I have a special day coming up for a friend where we are required the bring a plate of food. I decided to be creative and make something special instead of my usual supermarket run for dips n chips.. so I thought (far beyond my capabilities) it would be a great idea to try macaroons! To be completely honest I’ve never even tried a macaroon. I saw them on Master Chef – ages ago – it looked easy enough!

So I get the ingredients (after looking around for almond meal for ages not realising it would obviously be in the nut section) I get home and realise I don’t have anything to weigh the ingredients. That’s ok! So I work it out going on the 110g bag of almond meal I have. I need 130g of almond meal. Shit. That’s ok! So I compare the weight of that with the unmarked bag of icing sugar I have left over from some cake mix I had. It felt heavier. I reckon 150g. I needed about 220g but I need to compensate for the almond meal so that should be about right.

I mix them together. I need a sifter thingy. I need to sift 3 times. But I don’t have one, so the collander has to do. I make a complete mess trying to sift it all 3 times.

Next, I whip the egg whites, sugar and form peaks. In the mixer thinga-ma-jig–what I thought would take a few minutes took ages! It wasn’t working, damn it! My appliance started to have this kind of.. burning smell going on after a while so I gave up on that and out comes the antique 100 year old hand held egg beaters. It was a good work out I must admit, if you want one super strong man arm. Swapping hands doesn’t help, it just gets messier.

After a bit of good ol’ fashioned elbow grease the egg whites were looking pretty good! Now, to fold them together.. I did it as gently as I could, trying not to squish out the air or whatever. I had no idea what it was supposed to look like other than ‘smooth and shiny’. Mine certainly wasn’t smooth or shiny, but slightly lumpy and pasty. Ah well, lets see what happens! Into the piping bag.. uh, hand made baking paper bag, and pipe 3cm small round dots. They were pretty dodgy looking but some were not too bad! Finally I let them sit for 20 mins then into the oven for 20 mins as directed.

30 mins later.. tada! Craparoons.

From: BeckyB