Ye Olde Post #2: Cosmic Macarons

When I decided to use four different colors for these macarons, I figured that would mean about 4 times the effort when making these. I guess I got lucky because it turned out to only be around 3 times the effort...sure I made 4 mini-meringues, 4 measurements of almond flour and powdered sugar, and 4 separate piping bags, but I only had to pipe everything onto the baking sheets once. That's what I call efficiency. In all seriousness, I did have to be careful to get the consistency right each time I mixed the quarter-recipe of dry ingredients into the quarter-recipe of meringues (this macaron "batter" is called a macaronage). As most recipes that I've seen will say, you'll want the macaronage to have the consistency of lava, which we all have first-hand experience with, I'm sure.

One last thing on consistency: using finely ground almond flour is important. The brand I buy isn't as finely ground as I like it to be, as in, it does not all go through the sifter I use. As a result, I always pre-sift all of my almond flour and separate the coarse and fine almond pieces into different bags.

Once I run out of finely ground almonds, I use a blender to grind the coarse pieces until they fit through the sifter. If all of that goes correctly, the macaronage is well-mixed, and the piping is done, we get this:

Now for the fun part. After these were baked, I rather spontaneously thought that adding some constellations to these with white icing would be great. These should resemble Leo, Ursa Major, Orion, Pisces, Virgo, and Scorpius; I suggest squinting to convince yourself of their cosmic origins.

Oh yes, and these are filled with a raspberry buttercream!

I think for the extra effort, these cosmic macarons are worth it. They can be so beautiful depending on the colors you choose to mix together and they lend themselves well to further decoration once the shells are done.


:^)