Macarons vs. Brilynn: Round 3

The macarons are currently in the lead 3-0 and they show no signs of going easy on me anytime soon. My whole obsession with macarons is completely ridiculous because I’ve never actually had a French macaron but it seems like everyone else and their dog has and they’ve blogged about it. It was only a matter of time before I jumped on that bandwagon and tried to make some macarons of my own. The first time around I used a Nigella Lawson recipe and ended up with a lot of burnt chocolate things. I refuse to call those macarons, because they weren’t. Most of them had to be thrown out and the rest looked like they had been beat with an ugly stick. Then, 5 months later after my wounds had time to heal, I tried again, this time with a Michel Richard recipe. I got one good macaron out of the whole batch. The rest were disfigured, let’s not rehash that pain anymore. As much as I like to play up my feud with Nigella, I know that both of my failures were due to personal error and not the recipes themselves. For some reason the art of the macaron eludes me. It’s been 5 months since my last macaron debacle so I was ready to try again. I was encouraged by seeing so many other people succeeding at making stunning and colourful macarons and then there’s that saying: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Well I’ve tried and tried again and tried yet again and it still hasn’t worked! I feel like a gambler who keeps throwing money down, convinced that one of these hands I’m going to win the jackpot but instead I end up broke, forced to sell my house and live in a van down by the river. There’s only so many times you can attempt something before you have to admit that it’s not for you. And that’s really a shame because I’m constantly thinking of potential macaron flavour combinations that I’d love to try but at this point I think I’ll have to contract them out to other people to make for me.

Most recently I tried making a rum flavoured macaron from this recipe from The Traveler’s Lunchbox which is by all accounts a wonderful recipe that has produced beautiful macarons for a great number of bloggers. The recipe is not the problem. I am the problem. I’m macaron-challenged. The macarons you see here are some of the few that turned out. I overbaked most of them, resulting in dry, brittle macarons which were only made partially salvageable with mountains of crème chiboust, (leftover from the mille feuille which was leftover from an as yet unnamed venture… oooh the suspense!). The handful of macarons that turned out properly were quite good though so the carrot is still being dangled in front of me, just out of reach, urging me to continue on with macaron making despite multiple failed attempts. I seem to be making them in 5 month intervals though, so you can expect the next macaron post to come sometime around October.

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Macarons + Cookies + Rum