Macaro(o)ns

There are times when I bake and I seriously end up thinking, why do I bother? and this is what I've ended up thinking both times previously when I've tried to make macarons. We have a history, and to say I find them difficult is an understatement.

The first time I tried to make these little delights, I got to the end only to find that the shells were literally glued to the baking paper. And I mean literally. Impossible to get off. You would pull the outer shell off only to find the inside still stuck on the tray. The second time, I ended up with one giant macaron in the oven, (did I pipe them too close together?). It was not pretty.

But needless to say, I didn't want to go down without a fight so, on Thursday, I tried again, spurred on by the Ladurée Sucré book, which my sister kindly bought for me for my birthday (which by the way is so cute!). Obviously I also read up online on for and tips and tricks that would make the experience as easy as possible (ha!). Oh, and I roped my boyfriend into being my 'sous chef' ; )

The chocolate ganache to fill them with was simple enough, chocolate, hot cream, butter. It's in the fridge chilling, but now the hard part as always, the shells. I melt the chocolate, whip the egg whites, food process and sift the almond flour, icing sugar and cocoa powder (which takes forever as I have a mini food processor!), and eventually get the three things to make a homogenous mixture that I can now pipe onto trays lined with baking paper (do I not learn my lesson?).

Piping is definitely not my forte. The mixture just seems to go everywhere and yet again I think I piped the shells slightly too big, but neverthless they were not that bad. In fact when they came out the oven I thought they were actually alright, slightly cracked, not perfect, but alright. Until I go to peel them off the sheet, and destroy about ten of the shells in the process.

The book suggested to, after taking the macarons out of the oven, pour a few drops of water between the baking paper and the tray, to create steam, which should hopefully make the macarons easier to lift off, and don't get me wrong, I gave this a go, but the macarons were so soft at this point that if I tried to lift the paper up, the shells would break, so I gave this idea a miss, and decided to come up with one of my own (!).

The only way I could get anything slightly resembling a macaron shell off the paper was to flip them upside down. So, you see the picture above? What I did was place a tray on top of that tray, and then literally flip it, so the macarons ended up looking a bit like this below. Then and only then was I able to peel the paper gently off the macarons and cut them free.

Let me make this clear though, I love macarons, I really do love eating them. But making them just seems to be one of those things that I cannot master, no matter how closely I follow a recipe, or how much effort I put in. To contradict this, however, of course I'll be making this recipe again, but this time, I was thinking maybe I should bake them for a little bit longer, so that maybe they'll be easier to release...what does everyone think? What experiences have you had with baking macarons, good or bad?