Saturday 26 February 2011

Trouble Shooting Tip Numero Trois

When everything turns to sh#t and you feel like having a good ol' sook...  head to the fridge and eat CAKE!  Better still, find Alice's magic potion (the one that says "drink me") take a swig then go to the  mad hatter's tea party.  


You know when I told you that I was going to make Vivienne Westwood's Naughty Alice  macaron... after making batch after batch of successful macarons I had to swallow my pride and break the news that I had indeed created a failure.  You see, I made a really bad mistake by making them when it was raining.  Humidity plays havoc with macarons so... when it's raining the best advice I can give you is to stay indoors curled up in a comfy spot, with a good book or DVD, a lovely big slab of cake & a glass of champagne. 


Lies, lies, lies... it's all lies!  When you make your sugar syrup don't always trust the blue caterpillar or your thermometer!  Even the best of them can tell you lies!  I told you about the failure of my first attempt making Vivienne Westwood macarons.  But, guess what? My 2nd attempt failed too!  What happened dare you ask?  I trusted the temperature on my thermometer thinking that my sugar syrup had indeed reached soft ball stage when in fact it hadn't.  The result - the sugar syrup was too runny making my macaron batter too runny consequently making my macarons run to the next macaron for comfort and me creating wonder bra's in the oven.  Mmmm, just perfect... designer bras could be another day but just not today!  If you're daring you can test the sugar syrup by soaking your hand in cold water, snatching a small amount of the hot bubbly syrup with your fingers and immediately placing it into a jug of cold water.  Roll the syrup into a ball then drop it onto the bench.  If it stays in tact and is still soft you're on a good wicket but if it's hard and it breaks you've gone too far and you'll need to start again.  DO NOT try this at home unless you know what you're doing as you could end up with severe 3rd degree burns! 


P.S. I forgot to mention that I did also over mix them so this contributed to the runny macaron batter.  Remember that the odd failure is good as we learn from our mistakes.

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