I have loved macaroons ever since i can remember, have finished heaps of coconut macaroons as a kid during Christmas and only stopped once my mouth started feeling weird and coarse, last month at Sophias, Shashi mam taught us coconut macaroons, so yup i now bake them whenever i feel like and eat to my hearts desire, which is another reason why i have started running and working out, today my day started early in the morning because according to me , the school fair was on Friday and i had to get stuff done , so i did trial batches of the red velvet muffins , made 4 diff batches and thankfully , have got my zing back, the lovely and talented Pooja Dhingra of Le15 gave me a recipe and broke my jinx, so i have been at it and later when i got to school to pick up the kids i realised that I'm cooking 2 weeks ahead of time, but the thing is i was so excited about making the macaroons that i just went ahead, before starting them i felt that "wish i had gone to a baking school somewhere fancy so that i could understand the nuances and the finer points, but i have not , so i "pulled up my BIG GIRL panties " and got at it, of course i have been reading about these sweet little devils for some time now and decided , how bad can it get, it will just not happen and frankly , i will learn from the "experience" and so far that's who my PROFESSOR is at my "college of cooking and baking " ha ha ha
I found a whole lot of recipes on the net after after a tic-tac-toe i choose this one , its by Lizzie Karmenetzky....i love her name..so that's a positive thing...
Ingredients
175 gm icing sugar
125 g ground almonds
3 large egg whites
75 g caster sugar
Pre heat the oven to 150 degrees c..
Whizz the icing sugar and the almonds in a food processor to a very fine mix and then sieve it , i sieved it twice...just in case
In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to nice soft peaks.
Add the caster sugar bit by bit , until thick and glossy.
At this point add your colour or flavouring, i did not do any flavour, because i just 1st wanted to get the basic right, i did add very little blue in it..
To this mix fold in half the almond and icing sugar with a spatula, fold and cut , do not handle this batter roughly or it may sink, when the 1st half is done add the second half, and fold the mix till its shiny and ribbony....
WHEW !!!!!!!! its actually done
Line 2 trays with parchment paper and then fill the mix into a piping bag and with a 1 cm nozzle, pipe out small rounds of the macaroon mix and leave it for about 20 minutes at room temperature to form a slight skin, so that if you lightly touch the batter , nothing will stick on to your finger....
Put it in the oven and frankly ....just said a little prayer.....
I'm grinning from ear to ear because 22minutes later i had these lovely pale blue babies looking back at me and they also had the crusty part around the bottom which is called the foot, and that i believe is 1 of the signs of a well made macaroon, they look so cute that i felt bad that was going to be biting into them soon, "cute little chubby protected species" that's what they look like and as tempting as "string bikini bottom "ha ha ha ...
Let them cool and then very gently lifted them off the parchment paper..tricky busines...
So now its time for the filling and ya its got to be chocolate so nutella was at hand and it went right into these babies, both the ZZ.s , my man friday Vijay and me bit into our home-made heaven and broke out into peals of laughter and happiness , and yummy wow and further , frankly i heaved a sigh of relief , i did it , wow, im happy i may include this in the school stall, but not yet decided, in the meanwhile think i should go for a run...because this much of sugar and fat intake is not fun for your .... ha ha ha
So here they are
"Little devil-bottom macaroons" happy and really heavenly only from "Maria's Kitchen".
P.S. Think im having a sugar high.....have too many sweet things today...going mad..
