Read This First: Demystifying the Macaron

I'm going to take another break  from writing about Paris sweets to, well, share a favorite post about a favorite Paris sweet, the macaron.

I started to notice how this delicate beauty was tres en vogue last summer, when it started showing up on most every dessert table pictured on most every party-planning or wedding blog.

So naturally I had to try making some.

I turned to the trusty interwebs to go about my research - reading post after discouraging post about how fickle macarons were, how hard it was to get everything "just right", and how one of many potential missteps would lead to disappointment. And if you know me, you know being meticulous is not really my bag.

But just as I was considering giving up, I came across this post on the BraveTart blog.

Read it before you read anything else on making macarons. 

Read it before you even read BraveTart's Ten Commandments of Macarons.

Read it before you finish reading this post, if you must.

Here goes nothing.

You don't need to take a class. And despite what you might read elsewhere, you don't need to buy a $200 scale, and you don't always need to grind your almond meal and sift your flour exactly 106 times at just the right altitude. Apparently you don't even need to use almonds, would you believe it!

I know because Stella at BraveTart took all the guesswork out of these once-mystical morsels, through a rigorous process of elimination.

From BraveTart:

I don’t know if my experiment would stand up to the rigors of the scientific method, but I did take a systematic approach. I standardized every aspect of my already stable recipe: the exact number of minutes spent mixing, weight and temperature of ingredients, oven temperature, baking time, etc.
Each day, I changed a single variable across multiple batches (generally three), and noted my results. I also tested variables by their absence. (Read more...)

I dove in head first, and look.

(Just ignore that one cracked one.)

I made these last May, having never set foot in France, and having only ever eaten a macaron maybe twice in my whole life. This lover of short-cuts and occasional experimenter achieved success on the first try. 

Except for one little experiment with caramel sauce, hee hee.

Don't use caramel topping as caramel filling. DUH.

Do use chocolate ganache...

or lemon curd, if you're into that.

Impress your friends and yourself.
Here's that link again, to BraveTart's blog post on Macaron Myths. Recipes follow.