i ♥ macarons

Sickly sweet and beautifully outrageous in their colourful guises, I am in love with these. I'm not sure where I first saw them, before Kirsten Dunst's Marionette made them fashionable and it possibly had something to do with absurdly bright make-up coming back into vogue, but that's unimportant. I think there's something beautiful about them.

Macarons are French almond merigue which has to have a smooth, domed shell, a ragged foot and is sandwiched with butter icing, jam or ganache. They are also considered one of the most difficult sweets to bake, mostly because of the precision needed to make them, but for some reason I've become obsessed with getting them right!

Attempt one, a fluffy pink affair ended in a melted pile of mush on a baking sheet. I was being over ambitious. But attempt two (below) was much better!

Bad butter icing though, I used their recipe and not the one from the Good Food cookery book which has falling to pieces through years of over use. Never stray off the beaten path - no pun intended.

The next attempt, again pink - I have no luck with pink ones - fell and cracked, I didn't leave them in the oven long enough. Then Delicious magazine published a recipe - hurrah! One I didn't have to convert measurements or translate language!

And they were so pretty and very tasty, but they don't really conform to the ideals...but I tried again today and they did! The recipe worked perfectly and I have no idea what I did last time, but I gave these ones an extra minute in the oven, they got the foot at the base, the stayed smooth, they crisped up but didn't fall and they're sandwiched with Nutella, which is very nice!

So I'm having a bit of a macaron adventure at the moment. They're not perfect yet, but I'm getting better especially as I am the girl who once managed to grill a birthday cake.

I'm still adapting the recipe so expect more incarnations and eventually a recipe!

Listening: Emily Loizeau - Tristesse