I'm back with another mac! But first, I have some apologizing to do. My posts have been so scattered y'all. I went from posting twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, to posting once a week on Monday, to posting once a week whenever I get the chance. There's just been so much stuff going on in my life lately and I haven't been able to handle my time as well as I hoped. But, I plan to get myself back to my regular routine sooner rather than later, so don't you worry! Now, let's talk macs! The cookies I hate to love and love to hate. I originally wanted to make these pistachio flavored because of Eid coming up (Arabs love pistachios!), but I was too intimidated to grind my own pistachios and too short on time to order pistachio flour. Then, I remembered that I had bookmarked these mango macarons from Joanne's blog a while ago and one look back at her pictures had me sold. The filling looked and sounded so dreamy, I just couldn't resist. Plu...

I'm ready for summer and I've got the macarons to prove it. Check out these limited edition chocolate shells filled with a swirl of marshmallow buttercream and a dollop of chocolate ganache scattered with itty bitty almond pieces. I am obsessed, people! I was actually inspired to make these macarons after eating Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream. Ironic, right? I probably could have left out the almonds, added a swirl of salted caramel and called these Phish Food macarons. But I went with the classic American favorite. Seeing as how Memorial Day is right around the corner, these would be the perfect treat!

Plot twist: I, the non-lover of lemon, loved these tartlets from last week so much that it inspired me to make another lemon dessert. Totally unexpected of me, right? But the fact that the dessert I chose to make is macarons? Well, you had to have seen that coming. It seems I can't go more than a few weeks without making these notorious little ego-crushers. Yup, these are the most depressing dessert to make and will almost always put your baking ego in check. The good news is, they are also a very bipolar dessert, in that you can have good and bad macarons from the same batch you make. I'm talking, from the same tray in the same oven! That's what happened with these. Some of them chose to grow feet, some gave absolutely zero you-know-whats about growing anything. Most of them were the latter, but thankfully, I had enough good ones to share with you guys today. But before we talk about them, I want to share with you some super cool products OXO sent m...

Evidently, it's Girl Scout cookie season. Which means it's also time for us food bloggers to recreate Girl Scout cookie flavors in a variety of desserts. I called dibs on macarons. Now, I've never actually had a Girl Scout cookie before. But I imagine if I did, Samoas/Caramel deLites would probably be my favorite. Chocolate, toasted coconut, and caramel sounds like a stellar combination. Actually, it is a stellar combination. I know, because I ate the filling for these macarons with a spoon. And then there was the chocolate. I added cocoa powder to the macaron shells, and also drizzled chocolate on top in true Samoa style. I think these are my prettiest macarons yet!

Happy 2015 everybody! Whaddya say we start the new year off with some macarons?! I think you'd all be pretty happy with that decision considering three of my top ten recipes of 2014 were none other than macarons themselves! Lucky for you guys, I'm starting to get more comfortable making them. They're still a pain in the neck when they want to be, but practice makes perfect! And these Ferrero Rocher macarons are darn near flawless! I made the macaron shell entirely out of hazelnut flour, with a touch of cocoa powder in the mix. And let me tell you, the shells alone were delicious. You can't really say that for entirely almond based shells because almonds don't taste like much and the amount of sugar in the shells usually overpowers everything. But these, these were amazing alone.

Thanksgiving is just a week away which means at this moment, intense pie planning is going down. So I hope you won't mind if I interfere and suggest maybe not making a pie at all? Maybe instead, make a pie inspired treat? Like these macarons? That'll definitely set your dessert table apart from everybody else's this year. I know you're probably thinking, macarons? Really? Out of all the desserts I choose to suggest on a probably already stressful baking schedule, I choose the most notoriously finicky one. What can I say, these suckers are worth it in the long run. And let me tell you, the run was very long with these sweet potato pie macarons. I had to try three darn times to get them right. It was like I hadn't made batches upon batches of successful macarons before. The good news is, I now have a new favorite recipe AND I feel like I have finally truly mastered the macaron. Previous macarons I made sort of fit the bill, but the shells never tu...

