Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Le Premier Macaron

From Left to Right: first row- macaron with salted caramel, cinnamon macaron with white chocolate caramel cream; third row- filled with cream caramel.

Voila!! Mon premier macaron...!

I would not call it a perfection just yet but it is definitely a huge step forward to making the perfect heavenly shaped macaron with delicious ganache filling. Today is the third day of baking macaron since I started on Monday, the fourth batch with countless of washing, kilos of almond meal, a few kilos of sugar and about 15 egg yolks that will turn into a lemon custard tart tomorrow. Yes I am in love with macarons, you can read a quick history of it in here, in my other blog which I started when I ran away to Paris for three months, kidding! about the running away part, but I did spent three months in Paris earlier this year and it definitely changed me in a lot of ways! initially my parents disagreed letting their youngest daughter ventured away by herself to Paris, alone, single and without a care in the world, but I survived (phewwww, as my dad would say from time to time) and had the best experience ever! For the first month I interned with Collette Dinnigan for Paris Fashion Week and the last two months I studied intensively french language at Alliance Française. Fashion is my background but at the moment, I am sooooo over it, well not really over it but I am taking a break from all of that designing and living in my own little shoe box.

Setback: they have the unfortunate cruch* (macaron is suppose to be pretty goey, soft and fragile) these are pretty hard. However the cinnamon flavoured (yellow) did had a more supply texture as I added more almond and icing sugar mixture.

Now, back to my love-affair with macarons, funnily when I was in Paris, I wasn't obsessed with them, yes I passed Ladurée everyday on my way home from Rue Bonaparte and once when I lived further away in the 15eme arrondissement, I missed a bus home and had a stopover at Ladurée and scored a vanilla and caramel macarons. Yes we all know they are divine, but I was cool with them, perhaps because I see them everywhere. But when I went back to Melbourne, I felt something was missing around me, and to my surprise there were a few places selling macarons here but as Duncan from Syrup and Tang wrote, Melbourne macarons are pretty bad. So that got me thinking, mmhhh maybe I should make my own, haha and so the journey began, first I enrolled at Savour School for their full-day macaron class and it was worth every digits!

So since then I was hooked and been making them non-stop. Here is le premier macaron and I am pretty proud of them!

La Recette as adapted from the Italian method

macaron shell
Tant pour Tant (almond meal and icing sugar mix)
70g of fine almond meal (ground to a powdery texture)
67g of pure icing sugar

50g egg whites (divides into two equal amount in separate bowls)

67g caster sugar
16g water

Now, the step by step formula is adapted from Syrup and Tang's. There is limitless formula in the Internet world, and I find that the Italian method is best so far. I chose this one because it has the less grams quantity so that I can make more batches if I make errors.

Ok now I'm happy and thanks to Duncan I did a pretty good job. And welcome to my macaron blog!




2 comments:

Julia @Mélanger said...

You have done fabulously well for your first efforts! Mine were not as glossy as yours first go. Where did you get your violet?

Lady Macaron said...

hi julia
aw thank you! oh actually i called it violet because of the colour, ooops, i will update it! sorry to confuse. But i do know that a chocolate shop in Melbourne sells violet-lavender infused syrup. Let me know if u want the address!

e