I told you I’d take photos.

Macarons are the new cupcakes. Hipsters are all over them. They’re adorable and colourful, but – misleadingly – don’t look like insta-diabetes, unlike the most picturesque of cupcakes. Instead, they’re like cupcakes for refined, elegant people. People like me. I’m totally classy. All the time. While preparing my beloved macarons, I put a slice of lemon in my green tea. That’s class. Every sip tasted like bitterness and dirt, and twisted my face around worse than Charlie’s lemonade first did. SO FANCY.

Picture me drinking tea with the Queen; I’d have a pained expression the entire time (SUGAR IS FOR SISSIES.)

The yellow means they’re lemon-flavoured (!), but from this angle they kind of look like burgers with sweetened condensed milk as a filling. After all the attempts to get them right, the macarons in this batch are my babies. Macarons take less time to make than cupcakes, and theoretically they’re less complicated, you just have to make them with much love, ie:

• Don’t beat the air out of them. Beat eggs. Add caster sugar. Put down egg beater. Fold in the rest of the ingredients. I forgot that last part, ending up with sugary drippy water. Even better, the whole time I was thinking, oh this needs to be fluffier, I’ll just KEEP THE EGG BEATERS ON FOREVER.
• Let your babies chill out on their trays for a while before putting them in the oven. It stops them from fluffing up in the oven like meringues.

Both of these were why my previous attempts had failed. After figuring it out all by myself in attempt number three (BAKING SCIENCE), I noticed both these things in the instructions. I feel less like I’ve discovered the secret for perfect macarons. >_< At least my parents now think I am especially talented for finally mastering such a "complicated" recipe?