Another Baking Blog - Macarons with Jols!

When you’re life is stressing you out, I have found that baking helps. Creating something that you have complete control over makes a nice change to living constantly in the whirlwind of landlords, banks, bosses and other pains in the ass. 

So it’s Friday, the last day before the heaving weekend shifts in the bar and I decided to rope in a friend, trained pastry chef don’t you  know, and have a go at Macarons. Having been introduced to Macarons at Lauduree in Harrods by my boyfriend (also trained Chef) my heart was sold. Give me Salted Caramel, Orange Blossom, Rose or Violet macarons and my day is made – hell, my week is made. 

However because I’d practically forced Jols to make macarons with me, I  pretty much let her choose flavours. Eventually we went with dark chocolate and raspberry and then dark chocolate and coconut. The left over dark chocolate from someone’s birthday seemed to be a recurrent theme in our recipes.

With my head spinning in the differences between italian and french meringue, plus likes of The Meringue GirlsCookbook and all the fabulous flavours and colourings, I had done my research and I was raring to go.  

Unfortunately, we fell at the first hurdle. We’d run out of sugar. 

A (semi) quick trip to Sainsburies and a Starbucks coffee later – we’re back in the kitchen. First up were the macarons that were meant to be black. Black and red we thought, how decadent and daring. Our black turned out to be more grey-ish, but it still looked pretty good with the red sprinkles on top. 

Those grey-ish macarons became our fresh raspberry and dark chocolate macarons. 

Next up, we let little Max (Jols’ son) sprinkle on some decimated Coconut and we created our next masterpiece – toasted coconut and dark chocolate. 

Only then did we get to big for our boots and attempt lemon macarons. Sadly, after a small oven malfunction, our pretty pale lemon mixture turned into grilled cheese when someone (naming no names) put the grill on, rather than the oven.

So, no lemon macarons but plenty of raspberry, coconut and dark chocolate ones.

And some homemade marshmallow to boot - keeping the little one happy.

Overall, I think we did good and we had nothing but good reviews. 

Hopefully you guys think they look as good as they tasted.