In order to show you that not all of my creations turn out perfectly (in case any of you actually thought they did), I have kind of an embarrassing admission to make. When I first started making macarons and posting pictures of them here, I told you guys I had never actually had one before, but they looked right, tasted great, and the texture was how the book described it. Well, last week I came upon this blog post and learned that they aren't supposed to have a large air pocket between the top and the bottom of the shell. How was I to know? Of all the books and all the blogs that teach you how to make macarons, I haven't seen a single cross section of one until now. Here I was thinking I was doing it right, and apparently not so much. I'm pretty sure the reason was that I was overmixing the batter, but to be fair, the book I was using actually told me to mix it really well and then deflate the batter with a dough scraper, and the picture in it showed a thinner batter.
So yesterday I gave Ms. Humble's recipe a try and things went much better. And I got to use my blendtec to grind my almonds, and it did an amazing job. It blended the almonds much finer and much quicker than the food processor. For the filling, I decided to try a new recipe for pumpkin Italian meringue buttercream.
And here's a cross section. Other than one random larger bubble on the bottom shell, it looks much closer to what it's supposed to look like!
