Yes, it’s time again; a brand new year is about to come and your eyes are looking for a special recipe on this blog at that time of the year. I know that very well and believe me I did my best to catch up. However last week was a complete mess thanks to well known astrologer Susan Miller who visited Istanbul recently. What she said was quite off-putting.

Something very big, a sort of phenomenal event would take place in Turkey on last Tuesday and this would affect lives of all people nationwide. This event might be a natural disaster, a serious bomb attack or a major scandal. My goodness, choose lesser of the three evils. She also warned us that Mercury was coming back (explanation for astrology virgins: this is something bad, very bad) and we should be very careful while taking decisions, better not to take any decisions even.

Thanks to this prophecy I had one of my worst Tuesdays ever, expecting vicious things to come out from everyday life scenes like construction workers on the street corner to drill natural gas pipeline by mistake and cause a huge blast and so on. Of course I could not take the decision for what kind of New Year recipe to work on under these circumstances, could I? Thanks lord, nothing serious happened on that day and I went back to my kitchen after a hard day of work.

Making Almond Flour for the Macaron

As a new year’s tradition I stick to spicy recipes but the things I tried were not better than my dear deer cookies of last year so I decided to go for some change (or should I say challenge?) and developed a new macaron flavor combination to celebrate the new year. I knew that it was not an easy task but when I read my own words from last New Year’s post saying “We all can do anything, no matter how fancy or how difficult it is. It’s all about trying and retrying just like all other things in our lives.” I gave it a go.

It was a bit more difficult than I thought and you would pity on me if you had known how many undercooked or overcooked, under folded or over folded macaron shells I ate to test the recipe. It took me preparing several batches of batter again and again with different amount of ingredients, consuming a great number of eggs a chicken can lay in two weeks’ time and lots of almonds.

When it comes to macarons everyone has his/her own way of doing things. Some achieved success by folding dry ingredients very slowly, some prefer folding rapidly as they would beat the shit out of it at first then slowing down, some recommend lower oven temperatures some others apply high temperature at first then lower it at the halfway of baking, some recommend a convection oven, some using a conventional one. Even, I read about using two different ovens set at different temperatures for each half of the baking time and then I stopped reading any more. Imagine, the question of “how long you should wait for macarons to get dried before baking?” has many answers ranging from “What the hell, I don’t have enough patience to wait even for a minute after piping them!” to “You have to to wait for a day to harden their shells”. As you see it is so easy to go insane.

In short, this would be your own experience with your kitchen tools and oven which would significantly affect the end product. Particularly you need to know the characteristics of your oven very well, if you do not know yet, this will be the chance to deepen your relationship. Good to keep in mind that it takes some trials to realize what works and what does not for the given conditions you are in; even the humidity of your kitchen might change the fate of your little macarons according to some opinion.

Accepting the fact that they are not a simple cake to bake, gather all your courage and be determined to accomplish what you aim: sweet and crispy outer shells without any cracks on the surface and a moist interior to leave a deep almond flavor on your taste buds.

After all your efforts if they do not come out perfect, please don’t get down. Anything with that much almond will taste nice regardless of its shape. Try to look from the bright side; you may not have the picture perfect macarons but will definitely have delicious almond cookies beside your tea. It’s just a matter of finding the courage to challenge yourselves and that’s what all we need to have for the coming year.

I wish you a New Year full of courage and determination to take a step further and realize all the things you wish for no matter how difficult they are.

Ingredients (makes around 24 macarons depending on size)
For macaron shells

• 120 g (3,8 oz) blanched or slivered almonds
• 200 g (7 oz) confectioner’s sugar
• 90 g (3,1 oz) egg whites (aged 1 day at room temperature)
• 30 g caster sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• A pinch of salt
• Cinnamon to sprinkle on top

For filling

• 160 g (5,6 oz) mascarpone cheese
• 2 ½ tablespoons green apple syrup
• 50 ml (1,7 fl. oz) heavy cream

Instructions