I’m officially obsessed. I want to make every macaron flavor in the Universe– every odd, outrageous, and wonderful flavor known to man– and file all the really memorable ones into my repertoire. But right now I have to experiment with recipes and techniques to find the ones that produce consistent results for me. And then I have to master them. And I also seriously need a better oven, but more on that later.
Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of hands-on application to become an expert at anything. And I know this is only my second try at macarons, but the improvement in knowledge from my first to my second try is immense. The recipe I tried this time was the French macaron recipe from the adorable Les Petits Macarons book. It’s a little difficult to bake from because the base recipe is a few pages away from the flavor variations so you have to flip pages, but you can easily remedy this problem by typing the full recipe up into one piece of paper or recipe card. (Luckily I’ve done that for you already!) Despite this, the instructions in the book are very informative, and it has a troubleshooting portion at the back with scenarios and pictures which is beyond useful.
The smorgasbord of flavor combinations between shells and fillings the book offers is probably enough to allow you to clock in the 10,000 hours if you make them all. There is no doubt in my mind that I will get there, but for now I’m going with something very simple, straightforward, and fresh-tasting: Lemon Macarons.
Baby-steps, you know?
