Macarons cont.

Didn't get to bake yesterday but I made up for it today! Made three batches of macarons today, all with their own flavors, and had time to squeeze in a huge batch of vanilla buttercream and trial two of the lemon meringue tarlets.

Pretty happy with the results but they could've been better. Actually I initially thought today was going to be a complete disaster because my batter was a little more runnier than usual. That, and I couldn't find my tools! In the end, I still couldn't find the proper piping tips, which resulted in my cookies being all kinds of shapes and sizes :(

I recently purchased a huge (and suuuper expenisve) jar of strawberry powder so I started with that today. As I previously mentioned, the raspberry color didn't turn out so well last time so I up-ed it to 1Tb. today, which resulted in a very nice pink color. Unfortunately, the same thing ended up happening! They began to brown in the oven, despite me lowering the temperature a tad. I even tried blanching the raw almonds last time thinking it was the brown casing but to no avail. At least I was on the money with the batters being more runny today. It results in little to no feet at all on my strawberry batch :( I stirred/whipped it one too many times. But they smell good? I'm not too worried since I have friends coming home this weekend that will most likely eat these anyway.

Some browning occured on my green tea batch but it's still green to some extent. Looks more muddy green in thepicture, but you get the idea. I first only put in 2t. of green tea powder but I wanted a richer color so I added another t. I'm not so sure it was a good choice. Next time I'll stick with just 2t. But the flavor is great! Really tastes like green tea.

Because I still had a good amount of egg whites left, I decided at last minute to bake a batch of chocolate ones. To be honest, I've read a lot of disappointing stories regarding chocolate macarons so I expected failure, and therefore didn't really care too much about this batch. It turns out NOT caring is the key! This batch turned out PERFECT. Look at the feet on these bad boys!

Couple tips that are working out for me:

- run the almonds and powdered sugar through a sieve

- combine the dry ingredients to the meringue in two installments

I'm thinking I'll fill the green tea ones with a mango buttercream... weird combo but super asian, no?; the strawberries ones with a strawberry buttercream (to give more color); and the chocolate ones with NUTELLA! If I'm too lazy to get Nutella though I might settle with some left over mocha ganache I have.

Probably won't have time this weekend to bake any more until Monday but leave comments with flavors I should try :)

--fatty regina