Macarons!

Happy New Year! 

I write this post from the comfort of the crane that now lifts me off the couch and deposits me into bed on a daily basis. Such is the product of my holiday activities (or rather, lack thereof), and of my inability to say no to anything sweet. Once, I ate something off the floor not knowing what it was. But that was in 2008, many resolutions ago. (It smelled really good though, and to put mystery to rest, I've decided it was a piece of chocolate cake.)  All shame aside, I did achieve something very exciting and, hopefully, impressive over these holidays: I made my very first macarons!  No, not the pile of coconut mush wrapped in dingy plastic and sold at gas stations, but the Parisian perfection I first sampled when spending a week in the city of love.  I started with a recipe I got from the LCBO Food &Wine magazine, but it failed me many times and I would strongly recommend against using it. Five attempts and many wasted egg whites later, I went online, combined five different recipes, and finally settled on one I followed in Spanish. The results were fabulous, but because of all the switching around, I literally cannot repeat the recipe ever again.  So I created one of my own, as follows. I can't promise these ingredients and preparation method will yield results identical to mine, but what I can promise is that each part was, in fact, a part of my personal experience.

Recipe for Macarons

Ingredients:

1 cup of broken promises, sifted

1 melted spatula

1 broken hand mixer

1/2 a hand, burned

3 meters of black and white tiled floor, covered in ground almond

1-2 family members, unwilling to come near you

4.5 swear words, gently mixed into uncontrollable fits of anger 

1 bowl full of completely assembled meringue mix, thrown swiftly against the wall due to eggs' unwillingness to rise

Directions: 

Mix all ingredients, except last.  Notice ingredients will not mix the way recipe promises they will. Throw ingredients down the drain. Realize you have now spent more on batter than you would've on a box of macarons. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.  Top with last ingredient.

Makes: 

Life seem surreal, when, by the third night, you're no longer sure if you've said "kitten" or "kitchen".

From the top: Chocolate Fleur de Sel, Pistachio, Gingerbread Spice

The cutest little presents!

The most tired I've been in years