I Heart Macaroons

My single most obsession at the moment seems to be my ever expanding selection of cookbooks. Most ladies of an evening like to sit and read a copy of VOGUE, Martini in hand. I, however like to sit with a cookbook and a mug of tea plotting my next dinner party or baking opportunity. So what could be a more perfect way to finish off any evening, then a mouthful of crunchy, meringuey, almondy macarons. So perfectly tempting were these little beauties that after purchasing the very cute "i 'heart' macarons" I immediately hopped to it! 

I had heard many a myth about how frustratingly hard macarons were to make. There seem to be a million rules with them. For example, each beautiful little baby is meant to have a small skirted frill for at the bottom. This little skirt is called a "pied" in its native French, or foot to us, but without it each little pastry cannot be called a macaron. I think its this type of rule that puts people off making them in the first place! DO NOT BE PUT OFF!! If my little batch were anything to go by, surely each of us could be a world famous patisserie chef in a couple of hours and a couple of cooking cocktails...

The layout of the book makes it so simple and gives some really helpful tips, like rotating your trays, rapping your baking sheet sheet on a work surface to help create the perfect pied and if god forbid something does go wrong with your macarons, why it may have happened and how to amend it. It is also laid out with a complete photo guide to help coax you along each little step. 

Later on in the book, once you've had a go at creating your first macarons, are sections on combining different colours and flavoured puffs and creams, what to do with your left over egg yolks and how to package them for gifts.All in all, I think this is a great little book. Okay, so its not revolutionary but what it is, is a simple step by step guide to making the PERFECT macaron and as a beginner who needs more then that? Its not particularly a lengthy book and is bulked out by a myriad of beautifully shot photographs, but I purchased my book on one of my Amazon splurges for just under five pounds and for that I couldn't be happier! I urge you if you have ever been tempted into making macarons and have been put off by the alleged difficulty of making them, or if you have never even heard of them and just stumbled across them today, make them, eat them, fall in love with them!!