meet the macaron

I have always been slightly intimidated by French macarons. These are not the typical American macaroons that you may be thinking of - coconut balls held together with sugar. These macarons only need one "o" to be completely fabulous. And coconut is not typically involved. While the overall principle of baking macarons seems simple, there are many points during the process where failure is a possibility. Here is a timeline of my experience with macarons in the last month.

Late May: Greg and I stop at the chic Pistacia Vera dessert boutique in Columbus on our way to West Virginia. We are in awe of the beautiful macarons and buy three varieties to try - mocha hazelnut, pistachio and key lime. The mocha hazelnut was our favorite and I'm left wanting to buy one of each flavor. Good thing we were already on the highway when I pondered this possibility because they are $1.25 a pop.

Early June: We have an order for chocolate hazelnut macarons at the bakery and I am enlisted to help make them. After a guided tutorial from my co-worker, I feel like I'm getting to know the macaron, what makes it tick and what makes it angry. I bake off a batch and pipe them full of chocolate buttercream. Happy baker and happy customer.

Mid-June: My time has come. I have almonds and oranges left over from making muffins and decide to make orange macarons. Would you expect anything else? I started by tweaking a recipe for lemon curd to make orange curd instead and then started working on the cookies. I piped out the mixture onto a baking sheet and prayed diligently while they were in the oven.

After adding filling and letting the macarons rest overnight, they were ready for their main appearance - a gift to our friends Crista and Mark on their cross country move to Sante Fe. I also made a gluten-free chocolate tart for the occasion, but that unfortunately overflowed and charred on the bottom of our oven, so thank goodness I had these macarons. (I have spared you a picture of the charred tart with no flour.) The macarons turned out to be very tasty and I managed to impress myself, Greg and our friends.

Current day: I have overcome my fear of macarons and plan on making another flavor soon. And I can't wait to taste test many varieties when we visit the home of the macaron in October - France!

my oven's still on

Even though it feels like an oven outside, our oven has been on inside the house several times since my last post. My lemon cake that made the journey to West Virginia last month was a delight (even though it was re-baked in the trunk on the way there). Greg's grandmother made us an array of goodies to enjoy as well and we had a great visit.

On the way to West Virginia, we made a stop in Columbus, Ohio for lunch and a bit of shopping. I picked up two fabulous new baking books and have been trying out new recipes for the last few weeks with much success. First up were these almond, orange and blueberry muffins.

Healthy and tasty. Not over-sized and full of sugar. Sign me up. On a not-so-healthy note, I now have a recipe for some very decadent rice crispy treats. Imagine a thinner version of your typical rice crispy treat topped with a layer of melted peanut butter and milk chocolate which is topped with a layer of melted dark chocolate. A small bite of this treat will cure any chocolate craving. And you can stop imagining them because I took a picture.

Speaking of chocolate, I recently made a batch of brownies to take to a friend and nearly broke Greg's heart by only saving him one little piece. Here's what he missed out on.

 

I did, however, save him one of the strawberry whoopie pies that I made for the same occasion. One of my recent book purchases is all about whoopie pies, so expect some additional whoopie updates in the future. I promise to keep it all about food.

And that's not all folks...but I think this is all of the eye candy you can handle for today. I don't want to raise your blood sugar too much in one post.