Remember a few months ago I wrote about making vanilla extract at home? It is time to let you all know what happened with my little experiment.
The experiment worked fantastically (is that a word?). This past Wednesday there was a potluck for DC food bloggers, and I decided to bring dessert. Instead of making my famous flourless chocolate cake, I decided to make macaroons and used my home-made vanilla extract.
The vanilla extract smelled amazing! And it tasted even better. Here are the macaroons right out of the oven:
But they did not look impressive and fun enough. I decided to dip them in chocolate. Since the macaroons are naturally sweet, I decided to melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips with a bit of butter. Instead of doing this process in a double boiler, I decided to cheat a bit and microwave the mixture at 30 second intervals. At first everything was going well, but then the chocolate turned into a paste! I panicked and thought about trashing the chocolate and using some extra chocolate chips. But, after the melted chocolate sat for a bit and I stirred it again, it magically looked fine!
I put the melted chocolate into a Ziploc bag, snipped a little piece of the corner and "drizzled" the chocolate over the macaroons: ta da!
The potluck was very fun, and my macaroons were a success: happiness all around.
Question for you: do you ever add anything to your macaroons? I was thinking about adding citrus zest or dried cranberries, but Anna thought it sounded gross :) You be the judge!
Question for you: do you ever add anything to your macaroons? I was thinking about adding citrus zest or dried cranberries, but Anna thought it sounded gross :) You be the judge!
11 comments:
I didn't get to try these at the potluck. I'll have to make my own using your recipe; they look amazing.
I'm sure this tastes so good!
I love chewy coconuty macaroons.
these are beautiful!! Now I'm craving coconut! I think citrus zest would be great, but I worry about cranberries messing with the texture. I don't think i would like to have pieces of "stuff" in my macaroons.
I know on my blog I am always talking about the french macaroons, but I simply adore these! I just make them simply, I dont really add anything special. I did however come across a recipe that had saffron and cardamom in it, but I dont think I'd want to do that.
Your macaroons are beautiful! I've never added anything to mine that has a detectable texture.
These look great. I would add some chopped almonds, if anything.
Perfect macaroons with just the little bot of chocolate drizzle
I actually don't like macaroons, but these look very pretty with the chocolate drizzle. You can mix mini chocolate chips or chopped chocolate right into them. I don't think zest would be a bad addition either.
They are beautiful with the pineapples and chocolate drizzle!
Are these pix with the new camera? That last one is practically jumping off the screen into my mouth. UGH, it looks so good, I'm probably going to have to go over to Godiva now and buy one, since I don't have time to make any.
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