You guyyyyys! I became an aunt again over the weekend! And I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself! I love babies and right now, it's baby season! Literally, three of my friends had babies this past week. And there's more to come! Melissa, from a Teaspoon of Happiness , is expecting a baby girl in a few weeks and today we're throwing her a virtual baby shower! Isn't blogging fun? You get to throw parties for all your virtual friends. And that rule about not eating what you bring to a party because it's rude? Well, you can throw that right on out the window. You're basically required to eat what you bring to a virtual party. And enjoy it in all the guests' honor, of course :) I definitely enjoyed these macarons. They were inspired by my strawberry white chocolate cupcakes , which by the way, I happened to make for my friend who had a baby! I guess I'm just keeping the trend going. Although these macarons are pink, there is no fla...

Hello, Culinary Couture readers! I’m Allie and I usually blog over at Baking a Moment . But today, I’m here filling in for our good friend Meriem. It’s Ramadan all month and Meriem is very busy honoring her faith, family, and culture, so she asked me to pop over and offer you guys a yummy treat! One of the things that I love about Meriem and Culinary Couture is that she doesn’t shy away from recipes that might be a little challenging. Macarons are notorious for being fussy, but when you get them right, it’s the best feeling ever!!! I’ve made many batches over the last few years, and most of the time they come out great, but every now and again I get a pesky batch that cracks, or refuses to grow feet. Those failures can be so frustrating, but it always makes the successes that much sweeter and more rewarding! I know that Meriem feels me here. She struggled at the beginning, but she’s since mastered macaron-making and I’ve been drooling ever since. Did you...

So, this was a flavor just begging to happen. I mean, have you seen the obscene amount of marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate on display in every supermarket right now. How could I not incorporate that into a macaron? How could I not take America's summertime classic and make it classy? It needed to be done! The question was: how do I do it? Do I keep the macaron shells plain with a marshmallow/graham cracker/chocolate filling? Or do I make them chocolate with a marshmallow/graham cracker filling? OR, do I make them graham cracker flavored and fill them with a chocolate/marshmallow filling? I chose the latter AKA, the most difficult one because it involved switching out almond flour for graham cracker crumbs which is something I had never done before. And let's be honest, it's never a good idea to mess with a macaron recipe, because they are hard enough to get right as it is! But of course, I decided to mess with it anyway.

Where I once used to wonder what to do with all the leftover egg whites in my fridge, I now wonder what macaron flavor I should create with them next. Oh, how times have changed. Who would have thought that one day I would find myself brave enough to take on macarons? Better yet, who would have thought that I would win Sucre's macaron challenge ?! Certainly not me. But I am elated about it and can't wait to start receiving my year supply of macarons to get inspiration from all the flavors. My latest macaron flavor concoction if you haven't figured it out already is strawberry shortcake! So many strawberry shortcakes have been popping up around the web lately, and it was almost as if it was a sign that I needed to make a strawberry shortcake flavored macaron. Now I know that putting fresh fruit in a macaron is probably not the smartest idea due to the high water composition of fruit, especially strawberries. And then paired with whipped cream, fuggedaboutit. B...

Remember those days when not getting feet on a macaron was the biggest problem you could run into? Oh, those were the days. I miss those days. It seems that now that I've learned how to get feet on my macarons, I'm faced with a different, more complicated problem. Wrinkled.Tops. Oh wrinkled tops, how I loathe thee. The first time I became acquainted with you was two Fridays ago when it was a humid, rainy day and I thought you were just a product of the weather. That was until I tried the recipe again the following day in beautiful, sunny weather, and there you were again. And then I tried it a second time, and a third time, and STILL, no such luck. I don't think there's anything more frustrating in the world than not knowing how to fix something. I searched the interwebs high and low to figure out why my macarons were looking so beautiful in the oven, but then ever so slightly deflating when I took them out. Basically, all I could find was that they were u...

Macarons: 3, Meriem: 2. And let me just say, I am extremely proud of the number on the left. Three times is a pretty good amount of times to fail at macarons. Though any number above that one would have been completely understable too because MAN, these cookies are tricky! Of course, I didn't think so. I went into this thinking I could get it right on the first try, like a boss. Newsflash: I am not a boss, nowhere near it. I am but a simple human being who fails at macarons, just like everybody else. The good news is, failing makes you delve deeper into the realm of macarons to figure out exactly what it is that you are doing wrong. I watched ten thousand videos and read twenty thousand articles and viewed as many tutorials as I could find, but the one that helped me out the most was this one . I watched it over and over again, and settled on using the recipe it demonstrates as well. Guess what? It is truly fool-proof. My first three tries were using a diff...