Mint chocolate macaron failure.
If you recall from yesterday’s post, I’ve decided to take on the challenge of self-teaching myself the art of macarons. The first batch I made, Red Velvet, came out delicious, but not beautiful, by any means. I truly struggled with making discs of batter on the cookie sheet, and didn’t use “aged eggs.”
So yesterday, I decided to take what I learned, and make a new batch, but this time, I’d make a Mint Chocolate variety, making a light chocolate cookie with a minty butter cream filling. Yum, right?
Anyway, I started off with “aged eggs,” and made the same batter as I did the day before for the Red Velvet, but instead used green food coloring.
But the day was getting late, (it was almost midnight. I couldn’t stay up any longer.) and after nearly an hour after piping the batter onto parchment-lined baking sheets, the cookies hadn’t yet developed the hard outer shell required before baking. I opted to go to sleep, and set an alarm for 2 a.m., at which time, I’d stumble out of bed, and bake the dang cookies.
So my alarm went off and I dutifully stumbled out of bed at 2 a.m. to put these stupid cookies in the stupid oven to bake. I was way tired, and figured that after they were done baking, the oven would be as good as any place for them to hang out until morning. (No, the oven was not on.) Unfortunately, the cookies got super dried out, and are not at all like macarons. They’re more like super crunchy (albiet delicious) meringue cookies.
But I learned something while I was barely awake, baking these suckers. I did some more reading on these French cookies, and discovered that I probably didn’t work the batter near enough, while still not over-working it. Yeah, that sounds like a really fine line, but this is another important lesson. And because I don’t give up, next time, I will make sure to test the batter before piping out the rounds, to make sure that the peaks immediately flatten. Wish me luck!
Stick around for more March Macaron Madness.
