Baking Adventures: Macarons!

So I love macarons, but they're awfully hard to find in Florida. It's easier, I imagine, to find a unicorn than a macaron shop.

Until one opened up at the mall.

When I went to the mall last weekend, I wandered in and out of the Hello Kitty store, tried on a mound of clothes at H&M, admired the displays at Nordstrom's, and ate spring rolls and noodles at the food court. You know, the usual business. This mall is indoors (ironic) and far from where I live, so every time I go to there, it seems like an adventure, a long expedition to an exotic land of overpriced purses and trendy people. But on the way out to the parking lot, I discovered a newly-opened macaron shop. I was enchanted.

The space was very open with wood floors and huge posters of pastel macarons on the walls. The display cases were lit up. For a minute, I thought I was inside Flour House's bakery, Sweet Crumblier.

Just a minute.

Then, I saw the employees and their sneers... and I couldn't leave the shop fast enough.

It seems counterproductive to turn your nose up at customers if you expect to have good business. When I entered the shop, I got chills and didn't feel very welcome. A lady with a power suit and clip board observed the flow of people in the shop (since when do you need a power suit to bake?) and the teens working behind the displays were unfriendly. The price, also, was extremely high for such tiny treats. Normally, such things wouldn't bother me... if the vibe wasn't so strong, you know?

So I left that day proud that I hadn't bought anything from the shop, but also feeling a gaping hole in my stomach where macarons should have been. I really wanted some.

Maybe I could make my own.

This wasn't a new thought - baking my own macarons - but seeing that shop finally spurred me to action. I cracked open the recipe book I had gotten a few months ago, grabbed my mom (the real cook of the house), and embarked on a wild afternoon of trying to create this mysterious French dessert.

Here's how it went:

The cook book I used is called Macaroons: For the Ideal Bite-Size Treat. The outside feels soft, like a baby book, but there's tons of macarons inside to choose from. I couldn't find the edition I have online, so I've linked to (maybe) the same book. For some reason... it's on pre-order. Well, weird. It's the same publisher, at least. The only unfortunate thing about this book is that they spelled macaroon with an extra o.

*cringes*

Come to think of it, Oleander from Flour House had to learn the difference as well between them. A macaron is the French dessert that, for lack of a decent explanation, is usually pastel, has a filling, and is worn as much as a fashion statement as it is something delicious and sweet to eat. A macaroon is the ugly, yet tasty, coconut dessert. Hence, the chart:

Since my mom and I have been enjoying rose water (we've even made vegan cupcakes with it!), the choice of which flavor macaron to make was simple.

Maybe you can read the recipe directions? Hmm.

Almonds, Powdered Sugar, and Egg Whites

Pan Lining Paper

Ah, the basic materials above. We gathered all of this together, along with a bunch of blenders and mixers. I felt like a mad scientist, haha.

Because we didn't have almond meal already, we had to put our diced almonds into the blender. After that, we put in powdered sugar and created a potent concoction, haha. The almonds and powdered sugar had to be blended for fifteen seconds.

But the biggest challenge was the meringue. 

Neither my mom nor I have ever made meringue and so we had no idea what to look for when making it. So, the first time we tried, it ended up looking like this:

Thin, bubbly. Not quite right.

Even after adding a ton  of cream of tartar, sugar, and food coloring, it was still too flat!

The almond-powdered sugar mixture and the meringue are supposed to combine to make the cookie part of the macaron, so we knew that this watery failure wouldn't work. 

After wiping away a single tear, I flushed this down the toilet and we began again. 

What ended up saving us from a second epic fail was a wonderful site called Food Nouveau. Not only was there a helpful, step-by-step video set to Amelie-like music, but there was also a troubleshooting page that allowed us to find out what we did wrong right away. 

We probably had a bit of yoke that got into the egg whites, overbeat it in the process, and used too large of a bowl. Yep. 

Ah! Much better the second time! Looks like shaving cream, haha.

As carefully as folding a spider's web, we worked the almond-powdered sugar mix into the meringue and then packed it into a pastry bag. As you can see, the almonds left speckles on the cookies - because they weren't finely ground, haha. But it's all good. 

Ready to bake!

Look at that!

Do you see that perfect one? It's like... as real as one you'd get at a store. I almost cried when they came out of the oven ;_;

... but the holes!

Unfortunately, while they were baking, the paper on the tray flopped over - that's why some of them here were wrecked. The cookies are really delicate like that. You have to be careful when even eating them, haha.

As the last step, we had to include a filling for the middle. We went with whipped cream flavored with sugar and rose water.

Ta-da!

They're so cute, all imperfect and everything. *pinches their cheeks and cracks them* 

When we finally got to taste them, they were just, again, like ones you'd buy at a fancy store - with the added benefit of being fresh out of the oven. I wouldn't say that macarons are hard to make, but it's just that most of the techniques one would use to make them are, well, not part of everyday baking (at least, for me. I use the microwave). 

