Macaron, Macaron, Macaron!!

The original plan for Saturday was to go to Mt. Takao to take photos of the autumn leaves and then have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Ukai Toriyama, with my roommate Tanya. Of course the weather wasn’t cooperating and started to rain before we even got up. Looking at the gloomy and dreary weather, Tanya and I decided to stay in and have a lazy day instead. I was finishing up my cake and thought of trying to decorate it with macarons.

I was naturally a little nervous because it took me five tries to work out the gas oven in my Tokyo apartment the last time I made macarons at home. I never tried making them in my electric oven (yup, I brought my own oven to Tanya’s house…) so I wasn’t sure how many tries it’d take for them to turn out right. With the rain and higher humidity, I almost gave up before I even started. Then again, what else was I going to do besides watching LOST? Out came the frozen egg whites, almond powder and silpats. Instead of dissolving the colorants in water I mixed the color powder with the granule sugar but didn’t know exactly how much to use. That’s why the macarons are ten shades brighter than I wanted them to be, but the shapes all turned out perfect on the second try! I could hardly believe my luck.

I tried putting them around the cake but because of the bright colors, it didn’t look right, so I put some chocolate ganache in between and had them with Tanya over a cup of hot tea. What a perfect rainy Saturday.