Sticking with Your Strengths – A Baking Story

Cooking is Cool!

From an early age, I remember going to visit my grandparents and watching my grandma make incredible food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even snacks with simple ingredients and very little pomp and circumstance.

That’s probably why I have grown to love watching cooking shows, particularly shows like The Great British Bake-Off and The Big Family Cooking Showdown, both BBC series. I think my grandmother would have enjoyed them, too, as I learn so much about other cultures and what they grew up eating and what they consider to be their comfort foods.

I’m Not a Slouch in the Kitchen

I’m not bragging about my cooking prowess but I do believe it’s important for you to know that I’m not bad in the kitchen. I can cook great southern savory staples like buttermilk biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, collard greens and bacon, pinto beans and cornbread, and the list goes on. It’s not my first rodeo.

I can make rustic breads, white breads, pizza dough, and even focaccia from scratch.

My homemade focaccia with decorative herbs, tomatoes, peppers, and olives.

When it comes to desserts, I’m pretty good, too. I’m not intimated by recipes. I read through them, gather my ingredients, and follow the recipe to the letter.

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

I took a week off from work and have been cleaning house, photographing birds in my backyard, and watching the aforementioned BBC cooking shows while sweeping and mopping the floors and folding laundry.

The Brits love to mix it up when it comes to desserts. I’ve watched Paul Hollywood, Mary Berry (before she and Paul went sideways with each other), and Pruh Leith judge many a contestant under the tent for their sticky toffee puddings, treacle tarts, swiss rolls, battenbergs, and sponges. I’ve seen contestants get emotional when Paul told them they had a soggy bottom (okay, you have to watch the show to understand) or Pruh questioned the snap in their biscuits (cookies to us from the USA).

One of my favorite things to watch the contestants make is a macaron, a sandwich-like cookie filled with buttercream, jelly, or ganache, according to Southern Living magazine. Macarons are nothing like the macaroon that we southerners love to devour. Those lovely holiday desserts are made of coconut and offer a chewy, sweet deliciousness when you bite into them.

And Then This Happened…

I had some time on my hands this morning so I thought to myself, “I think I want to try and make macarons. How hard can it be?”

I found a great little website called Sally’s Baking Addiction, with a “Beginner’s Guide to French Macarons” recipe that was ranked with five stars by Google searchers from around the globe. Sally had it going on.

Nearly 2,000 people loved this recipe from sweet Sally so I knew I’d love it, too.

I read through it to make sure I had all the ingredients. Unfortunately, I was short a few eggs so I drove down to the Dollar Store. Don’t judge me. I live in the country and the grocery store was seven miles away. I checked the date on the eggs and they were good to go.

When I arrived back to the house, I got out as many small bowls as I could find so that I could have all my ingredients out and accessible when I began making this favorite recipe of the people.

I sifted the ingredients, per the recipe. I used a candy thermometer to make sure the heated sugar and water were at the right temperature. I whipped the meringues to medium peaks and then combined all of the ingredients together to make the shell.

I even used a piping bag, something I’m not prone to do, but I went for it. I lined the pan with parchment paper. I piped the circles on the cookie sheets.

This is where I may have made my first mistake.

I never could find in Sally’s recipe exactly how many macarons the recipe made, but I’d already made two dozen and I had a lot of the mixture left. Sally’s picture showed two dozen so I could only assume that’s how many it made. Before you go there, yes, I do know what happens when one assumes.

I decided I wanted to make Texas-sized macarons so I went back over the batches with the extra mixture and added them to the original circles that I had created.

Unlike the macarons I’d seen on the TV show, mine started to spread like that first batch of pancake batter you put into the greased pan. The dogs always get the first one because they never turn out right. Or is that just me?

My resting macarons.

I knew, having watched the cooking shows, that macarons need to dry a bit before you put them in the oven so I left them on the counter to rest for 30 minutes so they had a dry top. Then they were headed to the oven. I looked inside and the top layer of macarons, while very large, didn’t look too bad. The bottom layer started to bubble up like a pancake that needed to be turned. What was happening?

I pulled the pans out of the oven after the required 15-20 minutes cooking time. The flatter macarons looked a bit dark on the bottom but the top pan still seemed a bit pale so I placed them back in the oven for a little more time.

The Final Results

Now I’ve had some great macarons in my life. In fact, I’ve loved them so much at the time that I photographed them for the memory, they were so delicious.

As you can see below, my macarons look slightly different from the professional versions. While you can’t really tell from the photo, mine are not quite round, in spite of my impeccable piping skills. Most macarons measure around 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. Mine, on the other hand, came in at a whopping 3-3.5 inches, almost big enough to hold a hamburger patty, if one chose to go the sweet and savory route.

Once the macaron shells were cooled, you were to add butter cream icing, which I also made from dear Sally’s recipe. For some reason, it came out more like pancake batter than icing. Not to worry, I placed it in the fridge to “harden” a bit.

Aerial view of my macaron shells.

As you can see, the refrigerator did wonders for the butter cream icing.

The flatter macaron with butter cream spillage.

They say the key to a great macaron is that it should be delicate, almost like a floating cloud when you pop it into your mouth. The outside should have a light crunch with a chewy interior. Few things in my life have been described as delicate, whether it came to describing me or my cooking. I would probably use the word sturdy. I think that is much more fitting.

It kind of has a shell on it.

While I don’t post on this blog often, you might remember my first “Sticking with your Strengths” post when I discussed my inability to make a bow with a bow-maker or decorate a gingerbread house using a pre-made gingerbread kit.

Apparently, I can now add macarons to the things I am challenged by and should not attempt further. It’s important, my friends, to know your strengths, AND to be okay with the fact that you won’t succeed at everything, no matter how hard you try or read the instructions.

And to Sally, please know that my failed attempt at your beginner French macaron recipe is no reflection on you or the other nearly 2,000 people who thought it was the bee’s knees. It truly wasn’t you. It was me.

Macaron anyone?

Until next time…

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