Macarons ... how I love thee.

As I have mentioned, I love to cook ... and by that I mean I love to bake.


For some reason I have this uncanny ability to cook with egg white. My mother and her sister are naturally fantastic cooks (and two people that keep me forever wanting to improve - hopefully my cooking skills will get to their level one day), however for some reason neither of them can work with egg white.

Both try and fail working with egg white, most notably pavlova. Yes, they can make them, but I have this bizarre ability to turn a pavlova into the most marshmallowey thing you have ever tasted. I don't know how I do it, but I do. Egg whites and me are like this: X.

And for some reason my bizarre ability to work with egg white crosses over to the world of macarons. I have only made them 3 times in my life from Nigella Lawson's Domestic Goddess recipes and they always work and always taste spot on and have the right texture. Ok, I admit, I have only had frilly feet two out of the three times, but the time I didn't get frilly feet was when I made the chocolate macarons photographed, just after New Year's day and the weather was unbearably humid and hot (it was also my first time working with chocolate macarons). Frilly feet aside, I find it odd that I can make macarons without much hassle when chefs and cooks all over the world preach that they're the hardest biscuit to make.

To be honest, I think they're all just making a sponge cake out of a little egg white ... I think failures with egg white come from being afraid of failure. I also think lots of cooks and chefs treat egg white with too much care. I just stick my egg white in my Sunbeam Mix Master and beat it. Yes, I do that to my macarons. And while there are probably cooks and chefs out there would probably faint and die upon hearing this, to them I say "meh".

They taste good and that's all that matters! However, my piping abilities leave much to be desired and I am hoping that the below contraption from Chalet (oh, how I love Chalet) will help rectify my poor piping skills (it definitely saves on batter wastage ... I make the biggest mess with piping bags!). I am dying to make perfectly round macarons!

Behold, at the wonder that is my Chalet "I Did it Myself" Decoration Set: