I spent a few hours a day trying to make macarons in 8th grade. My biggest problem was that I kept messing up on the meringue. When I baked the macarons they would be these flat big cookies. They would be super dry and crispy and taste just like pure sugar. They were obviously failures with the incorrect texture and visuals.

The reason why I was making macarons was because we had a project where we were supposed to challenge ourselves and record our progress. As a baker I decided to take on what most bakers find a challenging task making macarons. Most bakers have difficulty achieving the perfect crisp on the outside and chewiness on the inside a macaron would have. The process itself also takes a while from sifting to letting the macarons sit for an hour to form a skin. The difficulty of baking it for just the right amount of time is also not to be underestimated as it is very easy to have burnt or raw macarons.

After those mistakes I got feedback from professionals who were skilled in the art of baking especially macarons. I emailed the bakers at Honey and Butter a very popular macaron baker in the Orange County area. They are well known for their super cute themed designs of macarons and their wide variety of flavors. After contacting them they replied with many tips and tricks on how to achieve the perfect consistency. They also sent links to articles and recommendation recipes that would be easiest for the inexperienced like me.

I met this challenge by going through all the articles and reading every single detail. Spending countless hours, I researched everything that could have went wrong. I also bought recommended tools and measured everything as exactly as humanly possible. I took my time and made sure I followed the recipe sentence by sentence, word for word. At that time I could recite all the ingredient and the whole recipe without looking.

Baking macarons is still a challenge me especially because of the weather. It was very humid this summer, which is the worst weather for any type of baking because it cause batter to become thin and warm. Also it is as I wrote in the paragraphs before a very long process that I would have to spend half a day on. Baking is an art and it is not something you can rush or multitask with as it is very complicated. However successes are always very rewarding.