Daring Bakers October: Macarons

For the month of October we got to take on one of many bakers' deepest, darkest kitchen nightmares : macarons. Our talented bakers Korena from Korena in the Kitchen and Rachael from pizzarossa made the intimidating task of mastering these French beauties a breeze

I failed this recipe three times this month, twice in the French method and once in the Italian.


This was the first fail--vanilla bean in the French method. I tried again the second time, but again, it failed.


Here are the chocolate macarons in the Italian method that I tried to make just tonight in an effort to redeem myself. Again, a fail. *sigh*

I've made macarons before, successfully. I made them the last time we made them with the Daring Bakers, and those didn't turn out so well, either. One time I made them , and they kind of turned out. Twice, even.

I know my egg whites were overbeaten every time, but for some reason, they were drying out before I could get all the liquid egg white incorporated. It was so frustrating, watching this happen as it was happening. Part of the problem may have been using eggs that were too new. Part may have been trying to reduce the recipe to 2/3 for each time I made the French method. In the Italian method. I think I had too much of the egg white in the meringue mixture and not enough in the almond mixture, all while starting with egg whites that were just overbeaten. I'll have to go back and compare notes to times my macarons have actually come out. It wasn't all a loss, though--I gave the vanilla macarons to my friends, branding them as the Italian cookie bruitti ma buoni. I haven't decided yet what to do with the chocolate shells.

Check out my fellow DBers' results through our blogroll.