macawrong weekend

I’ve been thinking about what makes a good blogger, and I’ve stumbled across the idea of mindcasting vs lifecasting. I’ll get into that next week!

But for now… let me do some serious, serious lifecasting.

The first weekend before Chinese New Year Holiday, I slept over at my friend Rachel‘s house. We had been planning this macaron-making session for months, and the almond meal was purchased a couple of months ago. Starting out with some chill Keane and Muse playing, I explained to her my elaborate diagrams and ratios and whipped out my secret weapon, the electric scale. People, get yourself one of these, then do what I do and memorise weight quantities of things such as flour (4.5oz per cup), sugar (7oz per cup) and butter (4oz per stick). Then you’ll never need measuring cups ever again.

These were the original flavour plans, which did not come to reality.

Our weekend was full of fails that day. Our first one was trying to sift the powdered sugar and almond meal together. Turns out, almond meal doesn’t go through the sifter! And the flour sifters that are mug-shaped that push the powder through the bottom? Doesn’t work too well. It took us half an hour just to press the lumpy powdered sugar through the sieve with chopsticks and spoons; the other batch featured cocoa powder, and so was separate, so we decided to push it through a tea strainer. That took a while.

After the almond meal and powdered sugar were satisfactorily sifted and smooth (ish), we brought a small saucepan of sugar and water to a boil to make the sugar syrup, to make Italian meringue. The egg whites were beaten to soft peaks, and looked like a ridiculously small mound of fluffy whiteness in the big blue mixing bowl. I tried to beat it some more, remembering that some sources said soft peaks, and some said stiff peaks. I aimed for somewhere between the two. I beat and beat the egg whites, trying to aerate them more, while watching the thermometer stuck in the pot of boiling sugar syrup like a hawk. The temperature had to reach 118˚C, or about 245˚F. It reached that temperature, all right… and became caramel. Of course, I had to insist that it was the right temperature, and poured it into the egg white anyway.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

At this point, we were almost ready to give up. Macarons are finicky things to make, and I had obviously underestimated their difficulty. How is it possible to have a sugar syrup at the wrong consistency, at the right temperature? Candy-making is finicky. Anthing involving boiling sugar is finicky. However, we are not ones to give up so easily. We decided to start over with the meringue: beat the egg whites again, research more about the stages of cooked sugar, and stop judging by temperature.

Then, there were no eggs.

This called for drastic action, which called for appropriate attire. I donned a Stitch hat, bling, and a poufy jacket, while Rachel put on sunglasses, a trenchcoat, and teased her hair up into a sky-high ponytail on the crown of her head. We were ready. For a costume party. At Tesco.

Then, Rachel’s phone fell into the toilet (before she used it), and we spent half an hour in our costumes being hysterical and trying to find a screwdriver small enough to unscrew the iPhone batteries. After we perused Yahoo! Answers, we decided to leave the phone in a can of rice. So we did. Then we crashed the costume party. At Tesco.

Rachel on the left, me on the right. We're so fierce, y'all

That was fun. BACK TO THE MERINGUE. Before leaving, a question was posed on Yahoo! Answers:

What is the “hard ball” stage of cooked sugar, and how does it affect Italian Meringue?

We were trying to make macarons today using Syrup and Tang’s recipe which involved italian meringue. The sugar overcooked (the temperature was correct, though, about 120 degrees celcius) and turned amber; when we added it to the eggs, it made a gloopy syrup that, needless to say, wasn’t meringue.

How do I solve this problem? How can I tell when the sugar syrup is at the right temperature? (I don’t trust the thermometer anymore)

And one of the more useful answers (not the voted “best answer”, which said “need more info”)

The pinch test isn’t totally accurate, and takes some practice to perfect. Hard ball means that when you drop a small bit of the sugar mixture into a glass of room temp water, it forms a hard ball that keeps its shape when pressed between your fingers.

AHA! We started over, and as the sugar syrup cooked, we watched it. Carefully. Stealthily, so that it didn’t feel violated. As it cooked, I dropped samples of the mixture into a glass of water until it formed a soft, squishy ball. Another piece of advice for making Italian meringue is to pour the sugar in SLOWLY. So that’s what we did… until the sugar clumped up and turned into chunks. It took two tries to get as much sugar from the pot as possible into the egg whites.

So we folded the mixture into the chocolate powder mixture (that one failed, miserably) and the other into the plain macaron mixture. It looked as if there was no hope left. I was worried I had overmixed, because it took so long to incorporate all the flour. My plain mixture was lumpy… but it flowed. Like magma.

If in doubt just bake it.

WISE WORDS, Rachel’s mom. Wise words. Because guess what?

They worked! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

The remaining mixture was stuffed into a pastry bag and piped into neat circles on to the pan again. They even developed feet without us letting them sit. They looked perfect. They tasted perfect, light and sweet with a great almond flavour and aroma. And they had FEET!

With 7 pairs of shells to work with, three fillings were chosen: Nutella, dulce de leche con chocolate, and strawberry-rhubarb jam. Don’t ask me to pick my favourite, because I can’t. The macarons sat pretty, waiting for their moment to come when we would use them as desert. And oh, my word… they were incredible.

Nutella, dulce de leche con chocolate, strawberry-rhubarb jam

Also… we filled the last pair of macaron shells with greek yogurt and blueberries. That was. Amazing.

This post is getting a little long already, but I’ll just summarise the next day for you: woke up late, made teal-coloured pancakes, microwaved one batch a little too long and made it like play-doh, drank hot chocolate, made blondies with four kinds of chips, tried to turn them out of the muffin pan, realised they were too too too too TOO sweet, went on a sugar high, screamed and danced around the house, fell into a sugar crash, sat in the kitchen corners depressed and fondling a can of salty seaweed and cheesy tortilla chips, were forced to throw the blondies away, ordered McDonald’s fries and chicken nuggets and ate them with barbeque sauce, then I went home.

OH. And the macawrong rejects (the successfully-made macarons that weren’t expected to be successes that weren’t piped) were made into a macawrong parfait, layered with greek yogurt and blueberries as well.