The French macaron debacle

I apologize for my absence these past few weeks. With the flurry of the holiday season brought my family's vacation to Cancun, Mexico. While I fully enjoyed my week of white sand beaches and lime mojitos, it was equally sad to miss all the holiday festivities happening in the states. Not only did I miss the most sacred of days (Black Friday) but I also missed making my annual holiday goodies. In lue of the normal pies I make this time of year, yesterday I decided to attempt one of the most delicious and complex desserts known to man- the French macaron. While apprehensive knowing how delicate these delectable cookies are to create, I presumed Martha Stewart could not fail me. I finally decided upon a gingerbread variation with lemon cream filling. Here is a picture of what they are supposed to look like:

And so began my french macaron adventure. While the preparation went easy enough, I realized I did not have one important component- the parchment paper to cook them on. I decided to look up if aluminum foil would work as a viable alternative. In the end a few bloggers had had success using foil so I decided to try it out. After the lemon cream filling turned out less thick than I would have liked, I become even more nervous about my macarons. However when I took them out of the oven they looked beautiful- that was until I tryed to take them off the foil. While I would have loved to post a beautiful picture of my own macrons, my results were less than blog worthy. All in all, the experience proved to be less than enjoyable. I think in the future I will stick to christmas cookies and leave the macarons to the professionals. Happy baking everyone!

Kacy