Macaron fail & Olympic knitting

I was at work Saturday night and we were going to get out early, so I thought what better than to bake! I grabbed 2 great gal pals from work and we set out to make Macarons. We made it from THIS BOOK, and thought we were so legit because everything was going to plan! Just look at our baking skills.



Attempting to have the peaks with the egg whites.



Letting the food processor get our crushed almonds and flour and hazelnuts all mix together. We actually doubled our batches because we wanted to feed everyone at work our fabulous macroons.



So much so that we needed so many bowls.



This is where we think we might went wrong. Or at least partially. This is our version of sifting the dry ingredients. I must say that this morning, my handsome man of mine, has gotten me a sifter =). I am very excited to try some of the ingredients that have failed because of this damn sifting necessity.



Piping the macarons are not too hard, but we think we had runny batter. . . This doesn't keep shape of a proper macaron. We were also piping onto wax paper, which I think is the same thing as parchment paper, just cheaper.



After piping, you have to let the macrons sit for 20 to 30 minutes. We let them set for 25 minutes. Then we put them in the oven and baked them for 10 minutes. You then have to let them cool for 10 to 15 minutes. After all this waiting you can attempt to take them off the parchment paper. Let me just confess that this is way harder than you think.

1. We were very anxious.
2. After confessing our epic fail to the pastry chef at my work, we should have put the cookie pans in the freezer for a few minutes so the cookies could peel off the wax paper easy.
3. Apparently French Macarons are IMPOSSIBLE to make.



We made a double batch, which should have given us 32 sandwich macarons. We got 8. It was super sad, but we each had 1, and my mother snacked on the rest because I forgot to take them to work. We were proud with what we accomplished, and will try these again, but they took 2 hours to get all the ingredients, prep the batter, wait for them to sit, bake, cool and put together. These Hazelnut Chocolate Macarons are hard to make, but what we did, were good.

The girls were very happy they helped me. They said it would've been nuts to try these on my own, and I agree.

Now onto my knitting =)



I started this exactly when the opening ceremonies began in London. I am very proud of my progress but still know I have to keep moving. I'll be knitting everyday and I have to. I'm excited to have a sweater :)



Lastly I wanted to show off some flowers I got for my room =). Just wanted a little bit of pink flowers to brighten my room up.

Until next time, I'll be knitting ;-)

<3 Carly