Macaron Obsession!

I've been really obsessed with these little french cookies recently! I can't believe I've been experimenting with macaron baking for 7 nights straight after work. Spent several hours in the kitchen past midnight! I kept telling myself to rest but my curiosity kept pushing me to go for it. Luckily I haven't heard any complaint from my neighbors yet. The KitchenAid mixer is quite loud actually and the kitchen is right next to my apartment's door. I spent the time on the weekend looking for macaron pictures and blogs when I'm not baking them. I'm really crazy!

These are the instagram photos I took with my iPhone of the results from the last 3 nights.

The left side is Annee's Macaron, the right side is Laduree's Macaron that I received from someone (who is very talented! and pretty unexpected!) who is also a huge fan of macarons. I used French method and I still couldn't get the shiny surface like Laduree's. I suspected that they are not using French method like their recipe from Laduree Sucre Cookbook.

 This is from the following night using Italian meringue method since I want that shiny shells! The sugar syrup part was messed up and I thought the result would be disastrous. Who knew it actually didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would be (luckily I didn't decide to throw away the meringue but kept going on to finish the whole process).

Definitely need a better candy thermometer. Funny enough the next day I started to ask around for coworker's recommendation (a lot of serious bakers at the place I'm working at). I finally decided to go with this one. From what I heard it gives almost instant reading of the temperature, hopefully it will be worth it since it is not cheap for my budget.

Love the height and look of the ruffled feet on this one. Also love the shiny shell. I just don't know if I could produce this kind of look again for the next time. Need to keep experimenting.

This is the same batch of mixture from the Italian method one. Since I thought it was going to fail anyway, I decided to just pour the leftover mixture into a giant blob. Who would have though it actually worked! The ruffled feet also appeared on this giant shell and the inside texture is quite full! No hollow shell at all. This gotta be the biggest macaron shell I've ever seen in my life... and it happened in my kitchen :)

Annee