Publication News and Other Odds and Ends

Publication News

I've totally fallen behind on making announcements, but if you've visited my "Publications" tab at the top of the blog, then you're up to speed. In the last three months, I've gotten three short stories accepted to literary journals - and two of them have been published (the other, in Cygnus, will be published by the end of May).

The first is in the literary journal called Hogglepot and the story is called "The Mattress Pea." As you might imagine from the title, my story has something to do with The Princess and the Pea fairy tale. Here's a little snipit:

Preshea used to be a sensitive child. Her parents held her with oven mittens so they didn’t bruise her skin. When she turned five, she cut her feet of daisy petals. When Preshea graduated from junior high, she couldn’t shake the principal’s hand for fear that the simple contact would crush her bones. Now that she was sixteen, Preshea had a better handle on her fragility. Somewhat. She still fell in love.

If you want to read the rest, please check it out here.

Again, on the theme of fairy tales, my second story called "Tick-Tock Beauty" can be found over at Mossyhearth. Unlike other journals I've been published at, you'll need to register with the site to view the whole story. It's nothing to be scared of (no viruses or anything). but I guess the site is set up that way so the  journals seem more exclusive (Maybe. Don't ask me). Here's another sneak peek:

When she had graduated school with an engineering degree, Lydia had been something of a legend. She had made herself famous with her thesis project, a sumptuous clock that stood in the middle of the student center; it made a raindrop-sound, ticking and spewing confetti whenever their football team won a game. Her clock had attracted the attention of an alumnus named Mrs. Kittell. They exchanged contact information at the unveiling party for the clock.

And if you follow this link, you'll find it here (after registering, of course).

Formspring Questions

Who are Oleander's parents? Will there be a sequel to Flour House?

Before I answer the question, let me give a little background information for any new readers who may not know about dear Ollie. Flour House is a novella (or maybe even a novelette) that I wrote in the span of four weeks while competing in a Figment contest centered on writing a serial. For the specific rules, and to read the first chapter, check out my old blog post here. I ended up winning the contest and have had the story up ever since (it needs to editing though, but that's what this summer is for! It's on my list, haha). 

Flour House is basically about a girl named Lettice Morris who entertains guests at the family bakery by telling stories in flour - her drawings wiggling within the confines of the cutting board. After long days full of school and the bakery, there's one tiny secret that keeps her going: a boy named Oleander lives in her mother's dollhouse.

Now, on to the answer!

As revealed in the story, Oleander and Noelle (his sister) know nothing about their parents because they had been abandoned as babies on Agatha's windowsill. My guess is that their real, biological parents were probably stiff-necked, sour people who had no room in their hearts for "malformed" children. I suppose they had hung onto Ollie until Noelle was born, hoping that their next child wouldn't be born as tiny as a doll. But alas, Noelle was just as small as Ollie. And that was the last straw.  

Again, this is all in theory. You may have a different opinion on what kind of parents they had been. 

I don't have plans for a sequel. I think the story ends where it should, though I'd be interested to know where you think it could continue (Oh, mysterious formspring person). But, yes, I do think Lettice and Oleander's story is quite finished. 

Birdcage Girl Announcement

While I'm at it... I want to let my blog readers know that I'll be taking down my novel-length manuscript, Birdcage Girl, by May 11th (a self-prescribed deadline). I'm serious about sending it off to agents and publishers this summer, so I'm showing it in this way. However, I can't really do anything about it at the moment with the semester puttering to an end, so that's why the take-down date is some odd weeks away. 

If you haven't already, please feel free to read it while it's still posted and let me know what you think. 

Award News: Figment, Flour House, and Posters

Even though this did indeed happen a few weeks ago, I wanted to gather everything together to properly announce this awesome news: I won a writing contest! The contest was hosted by the teen writing website called Figment.com; anyone's who's been following me for a while already knows about it, haha.

The contest was called the serial contest. For anyone not familiar with the term "serial" in relation to fiction, I found a great quote from an article entitled "Writing Serial Fiction" by Icy Sedgwik:

"Serials have been part of fiction for decades. Newspapers and magazines regularly ran stories in installments, keeping readers hanging until the next issue continued the plot and spun out the story."

What serial fiction usually means nowadays is that you, as the writer, are periodically posting new chapters and the readers are following along with you as it happens. Very exciting. At least, I find it exciting. So when I found out that Figment created a contest revolving around this concept, I definitely wanted to take a shot at it.

