French Macarons - Almond strawberry dessert

French Macarons! Name sounds pretty good. I had high hopes of making this recipe successful. After 3 attempts I came so close but not quite there. I will probably try it one more time when I make my next visit to US.

Needless to mention, thanks to Tatyana's YouTube video on how to make raspberry macarons. Video made it look so easy. But I am still not sure where I screwed up.

Recipe in my opinion is difficult for beginner's level. Problem is not with ingredients or procedure. It's about taking correct ratio, adjusting timing and mixing them to get desired consistency. I would say it will take few efforts for beginners to get everything right.

To start, you will need to buy some almond floor, strawberry flavored syrup, red color and whip cream for filling. Make sure you do not add too much of water in the cookie batter. Too much water will flatten them up and this effect will even magnify when you put cookies inside oven.

To start, add very little water, let mixture thicken up. Then keep on adding slight drops of water until you reach desired medium thick consistency

For whip cream, you can either make it at home as video shows or buy a readymade one. I usually use vanilla or butter-cream flavored whip cream.

First time I made macarons, they all caused crack and breaks at the end. Second time they swelled too much. Third time I added too much of a red color, but they become too hard to chew. Unlike ones mentioned in the video where they look so crispy and smooth textured.

But in all the 3 cases I can figure out the point where it went wrong. It all lied in the mixture consistency. Sometimes it had too much of a water and sometimes too dry mixture.

However, that being said I will try few more times until I get my stuff right. The reason being recipe is not really that tough. It's all about fine tuning all ingredients and striking right balance between them.

My first two attempts were rather too pathetic to post pictures for. I would rather post snaps from my third and final attempt.

Raspberry Macarons Snap 1

Raspberry Macarons Snap 2

Raspberry Macarons Snap 3