pierre herme's macarons- vanilla bean and strawberry and vanilla.

2012 is here! And I made some macarons to celebrate!

There are two kinds but both are using the same shell so it wasn't much of hassle. I even cheated with the strawberry and vanilla macarons. I was supposed to make a strawberry gelee of sorts but because I would have to make such a small quantity, I just used strawberry jam in its stead. But I don't know how it worked out because all of them were gone before I got to one. So I guess the jam replacement worked out well!

Besides the strawberry gelee, the S & V macarons also had a layer of vanilla bean ganache, which is the same as the vanilla bean macarons'. So you see, really no trouble at all making two kinds.

Being such a vanilla junkie, I thought I would worship the vanilla bean macaron but nope, not really. It was good, but vanilla and almonds doesn't go together as well as say... raspberry and almonds.

Still, I'm really happy with the vanilla bean batch because they look beautiful! If you would allow me to say so. I finally figured out the reason why my macarons didn't succeed in the past- temperature. My oven was way too hot even at 150C for these little babies so the temperature that works best is 140C. And I used to follow recipes that said to bake at 160~170C... no wonder they failed.

There's still a bit of air pocket inside the shells but I think that's because I overbeat the egg whites- way to much air. Or maybe because I don't mix the almond meal, icing sugar and first portion of egg whites together first. But the book didn't say to do that! I think... Almost everyone does that too though... Hmm...

Alright! Next batch~ Oh by the way, if you're interested in the shell recipe, there's one here. Just omit the colorings for a plain one.