Every year, I look forward to attending the Earth day celebration held at the Tallapoosa Center for the Inner Arts. As usual, I will be accompanying the beautiful voices of the Clear Rivers Chorus. This year 's program will be extra special since one of the pieces being sung includes music composed by yours truly. Another highlight of the celebration will be what I've dubbed the "mile long" pot luck table. My contribution to the potluck this year will be none other than.. drumroll.... macarons!
My inspiration for the color selection came from the lovely front cover of a Garnet Hill catalog.
And for the flavors, I went with my favorites: Green Tea, Pandan and Nutella. In the last 2 weeks I have been experimenting with some new macaron recipes and I am sad to report that none of them work as well for me as the original recipe. So for the time being, I am sticking with Hisako Ogita's recipe.
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| I am enjoying my new kitchen scale! Macaron shells are simple, made of almond meal, egg whites, sugar and a little food coloring |
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| I add "matcha" or green tea powder to make green tea flavored shells |
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| Most important step in making macaron shells is drying the batter |
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| Batter is ready to bake when it forms a firm & dry skin |
My favorite part(other than eating them) is filling the shells. It is so much fun, I made a video of it:
I am hoping these get devoured at Earth day, if not, I will certainly enjoy the leftovers.
For today's macarons, I experimented with equal weights of almond meal and powdered sugar to great success. The macaron shells baked up nicely and I got a less sweet and more pronounced almond flavor in the shells.
Meanwhile, in other gardening news: The tub garden on the front continues to fill in nicely, the window box is doing well and I am trying my best to keep the cats from munching on my Sellaginella(club moss) plants
