December has always been a crazy month both personally and professionally. At the end of the week I usually collapse on the couch and enter a television stupor. As the weekend progresses I find that couch potato-ing is not enough and turn to my other stress reliever: food. I find baking relaxing. There is something therapeutic in filling a scoop with fluffy flour and leveling it off.
For the past two months I've whipped up baked goods on what I like to call "the Sunday bake". I've made loafs, cookies and brownies amongst other baked goodies. Martha Stewart released her annual holiday magazine and this year's theme was cookies. I love cookies because they are small sugary bite size goodness...my mouth is watering just thinking about it. I went back and forth between smoked bacon ginger cookies and macarons...macarons won out.
Thanks goodness for my KitchenAid! I have literally burned through four hand mixers in my history of baking. I've tried cheap to mid-level ones. My relationship with them has always been tenuous and has always ended with a terrible burning smell. When my last one began to go up in smoke I decided that I had to fully commit to the KitchenAid. I haven't in the past because it was heavy and a bit cumbersome, but it really came in handy with the macarons. I spent 90% of the cook time whipping the eggs. After my first attempt was successful I decided that this would be my hostess/host gift for the holidays. I have done a mixture of black tea (cream of avalon or earl grey)-apricot jam macarons and chocolate-strawberry jam ones. Although these are not as good as Lauduree I'm still really happy with them, especially with a nice sprinkle of curry. Yum! I'm still figuring out some transport aspects but overall A+.
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