chocolate macarons with cherry compote

These macarons were a surprise success.

You see, I was making them on a humid day. After preparing all the ingredients and setting everything up, the weather started turning cloudy and gloomy. Since everything was prepared, I decided to go ahead, since I figured I could use the oven drying method.

Frankly I do not like to use the oven drying method. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, I figure it could be the tops were too dry. I think if you dry macarons by fan or air-conditioner, the top doesn’t end up too dry. When the top is too dry, the macaron will crack.

Today, I used the air-conditioner method. The piped macarons were left to dry in my room, on my bed, for an hour. In fact, I had intended to dry them for only half an hour but forgot about them as I was busy making something else. When I checked on them, they were really dry. So I thought they were a goner. But surprise surprise, these babies came through. 😀

The recipe and the method is similar to my earlier post. If you’ve been as unfortunate as me to try for so many times before succeeding in macaron making, you’ll understand why I’ve decided I’ll never try another recipe. Ha! Though baking is all about trying and failing and trying again, this rule does not apply to me for macarons. I’ll just experiment with the flavor combination instead.

The only change was that I used a copper bowl to beat the egg whites. Besides the exercise, I find the meringue is much softer and will not clump up together that much. The extra fine ground almonds from Phoon Huat are still not fine enough. Sobs. I was too lazy to break out the processor but thank God the macarons came out fine, though a bit rough looking on the surface. So far, the only ground almonds I have bought that are very finely ground were from Japan. I got mine from Tokyu Hands and they came in small packs. I wish I had bought more. Sigh.

I had made a simple cherry compote a while back and it was kept in a canning jar, safely stowed away in my ingredients cupboard. I wanted to use it when I made black forest cake again. But as time went by and my mood changed and drifted away from making decorated cakes, the cherry compote sat in the cupboard, neglected. Today I opened the cherry compote, blitzed it in the processor, cheated by adding some corn starch and reduced the mixture over a low fire. Love the sweet sourish taste!

For a simple cherry compote recipe, you can check out Bon Appetit. For a cherry preserves recipe, check out The Cilantropist.

Oh, it is a happy day, when chocolate macarons and cherries come out to play….