Macarons pt. 1

Before I discovered the world of food blogging, I had never heard of macarons.  {gasp!}  & since then, I’ve drooled over every picture of one.  Especially ones done by Aran & Helen.

I decided that before I took on baking them myself, I would do my homework.  & I have!  A few months ago I decided that I was ready to take on the task, but alas; I had no almond flour.  And, after last years Daring Bakers Challenge, the one where we had to make the Opera Cake; I knew I would never ever ever make almond flour from scratch.  It was just too much of a pain.  So, when my grandma gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday, I knew I was going to use it to buy some almond flour.

For my first shot, I used Aran’s chocolate macaron recipe and filled it with Deb’s white chocolate ganache filling.

Did they turn out?  Well… yes, for a first shot I think they turned out pretty good.

Were they good?  Yes.  They tasted fantastic!

Since I know some people are very scared to try making macarons at home, I figured I’d share my resources!

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2005/10/french_chocolat.html

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/10/how-to-make-macarons-recipe.html

http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/10/introduction-to-french-macarons.html