Merry Christmas! Here’s another way to enjoy some festive eggnog ;).
As I have previously mentioned, my first encounter with macarons was in Paris with my aunt when I was 18. I immediately fell in love, but I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably have to come back to Paris to ever taste them again, which would either be a) never, or b) a very very long time off. It never even occurred to me that I could make macarons at home – they seemed like some kind of impossibly complicated, intricate pastry that only the French could create – until I started noticing them popping up on food blogs a few years ago. However, it was also noted that the homemade macaron was a highly temperamental creation, and that the very techniques and methods that some people swore by were the same techniques and methods that others blamed for their macaron disasters.
Armed with the knowledge that macarons were possible in my own kitchen, I set out to scour the internet and learn as much as I could about making them. This may have been a mistake. Sometimes it’s better to go into things a bit blind, because you aren’t aware of every little thing that can go wrong and therfore totally paranoid about them. The whole process became overwhelming and a bit intimidating, so I put off making macarons for fear of failure.
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