Mac Attack III & PhotoHunt: Jiggly

RJ Flamingo — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:04:00 +0000

I’m combining my PhotoHunt post this week with my January Mac Tweets Challenge! And the PhotoHunt theme this week is “Jiggly”!

For those of you unfamiliar, Mac Tweets is made up of people all over the world mesmerized and obsessing over a little French cookie called the macaron. For January, the Mac Tweets theme is, well, “New.” Do something new with your macs – something you’ve never tried before. How do the two themes, “New” and “Jiggly” go together in this post?

Well, for the “Jiggly” part, I made marmalade. Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade, to be exact. I’ve never made marmalade before, in fact, I’ve never canned anything before! More about the marmalade next week, when I post about another new group I’ve joined, the “Can Jam”.

So this is very, very New for me. Oh, and that marmalade is pretty Jiggly.

These are Ginger Almond Macarons filled with my Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade. The other New aspect to my macs this time, is color. I have to admit that I was inspired by Elissa of 17 and Baking’s Striped Peppermint Meringues, last month, and have been itching to try something like her technique with my macs. Well, no time like the present!

After mixing up my batter, I dabbed paste food coloring in pink and yellow – to hint at the pink grapefruit (deep pink on the inside, yellow on the outside) – randomly on the inside of my pastry bag. I then loaded up the pastry bag with my batter, and piped my macs, getting these random, swirly effects on my shells.

Yes, I know I probably over-mixed the batter a bit, and probably piped a bit too large – note the petite “ballerina feet.” I think they came out pretty cool. But then, that’s just me.

(Are you out there, Casey? I think I’m going to have some fodder for you pretty soon!)

Mac Attack II – MacTweets

RJ Flamingo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I don’t have a “12 Days of Cookies” post today, so I hope you’ll scroll down to yesterday’s (after this, of course!) and visit the other dedicated holiday cookie bakers in their quest to produce 12 cookies in 12 days from the Bon Appétit 2008 Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection!

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To tweet of many things:
Of eggs–and nuts–and flavorings–
Of Macarons–and sweets–
And why meringue won’t lighten up –
And whether Macs have feet.”

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

The journey began last September, when I was conned, er, coerced, no, um, invited by Deeba and Jamie to join a challenge to make French macaron cookies – the first Mac Attack. I gave it four tries and this is what I produced back in September:

and this:

Notice something? No feet. No ruffley, elevated base from which the macarons rise gracefully to smooth, mushroom-like tops. Look like little Moon Pies, don’t they? I comforted myself with my husband’s words: “Hey, they don’t need feet to get ‘em to my mouth!”

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough. Although fear of further failure reared its ugly head, the subsequent mysterious and cryptic Twitter chatter between Deeba and Jamie only served to whet my curiosity. Then the announcement: MacTweets, the website, was born, and with it, the opportunity for wannabe macaron-bakers of every skill level, to learn, to bake, to commiserate, and speculate over every aspect of the macaron and its most elusive feature: feet.

I discovered that I wasn’t alone. Accomplished bakers and cooks on at least three continents were bemoaning the lack of feet on their macarons, trying this recipe and that, sifting, drying, tweaking oven temperatures. We compared technique and relative humidity. As we came closer and closer to this day, the Twitter buzz intensified and the tension mounted.

Finally, like Deeba, on my sixth try, I produced macarons with feet! I was all alone in the house, and grateful for that, as I did the “happy mac dance” around the kitchen, squealing “I’ve got FEET!” I grabbed my cell phone, took a quick, fuzzy snap, and posted it to Twitter with the caption: “FEET! I’ve got FEET!” The uninitiated were all like, “Huh?” or “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m happy for you” but others knew and shared my joy.

I don’t know if I can make it happen again, but without further ado, and in honor of both Chanukah and Christmas (we’re a bi-holiday household), I bring you Peppermint Macarons filled with White Chocolate Peppermint Buttercream:

Do feel free to click on the photos to see them in all their glory! And please visit MacTweets for recipes, tutorials, and general all-around encouragement, and return on December 15th for a roundup of Macarons from home bakers all over the world!

Flamingo Musings » mactweets

Mac Attack III & PhotoHunt: Jiggly

Mac Attack II – MacTweets