Plentitude Macarons

It's been a while, a pretty long while since my last post. Are you wondering what I've been up to since then? Well, after changing to my new job, the hours are long, workload's heavier and I don't have much time nor energy to dream of baking sweet treats like I do last time. When I get off work, some time is spent destressing (i.e shopping) to get my mind out of work mode and into the lifestyle mode. And after that, I'm pretty much ready to go to bed. Baking time is almost non-existent.

Well, I miss baking! Miss the days when I can dream about the goodies I can bake with my "spare" brain capacity. Miss the days when I can spend long hours in the kitchen without worrying about finishing within a certain number of hours. All that has changed, quite abit in fact. 

I feel a little rusty in the kitchen, a little lost when I can't find those ingredients like I used to, a little sad when I had to throw away expired ingredients that hasn't seen the daylight since months ago. Wish I had more time to make good use of them rather than throwing them away right now.

The first thing I decided to bake when I had an off day is macarons! I have not tried any recipe from the Pierre Herme's Macarons book yet, and decided to pick a simply one - Plentitude Macarons. The description for this sounded delicious enough - caramel chocolate filling with fleur de sel dark chocolate chips sandwiched between 2 shells - I'm sold just by reading this!

Seriously, I was quite rusty. I forgot to start beating my egg whites and my sugar syrup was already reaching 110 degrees. I overmixed my batter and it turned out pretty runny. I was all set for a failed batch until I saw those frilly feet rising up high. Phew!

However, the texture didn't turn out quite right, they were wayyyy too crispy for their own good. I had a good laugh when I bit into one and heard a crunching sound HAHA. Ended up with a batch of Crispy Plentitude Macarons!

Apart from the shells, the caramel chocolate filling was super yummy! I caramelised the sugar to a deep amber and it gave this a nice burnt sugar taste which I love. The filling's a winner for sure :).

I'm still in 2 minds as to whether these can be shared with the world. After all, it's kinda like a "failed" batch, though it's edible. Alternatively, I can look at this as being the "pioneer" of Crispy Plentitude Macarons...HAHA.

Oh well...