Macarons

Monday isn't my favourite day, for many reasons. So I'll write about Sunday instead. Fortunately I still have some of my macarons left to photograph today.

I admit to having loved the look of pretty little macarons ever since they burst on to the scene several years ago. Cupcakes don't float my boat at all, but I once paid £5 for a macaron and a pot of Earl Grey, so that I could sit in the cafe-with-a-view at the top of Tate Modern. I'd never attempted to make them, but my ears pricked up when a woman at Denman (the Womens Institute college) said she'd been once on a course in the art of macaron making. Turned out that Denman didn't have a solo course in macarons, so I chose Ashburton cookery school for a half-day's instruction.

The course was well taught, busy, and: incredibly noisy! I hadn't expected that. Turns out that you make the meringue shell by mixing together ground almonds and sugar (both sieved) then adding egg white and powdered food colour. You then mix together sugar and water and heat to exactly 114 degrees C, at which point you begin beating more egg whites. At soft peak, you stop beating. At 120 C, you take the syrup off the heat. You then drizzle the molten syrup into the egg white and beat carefully with a hand-held electric mixer. When it's all combined, you fold it into the almond paste you made earlier, in three batches. At this point, you pour the mixture into a piping bag, snip off the end, and pipe several small circles on to a tray. Then you bang the metal tray vigorously, several times, to get the air out of the meringue and make the shells glossy. The macarons then go into a preheated oven (145 C for approx 17 mins) while the chef sits down and pours a large whiskey....

I was the only person on the course who didn't have a partner, (not because I smell or anything) so I had to work twice as fast as everyone else in pairs. but did get some help from the assistant, and twice as many macarons to take home. We had to let the macarons cool, then sandwich them with fillings provided, such as creme patissier, chocolate ganache, salted caramel sauce, and decorate them with drizzled chocolate, freeze dried raspberries, chopped nuts, and much, much more.

My decoration fell somewhat short of my expectations, but the damn macarons were taking their time to cook! Writing I now realise that my oven was set to 140, not 145! I came away with all the recipes and more filled and finished macarons than I could imagine ever owning. I've also got several boxes of 'shells' to freeze until I such time as I can more fillings, and embellish them with drizzled chocolate, etc.

In the meantime, I'm not yet ready to start selling them in the farmer's market, but I'm dead chuffed that I got so far. Hence the blip tonight, while there are still some macarons left. Oh, and by the way, these are macarons, made with almond flour, as opposed to macaroons, which are those British coconutty biscuits. We followed the Italian macaron recipe because it is easier than the French macaron method, which involves more waiting around for the macarons to form a skin before baking.

The important thing is the foot (the crumbly bit at the base) so it's appropriate that Bomble's paws should be just about visible, back right of the shot. "'Every photograph can be improved by the addition of a black cat", he informed me. I"m not sure that I agree with him.