Farewell macarons

It's the Sis's last day at work today, and we spent the weekend baking macarons for her to give to her colleagues as byebye presents. We made the shells over the weekend and stored them in containers. Then did the fillings over the past two days, and sandwiched them and packed them so she can bring them to work yesterday and today.

Lemon macs with lemon curd filling & Milo macs with Milo buttercream and Valrhona crunchy pearls

This is my second time (the first time post coming right up, I just decided to jump queue and post these first...) attempting the Italian method of making macarons and I must say that although they are a tad more troublesome to make, I kinda like the shells more than the French method ones cos they are much nicer.

It was also my first time making so many macarons at once. I normally don't bake so many but I must have piped like a hundred (or more) macaron shells! The batter for the milo ones were nicer and puffier than the lemon ones cos I added a few drops of yellow liquid colouring and lemon essence for the lemon ones, which made the batter runnier I guess. But the batter for both batches were really thick essentially, much thicker and glossier than my usual French batter. 

Macaron packages

The milo shells were really yums, and the milo buttercream (which I added a little kahlua too) made the macaron super milo-ish. I like the addition of the crunchy Valhrona pearls inside the buttercream, but the Sis didn't like 'em. Well, differing tastes I guess. As for the lemon ones, do I even really need to talk about them? It's lemons and I'm a lemonaholic! 'Nuff said.

I might stick to using the Italian method in future...if only I can figure out how to juggle boiling the sugar syrup and beating the egg whites concurrently. Sis and I, we split the chores. I'll make the sugar syrup, and I'll tell her when to start beating the egg whites. Then when the egg whites are done and the sugar syrup is done. I'll pour the sugar syrup over the whipped egg whites and continue beating while she mix the remaining egg whites into the dry almond/icing sugar mixture. 

Now...the only thing I need to do is to pipe multiple trays of similar sized macarons. I always end up piping a tray of medium sized ones, a tray of large ones, and a tray of small ones. Haha. ;)