Pink Macaron with Vanilla buttercream, Macaron with Nutella buttercream

Anybody that knows me well would know that upon the revelation of this month’s daring baker’s challenge, I was shitting myself.

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Prior to attempting this month’s challenge, my half dozen past experiences with macaron went something like this.

1. Separate egg whites from yolk

2. Whisk and add ingredients according to instruction

3. Pipe the macronage

4. Kneeling, with eyes glued to the oven for 10-15 minutes.

5. Pull out the failed macarons and discard it.

With such traumatic experiences, you can understand why I was so hesitant in dipping my toes into such a challenge again. Alas, it is the nature of the DBC, over coming your fears, creating things you’d never thought possible and learning from your mistakes.

To prepare myself for the daunting task ahead, I consulted the Holy Bible of Macaron that is Tartelette’s blog. After reading through her macaron posts, I was feeling confident enough to give the macaron one last go.

My fear of failure, and reading about people’s unsucessful attempts at macaron using the recipe provided, I opted for Tartelette’s standard recipe. Imagine my suprise when out of the overn, I pulled out a tray of successful macarons, with feet and all.

I was so happy with my success that I started to get a little obsessed, making another half a dozen batches, each time yielding beautiful macarons and experimenting with flavours.

Since first having mini macarons at Sepia, I’ve come to love these miniature versions. I dabbled with coloured dye, so resulted in blue macarons, and black sesame shells with buttercream filling.

My mum loves coconuts, so I made her a coconut/almond meal macaron with pandan leaf flavoured buttercream. Despite it taking me over an hour to fill up the jar, it took mum and the brother less than half an hour to demolish it. I take that as a good sign.

The obligatory tower of macaron, top to bottom: Black sesame shell with vanilla buttercream filling, coconut and almond meal shell with Pandan flavoured buttercream, and blue shell with vanilla buttercream.

Like any proud parent, I was showing off my little babies. Here’s a hanfdul of the mini macarons.

By this stage, with about 5 succesful macaron attempts under my belt, I decided to give macaron making a break. However, due to left over ingredients I decided to play around with different colours and create something different.

Eiffel Tower

The one thing that comes to my mind at the mere mention of Macaron is Paris.

Using super dooper mini macarons, I decided to diagrammatically present it in the form of the Eiffel Tower.

Nearing completion, Dad commented that it looked like the Eiffel Tower, YAY! I’m glad someone can make out what I was attempting.

My Eiffel Tower macaron in all it’s glory.

Joining the Daring Baker’s Challenge should come with a health warning; WARNING: BEING A DBC MEMBER WILL UNLEASH OCD THAT YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED Since completing my challenge, I’ve noticed that there are a few habits that I’ve picked up or things I’m obsessed about.

1. Looking out for powdered dye at every store that I go to

2. Ensuring that egg whites are aged for 4 days, no more, no less.

3. Looking at feets, whether it be macaron or human.

4. Running around the house looking for spots with the best natural sunlight.

5. Looking out for items that can be used as props for future photo taking sessions

6. The word “Lava like”

After sucessfully churning out about 8 batches of Macaron, I am happy to announce that I’m finally able to move ahead, putting the macaron demon behind me. Once again, thank you to Ami for choosing a great challenge, you’ve helped me over come my failures.

© Linda for eatshowandtell, 2009. | Permalink | 45 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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