Macarons!

This is something I had wanted to try forever! I even procured a giant bag of almond flour. And then... Life.

Sick, busy, or both, weekend after weekend. Happily, Easter is a four-day weekend, and no one was ill, so I finally had time for an attempt!

I followed David Lebovitz's links to bravetart's recipe. first step is beating the egg whites. Looked suspiciously like our ceiling.

Somewhere, in all of my reading, I read that you can save time by drawing circles on a piece of paper, and putting it under your parchment when you pipe. Seemed to work. But the only thing I was able to find that was the right size to trace was an old New Year's Eve noisemaker.

They are lumpy on top! But they have little feet!

And many cracks on the surface!

These are among the prettiest:

Much more practice is required. Lots and lots. I think I needed to crush out more air when adding the almonds. I was a bit afraid to do that. The chocolate ones are a bit better than the plain for that reason - I made one batch of batter, piped out about half of it, added 1 Tbs cocoa to the remainder, and squished out more air while mixing it in.

Also, for the record, I made a half-batch of Swiss meringue buttercream - 5 oz egg whites, 5 oz sugar, 1 lb butter - and flavoured half with caramel, half with raspberry puree. The raspberry... well despite a full punnet of berries, it had no flavour, and looked kind of grey. It's still edible, I have no problem eating it by the spoonful, but it isn't what I hoped for. Luckily, the caramel half was more than enough to fill all the macarons, with a bit leftover. So next time, it will be 2.5 oz of whites and sugar, and a half pound of butter.