Macarons

So....Emma has been wanting to make French Macarons. We have watched little kids make them on TV, and we found a recipe on Pinterest, so how hard could it be? 😔 or so I thought. Today we made them. Right before we got started I read a note that said that making them in humid climates is not a good idea, but the dehumidifier said 65, so thought we would be ok. My first clue that something was wrong was that our dry mixture wouldn’t even sift because when running it through the food processor, it started to clump. We were using a mesh strainer, so I thought maybe we needed a real sifter, which we went and bought at the BX. Nope, same problem. After what seems like forever to Emma, we finally got it sifted. (And it did take forever, but partly because we not only went to the Bx, but also we went off base by ourselves for the first time! We didn’t buy anything though...the grocery store didn’t have grapes☹️)  Anyway, making macrons will probably not happen in our house for a very long time. There was food coloring all over the place (somehow even on the couch???), bowls of water spilled all over the floor, and a little girl who doesn’t like to follow directions and was constantly hungry all day asking me what she could eat while I was busy (until I made her dinner of course), and a mom who was not very patient. We tried. We Pinterest failed. They are edible, but not presentable. I am sure that I have never used so many bowls and appliances for once recipe before. For some reason we picked a recipe that had 2 colors, because you know, one was too easy. One color looked good going in, but flopped. The other looked bad going in, came out looking good. Cooking can be very humbling...seriously, little kids on TV made these!!! Oh well. They are done, the dishes are done, and we survived. I won’t say we had fun, but we definitely made memories. Thankfully we went to church after all of this, and we are in much better spirits. :) 

Stirring trying to keep it from forming lumps in the humidity 

5 hours and a wardrobe or two later...piping. This batch didnt look good at first. And Emma didn’t get the memo about doing them the same size, or circles. I tried to help after this, but it didn’t t help much. 

Her favorite part of course.

Going in red looked like it had more volume, but was lumpy. Blue looked flat, I didn’t think they would turn out. 

When they came out, the blue had shiny tops, and the ridges at the bottom, but still flat.  A couple were cracked, but since they were different sizes they didn’t cook evenly. 

The red ones flattened out and were gooey. Not baked long enough? I have no idea, again, Same batter as the blue ones. 

Girl loves piping, but she needs a lot of help! 

The filling was a cheesecake like thing, and I made a quick raspberry jame to go in the center. 

All done!

Not a total flop, since we can eat them and they tasted good. But not something I would give to someone I’m not related to either. She wanted to eat them for dinner. I’m just glad it’s over, I will now go back to making muffins.