I have been having a craving to make some Italian meringue to practice and get it perfect, so when Donné told me the Bradshaws were coming to visit it was an opportunity to try something new. In my quest for perfect Italian meringue I discovered that macarons are made with it, so a new challenge arose.

I do seem to have lucked out and had a very successful first batch of macarons. The main comment from the consumers was that they were on the large size, and were hence dubbed, “Man-carons,” but as Kim said, “Who has ever complained that their macaron was too big?”

I was also super happy with the Italian meringue that I made – it came out entirely differently to my previous attempts, and in my opinion it came out perfectly. Shiny, silky and stable – beautiful to work with.

There is one challenge in making macarons – it takes quite a long time for them to rest before they bake, so although the preparation time isn’t too long, the waiting part (where the outside forms a skin) is very time consuming. If you make them, be aware of how many batches you’ll need to make, and how long the pre-baking resting time is for each batch.

I used this macaron recipe (because it prints nice and easily), but made them more like this recipe describes. For the filling I just doubled up the meringue and used half of it to make Italian meringue buttercream.