using up my egg whites part I: swirly macarons

After some kueh lapis and pineapple tarts, im sure many others who attempted those common cny goodies face the same problem as me - many leftover egg whites!

The only thing i thought of was macarons, since those are the only things i knew used egg whites only. Upon surfing the net and reading up on other food blogs, i realised that there are much more recipes that uses egg whites only.

For a start, i still did macarons, for a simple reason, i hadn't experimented enough with it and since i have spare egg whites, why not make use of the opportunity? This time, i'm sticking back with the french meringue method. The italian meringue method experiment left me with sticky pots and perspiration all over (due to the boiling of the sugar syrup). The french meringue was sooo much simpler and yielded better results.

Once again, i used the recipe i did for the french meringue method i did, adding a little twist to it, thanks to Tartelette who inspired me to try out what she did.

it was abit of a frenzy, trying to separate out some batter and add colouring to the remaining ones and..i might over-mixed the colour batter in the process =X or rather, i might have mixed correctly, but, due to the fear of over-mixing, i had streaks of coloured powder they weren't incorporated carefully enough.

my first fear was removed when i saw those pretty feet bubbling away..however...the tops cracked all overrrrr. =((( brrr

I had extra plain batter left, and realised the consistency was much thicker and might be less overmixed den the blue ones. so i piped 4 of them, yes just 4 of the plain ones just for the sake of comparison. and boy, was i glad i piped the plain ones.

2 trays of blue ones and ALL had cracked surface. I began wondering why. 1. i left them out to dry. so i don't think it's because of the skin-forming problem. 2. i had an oven thermometer and the temp was kept under control. 3. ah ha! the cracked parts were on portions that the colouring streaked! hmm..so was it or was it not the colouring? the answer could only be solved by checking out how did the plain ones fare.

ta da! the plain ones look great! thought i thought they were a little under-mixed. the feet looked a little to big and tended to spread more outwards than the blue ones. nonetheless, i'm pretty happy with the outcome as the feet did not spread so much outwards like my first french meringue attempt.

The bottoms of most came off beatutifully, but the plain ones had sticky bottoms that left their bellies/insides on the parchment paper. =( maybe because they weren't cooled enough before i removed them or...?

conclusion:

1. i might just stick to the french meringue method for good, seeing how easy and that it works fine for me.

2. if only the blue colouring was evenly mixed, i might have just ended up with pretty looking macarons.

3. no more blue macarons for me, they look abit too coloured to be eaten. though, really pretty to look at.

4. i quite like the recipe as somehow, it didnt taste as overly sweet as the ones made with the italian meringue method.

5. **something to improve, the macarons were a little too crunchy on the sides. like biscuits. hmm..that i'll have to troubleshoot over again.