Junior Masterchef Australia?

Miss Mally Macaron

One of my fondest memories as a child is watching my mum bake. She used to make all sorts of things from scratch, like cheesecakes and chocolate cakes and pavlovas, and I was always in awe of her skill. The birthday cakes she made for my brother and I were second to none, and I looked forward to each birthday with a kind of excitement that is only now matched by the excitement of making cakes for my own children.

It seems that Malorie is a lot more like me than I realised, and she too finds joy in making desserts. We usually only tackle simple things and bake for the fun, not for food, but we are extending our horizons as each day goes by.
One of the newest things in our repertoire is macarons. As a family obsessed with Masterchef Australia, macarons are something we've always been interested in making. Watching contestants fail to make them time and time again had me too scared to even try, no matter how many times Malorie begged me for them, but then I got wind that Adriano Zumbo had easy-to-use macaron kits. That meant a trip to Coles was on the cards.

I bought an electric beater after our first endeavour.
No more hand whisking for me!

We picked one up on special (bargains are my favourite!) and rushed home to try them out right away. I was, to say the least, unprepared. I didn't have an electric mixer, or a sieve. That meant hours of hand whisking just to get the meringue mix to peak, and it meant manually breaking up the bits of almond meal and folding it in with the spatula. But they turned out great, and Malorie had so much fun helping me out. She even piped her own and made a macaron tower to rival even Zumbo's! 

Maybe soon we'll be able to make them from scratch, and put to use that macaron recipe book Malorie keeps under her pillow.

"Mummy, I'm a cat! A cat making macarons!"

Two whisks are better than one!

Heart eyes forever.