Life in the Cheese Drawer

several of my readers have benefited from my thing about trying out obscure, results-driven baking, which has included such weirdos as the buche de noel, spatchcocked turkey, and last but not least, the macaron cookie (not to be confused with the macaroon, a coconut heap).

after two or three recipes and watching a youtube video on the proper macaronage (the technique to get the feet to do their thing), i found one that worked for me. so first, the recipe, because we all know how annoying it is to read someone’s life story and 40 million food sponsor ads just to get to the recipe:

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:1]

some BIG TIPS tp make your macarons better:

1. buy a kitchen scale and weigh all your ingredients. my recipe has no measurements, just weights. (this also helps find package weights so you can buy your postage at home and stick it in the mailbox.)
2. once you start, you’ve gotta go. boom boom boom – all things happen right after another, especially with the eggs whites beating and making the sugar syrup.
3. you will need a thermometer to watch the temperature of your sugar syrup.
4. if your feet suck, no biggie. still tastes the same!
5. make sure your filling is on point. i’ve just got the recipe for the base cookie, so you can customize flavors how you wish. my favorite is adding lemon zest and extract to the cookie, then having a lemon curd and lemon cream cheese filling. my most recent batch was peppermint mocha.

on a related note, other items that have helped me in the kitchen:

1. a good knife
2. an electric knife sharpener
3. a LARGE jellyroll pan. 18×24?

anyway, the technique for making macaron is basically making a meringue and then mixing it with sugar and almond flour. i tried a straight up meringue with eggs and sugar, then found that a swiss meringue (sugar syrup instead of just sugar) makes a better macaron.

one of the things that took a couple tries was figuring out the consistency of the batter. i looked at the macaronage method, which is beating the batter against the side of the bowl, and read somewhere that your batter should be the consistency of magma. once i figured those things out, i liked the results of the feet of the macaron better.

because the feet is what the macaron is mostly about! it’s this little lift in the bottom of the cookie where the air puffs out and makes a little holey base.

and i have FINALLY made a video of the process! here’s the short process, then watch the sped up video.

1. line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. i use one large and one medium.
2. sift flour and powdered sugar
3. measure out egg whites and throw into mixer to come to soft peaks
4. once there, add sugar, whisk to stiff peaks
5. while that’s whisking, make sugar syrup
6. pour syrup slowly into meringue while it’s whisking, then let it keep going for another 10ish mins
7. during this time, mix the rest of your egg whites with the flour/sugar mix. it’ll look pasty beige. yum.
8. mix/fold the meringue into the beige paste with a spatula, then add in flavorings and food coloring
9. then macaronage until magma consistency
10. put into a piping bag and pipe circles onto the cookie sheets
11. let it sit while your oven comes to 320º
12. put in oven for 10-20 mins
13. check if done by moving the cookie around and see if the foot moves easily with the cookie
14. let them cool, then match up two the same-ish size to make little sandwich fillings with your filling of choice!

here is a 3-minute quicklapse of macaron making!

i feel like this title is more in tune with my year in review, so perhaps i’ll revisit. but i just wanted to say that i was a total fail on on kablpomo – i did not blog every day. i did blog most days during november, but not every day. in the same vein, i think i may not hit my goal of reading 55 books this year, which is really discouraging because it’s a stinking PANDEMIC and i’ve got nothing else to do! eyeroll. i should be killing the reading, but instead i’m killing the doomscrolling on twitter and foreverwatching on netflix.

alas.

(i HAVE been hitting baking goals that i never made, i guess. so there’s that)

nate and i just celebrated our 15th anniversary – who knew! we didn’t do anything for it, but it did happen. i wanted to convince him to go to some place fancy to eat, but everything is shut down. thanks pandemic. #thankskim. next year! i swear, once this vaccine is on its way to mass delivery, it’s gonna be one big partaaaay. until then, i’ll wear my mask and stay mostly home. what a (necessary) drag.

christmas is going to be interesting. i’m actually think i’m going to start wearing my fancy clothes all the time. zoom call? put on a party dress. working from home? wear a long cloak and fancy hat. maybe get a bird of prey to hang out on your arm. what’s stopping us? we all wore yoga pants for 10 months; how about we class it up a bit?

speaking of the holiday, i’m going to work on baked goods this weekend, then next weekend it’ll be tree time. i’ve taken down the fall decor, and i’m mid-respite til it’s time to pull out the festive indoor decor (outdoor decor is going full force).

that’s all i got.

my first blog mention of fightmaster yoga is in october of 2014. i’ve been doing almost exclusively fightmaster yoga on youtube for 6 years, and on a daily basis for the past two years. her yoga is for everyone – 10-mintue yoga, beginner’s yoga, vinyasa flow yoga, hour+ ashtanga yoga, meditation, breathing, slow, fast. over new year’s, she’d do a challenge and new videos would get uploaded every day. otherwise, she’d upload a video about once a week. she has 673 videos on her youtube channel and more in her myyogapal app that she created with her husband.

i chose lesley because of the way her voice sounded and how she only expected the best we could do – not the full iteration of the pose. as long as you feel a stretch, that’s all that matters. there’s no enlightenment at the bottom of a split – just a sweaty yoga mat. every day i turned on a video and followed her easy instructions as i flowed through poses, listening more than watching. her quotes and affirmations at the end of the practice leave me feeling refreshed every time. her positive attitude and easy smiles are what makes me come back to her videos. i had wanted to go to one of her retreats or do yoga teacher training with her, or even just go to california and do a personal yoga practice with her. after the pandemic was over, it was my plan to find a way to go to her next yoga retreat.

this morning i found out that she died unexpectedly.

i’m on her email list, and her husband (duke) wrote to her followers with the news along with her last video upload. i don’t know what happened or how she died; duke is usually forthcoming, and i expect that he will update later on, but given the situation, i understand why there is no explanation right now.

i didn’t know lesley personally, but i still knew her. she was a voice i looked forward to every day (and still will in her old videos). she was a voice that i knew would always calm and relax me. she was a centered voice and an available voice. she was a voice that didn’t expect anything but the most you could do in the moment.

this it gut-wrenching. i will miss her.

namaste, lesley.