New Year's Eve Macarons

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all are enjoying the holidays :). I'm currently trying to get all my holiday cookie photos edited, but hopefully I'll have them up soon. This year I made a variety of cookies for Christmas and then a few more sweets to celebrate New Year's Eve last night. I'll start with posting my New Year's desserts, then move onto my Christmas cookies.

For this New Year's Eve, I really wanted to make some black and white macarons. Today I'll present my black macarons, and in my next post, I'll share my white macarons. Other than black and white, I also associate New Year's Eve with a ton of glitter and confetti, which inspired my manicure from last night: mixed rainbow glitter (Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday) over black nail polish (Chanel Black Satin). In turn, my manicure became the source of inspiration for these macarons.

I knew I wanted to make these macarons glittery and rainbow, since I figured that would contrast well with the black color, sort of like how fireworks show up so well with a dark night sky. So, I decorated them with the edible equivalent of glitter and confetti: shimmer dust and sprinkles. I also wanted to try something new, so rather than just cover the macarons with nonpareils, I ended up spelling out "NYE" and "2014" on the macarons to make them just a bit more fancy. These were definitely the perfect dessert for celebrating New Year's Eve.

^A preview of my white macarons.

Cinnamon Apple Macarons

Fall is definitely here. The leaves are changing, it's getting chilly, and suddenly I'm craving the warm, cozy scent of cinnamon as well as pumpkin baked goods. I say it's the perfect time to bake some Cinnamon "Apple" Macarons.

I'm going to straightforward; these macarons aren't very apple-ly in flavor. It's more like cinnamon with a hint of apple. My brother calls them Apple Jacks Macarons, you know, like the cereal, which is actually pretty accurate. But I find them pretty cute, so I couldn't resist posting them anyway.

They are technically still Cinnamon Apple Macarons in that they look like apples and taste like cinnamon :). I think if I were to make them again, I'd devise some sort of apple jelly center to up the apple flavor. But despite the lack of apple flavor, they still taste wonderful. Happy Autumn Everyone!

Olympic Macarons + News

I know that I said that I'd blog about the Southern Dinner Party in my Mini Moon Pie post, but since the Olympics ends today, I decided to do an Olympics themed post instead. But don't worry; the Southern party photos and details will definitely come another day.

But before I talk about the Olympics, I first want to let you all know that I'll be starting medical school at the end of this month! I'm super excited :D. And I intend to keep this blog running even after school starts. That's partially the reason I've been MIA here this past month. I'll be living in the dorms for my first year, which means not having my own kitchen, so I've been baking like crazy, taking advantage of the kitchen at home, preparing back-up posts in case I really won't have access to a kitchen in the coming months. So hakuna matata :).

Back to the Olympics. Did you all watch them? My favorite events are always gymnastics and swimming but this year I've discovered that I also like pole vaulting and synchronized diving. I set out to bake something simple but Olympics themed and somehow ended up making Olympic ring macarons :P. Technically these are more meringues since they didn't form feet, but since I used a macaron recipe, I'm going to stick to calling them macarons. I also made individual rings with the leftover batter and they ended up with feet, so go figure. Keep these in mind for Sochi '14 and Rio '16!

A Tale of Two Macarons (Part II)

Today, I continue posting about my holiday macarons. What makes these macarons festive is not their flavor, but their appearance. These are my usual pistachio macarons, spruced up to look like Christmas wreaths, which were perfect for my holiday cookie box.

Yup, these macarons are basically normal pistachio macarons with holes in the middle and bows piped on. Interesting how these two small changes can turn a typical round macaron into a holiday macaron.

A Tale of Two Macarons (Part I)

Every year I have to have at least one type of macaron in my Christmas cookie package because they are my favorite type of cookie. This year I have two, one old one new. Today I'll be posting about peppermint macarons (the new) and later I'll be posting about pistachio macarons (the old, spiced up of course).

A couple of weeks ago, I spotted candy cane shaped macarons on Almost Bourdain, which were made following a recipe by the famous Adriano Zumbo. The moment I laid my eyes on those macarons, I knew I'd have candy cane shaped macarons on my cookie list this year. I took that method of making candy cane macarons and adapted it to my trusty basic macaron recipe, which worked like a charm.

I: Zombies!

I guess you should know that I love holidays (and anything else that has a theme). That being said, I think the best way for me to start off my blog is to post about Halloween. Today will be the first post in my 4 part "monster" series.

Monster of the day: Zombies! When I see the picture above, I imagine the ground cracking open as zombies try to pry their way out of the dirt, like in a horror film. At least that's what happened as the macaron shells were baking. I "accidentally" put the shells in the oven before the skins were completely dry, so as the macaron feet were forming, the middle of the shells began bulging out and cracking, like fists were trying to punch their way out below the chocolaty macaron tops. Quite an entertaining thing to watch. It was definitely a sign that these were meant to be Halloween macarons!

Before starting college, when I still went trick-or-treating, my favorite candies to receive were always those of the peanut butter chocolate variety, like Reese's pieces or those funny Halloween-themed half chocolate/half peanut butter coins. But... now that I'm too busy with studying (and possibly too old?) to go trick-or-treating, this year I decided to create a more upscale twist on my beloved childhood PB & Chocolate combination by playing around with the filling in my favorite Pierre Hermé chocolate macaron recipe. So even though I still enjoy peanut butter cups very much, I must admit that these macarons are wayyy tastier!