The rules were simple:

1. Create a new story and write for four weeks straight.

2. Post at least two chapters each week (minimum of eight chapters in all).

3. One post each week must address the given writing prompt - and there was one prompt for each week.

The prompts were pretty tricky; you couldn't just write your story all at once and be done. So the prompts ensured that everyone entered was writing and creating as they went along - something that really gives me a thrill with the challenge of keeping pace and giving my characters something to worry about. The prompts were:

Week 1: Someone has to buy something from a toy store.

Week 2: Something made out of glass breaks

Week 3: Someone must be dancing or must witness dancing (of any kind).

Week 4: Someone or something (not necessarily human) must die or be dead.

The Prize: A Poster

The prize I won was a free poster from a company called PosterText. What they do is pretty cool - they take the classics (like The Portrait of Dorian Gray or Alice in Wonderland) and print the text of the book on the poster. Yes, it's like hanging a book on the wall. They choose a memorable scene, use the text from the book, and create a neat silhouette picture in the middle of the negative space. I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted, but in the end I stuck with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Here are some pictures of its arrival, followed by what I did after the happy delivery:

The poster arrives!

Ah, the poster is successfully unwrapped and up on a wall! It looks good, haha.

When you look at it up close, you can see the text! This one is the text next to Elizabeth's face.

My dog, Misty, and I eating cotton candy Italian ice. Delicious - and it helped cool my brain off after all that writing.

The Story: Flour House

From this contest, I came up with my entry: Flour House. I listed the prompts because, if you do decide to read it, you might be interested to see how I used them to fit the story each week. It's a story filled with baking sweets, teacup bathes, handsome tiny boys, and a lot of flour. I've posted the first chapter here:

Measuring Spoons

It was late November when Lettice Morris stood outside the toy shop. She was seventeen, a small girl with small feet. She had her brown hair tied back in two braids, her smart green pea coat buttoned up to the neck, and she watched her breath fog the darkened windows and drew hearts and stars with her gloved fingers until they faded away.

A thin layer of frost covered the city street. People walked carefully in big, slow strides with their arms out like tight-rope walkers. Lettice checked her watch out of habit, but she knew what time the toy shop opened.

8:03 am

The lights turned on.

The old man who ran the toy shop was called Duncan. He unlocked the door and popped his head out, smiling down at the young woman. “Good morning, Letty,” he said. His eyes glittered behind his gold-rimmed peepers. His bowtie was blue.

She greeted him with a smile that split apart her chapped lips. She forgot again to rub on her vanilla chapstick; it always got lost in her purse, no matter how small and how few pockets were inside. For this reason, Lettuce believed that all purses were hungry monsters – a notion she had held onto since she was a child. But more importantly, for this reason, her lips were chapped and aching.

When Duncan let her inside, she darted past the train set display and the mobiles of butterflies and space ships to the cash register. She pawed around in one of the small fishbowls filled with tiny, inexpensive trinkets and found a tiny, round container of chapstick. The cover was decorated with swirls like a melting candy cane but it smelled like roses when she opened it. She quickly swiped an un-gloved finger across its smooth, sticky surface and flinched as she carefully dotted her lips.

“Did you come out here for just that?” Duncan said, looking at her over the display of rag dolls. He gently adjusted a fallen teddy bear.

“Not at all. But I’ve forgotten to put it on again. Or my bag ate it. I can’t tell which is true yet,” Lettice said. She took out her wallet and pulled plucked out two crisp bills. “That’s for the sweet relief. I can feel my lips healing already.”

“So what are you looking for?”

“A measuring spoon set.”

“There are kitchen stores for that…”

“No. I mean, I want a tiny one. Dollhouse-sized.”

Duncan laughed. “Well, that’s different. Follow me.”

They walked down one of the cluttered aisles, stuffed with train wheels, menageries, broken china dolls and faded scraps of clothing. The labels on each wooden shelf were faded by the years. Some peeled off and joined the dust on the floor. Duncan stopped at a shelf lined with tiny couches, paintings from Picasso and O’Keeffe on bigger than a thumb, and a bathtub realistic enough to have a ring. He extracted a small box, and from that box, amongst forks, brushes, and necklaces, he offered Lettice a flower-painted measuring spoon set. She held it prudently in her hands.

“I gather you’ve wanted to add to your mother’s dollhouse,” he said, watching Lettice gently turn the set in her hands, hearing it jingle. “It’s a worthy cause. It’s almost like building a real home, from the ground up. You’re lucky your mother boxed away most of her collection so that, when she passed, they would belong to you.”

He spoke easily about this because it had been five years since her mother died. Lettice was comfortable with it. She thought of her mother often, but not sadly; she had her cheerful, older brothers always making her feel safe. But although she did have a keen interest in putting her mother’s dollhouse back together, there was another reason why she had started to spend her money on the tiny delicacies. So without hesitating, Lettice said, “There’s that, Duncan. Yes. But my boyfriend is living in the dollhouse, and he’d really like to bake a cake.”

(Original cover art found on We Heart It)