Ok, so a few posts back, I showed you what I was capable of as far as macarons go. It wasn’t a pretty site. Except those were chocolate pecan macarons. The swarthy cousin of the petite french macarons. I have been trying for the better part of a year to bake the delicious french macarons that can be sold for $2 a piece, and I have failed every single time. Either they are too hollow on the inside, or I burned the bottoms, or they didn’t have feet. However, I have learned so much about baking in the last six months that I decided to give them another try.

One of the things that I still don’t really understand is piping out the macarons. You take such great care to gently fold in the almond flour and sugar into the fluffy egg whites, but then once it’s all mixed, you put it in a bag and squeeze it. To me that just seems crazy! Nevertheless, I accept that I’m still pretty new at this and I’d follow the instructions and go from there.

So I picked Sally’s Salted Caramel Cinnamon Macarons. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/salted-caramel-cinnamon-macarons/

I had some salted caramel sauce left over from last month that I needed to use so I figured this would be perfect. The big difference between the chocolate pecan macarons and the french macarons is that the french cookies use ground up almonds (almond flour) instead of ground up pecans. It definitely makes a difference. So I made sure that the almond flour and confectioners sugar mixture was pulverized into tiny particles. I beat my hella-aged egg whites until they were super glossy, and then I very carefully spooned the batter into my piping bag. So far so good.

Now, I had to give myself a pep talk that morning before I started making these because they have just been so awful in the past. But I told myself that today was the day! These were going to be great and I was going to be methodical and take my time. So I get the cookies piped out onto the tray and I must say, the batter looked beautiful. I then sprinkled some cinnamon on each cookie, banged the tray on the counter 10 times and then set the pans on the table to sit for an hour.

I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned them before, but I have two cats, Albus Dumbledore and Remus Lupin. Or “Alby and Remy”. I’ve had Alby for 7 years and I just adopted Remy last August. Remy was super scared of everything when I first brought him home, but in the last six months he had really come out of his shell. So that morning, Remy was aloud to go out side with Alby for the first time ever and he was excited. He did great. He came back when he was called and never strayed too far from Alby’s watchful eye. I’m choosing to believe that his ego got the best of him because his next trick was to jump up on the table and survey the apartment from that view.

However he failed to notice there was already something on the table…he leaps and lands square in the middle of the macaron tray. However, he immediately realizes that something is wrong, so before he can even fully land on the tray, he catapults his whole body backwards and pushes off of the tray, spraying the whole room with macaron batter. He takes off all freaked out, and there lays my half destroyed tray of once perfect macaron batter.

I’m telling you all…I’m just cursed from ever being able to successfully made these cookies!! However, once I made sure that Remy was alright, I just had to laugh. Because the minute you start to take yourself too serious, that’s when disaster strikes and puts you back where you belong. I just had to laugh this one off. What made it more comical is that you’ll see almost an entire cookie is missing from the second row. It took me an hour to find it under the table blending in with the carpet!

But I had another tray sitting behind this one that went untouched and some of these cookies were actually good to use. So I just baked the whole tray as is and threw the damaged ones away. And ya know what?! The rest of the cookies turned out marvelous! I couldn’t have been happier with their tiny little feet and their cute cinnamon faces. The filling was swirled in with the salted caramel sauce which just made them to die for. My friends and co-workers were speechless when eating them. Just mmmm’s and ahhh’s.

Do you guys have any fun macaron cookie-baking stories?! I’d love to hear them! Happy Friday! -Jen