the lava stage. It is a very ambiguous phrase. "Lava stage" What it means is that when you scrape up a part of the macaronage and let them slowly drop back into the bowl. Now, observe. See if the part that has dropped back into the bowl actually form the same layer as the macaronage that was left in there. If it still has multiple layers, it means your macaronage is still too thick and requires more folding. Do not worry if you did not get it right, this is the hardest and the most important step and requires practice! *cheers*

Here is how they looked when they came out of the oven, anything but round!

If you over-fold your macaronage, it will be very hard for you to handle or pipe later. Everything will flow like water and leave you with a sweet and colourful mess!

Next, it is all about piping! The first time I did it, nothing was round! Do not laugh when you see this!

My very first batch of macarons! <3

Despite the shape of it, THEY HAVE FEET! THANK THE MACARON FAIRIES! <3

Then, I piped in the chocolate ganache and found them their partners and hamburger-ed them together!

Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. PERFECT! *dies*

Driven by my own little success, I kept on brewing more macaron babies the following dayS, using different food colouring, of course!

Second batch of pinkies!

Third and forth and fifth, ALL IN DIFFERENT FLAVOURS!

Of course, my macaron journey has not been all magic and unicorns and rainbow and sunshine...
There were some batches that were cracked and no feet and then...

DISASTER! *sobs*

Nothing is sweeter than macaron disasters! *noms* *stuffs into friends' mouth*

Those were 2012. I did not just stop there. Even just a day before, I made some macarons, as well. And the recent ones are of course, much better looking than the ones in 2012. Today is 2015.

Baking, is indeed a constant experimentation. With macarons, it is sometimes about the weather, sometimes about the baking paper, the proportion of the ingredients, the ganache. Basically, if ONE thing goes wrong, your macarons will NOT look pretty.