Macarun Like the Wind from My Bad Puns
If you want to learn how to make macarons from the internet, well, there are hundreds of people who will tell you how to do it. None of them will hold your hand when you cry over how yours look nothing like the pretty little cookies lined up in rows in every snooty bakery this side of the Willamette. But thankfully, neither will they be around to force you to share with them when your ugly duckling macarons turn out to taste light years better than the pretty little cookies lined up in rows in every snooty bakery this side of the Willamette.
I think things started going south once I realized I didn't have a pastry bag, which all the pros use. Or maybe things got a little dodgy when it was revealed that my eight-year-old assistant had never folded his own shirts, let alone folded dry ingredients into delicate peaks of egg whites. Mercifully my English degree has left me well-equipped with an arsenal of metaphors for this kind of situation.
CHILDCARE PROFESSIONAL: Pretend like the egg whites are a baby and you don't want to kill it.
CHILD LABORER ASSISTANT: Okay. But what if I don't like babies?
CHILDCARE PROFESSIONAL: We can kill it later when we put it in the oven. I think this baby would taste a lot better if we baked it.
CHILD ASSISTANT: I'm going to stab it with the spatula.
[THE BATTER IS STABBED]
CHILD ASSISTANT: I think stabbing works better than folding.
CHILDCARE PROFESSIONAL: Ah, sweet, sweet innocence.
Clearly I was born to care for children.
This time around I followed a recipe from the Los Angeles Times; I think I only have my inexperience to blame for their appearance. David Leibovitz has another recipe that I might try next, although it uses quite a bit more sugar than this one, which means I'll have to use a filling that's less sweet than dulce de leche. I tried out my homemade raspberry jam, some chocolate cabarnet sauce, and this, and dulce de leche was the clear winner. Although since I slathered it inside of a French pastry I think I'll have to refer to it as confiture de lait.
