{Baking} NO FEET, PRAY, LOVE …Oooops I mean EAT, PRAY, LOVE Chocolate Macarons

What’s not to love about the name of this much awaited film that is being released today on Friday the 13th – Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. The film is a 2006 memoir by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The memoir chronicles the author’s trip around the world after her divorce, and what she discovered during her travels. The film doesn’t seem to have very great reviews, but I love the title. A now clichéd phrase which seems to embody the essentials of life, a set of words I imagine everyone can connect to in their own little way!

What does it have to do with me and my blog? Well, I am no different and seem to have got caught  in it’s hype. So, I chose this summer flick to fit the theme for this months MacTweets, a monthly event co-hosted  by Jamie and me – Mac Attack #10 – A Summer Flick.

Our call…

Create that perfect macaron inspired by a movie: whether old or new, comedy or drama, black & white or in glorious Technicolor, let that movie inspire, fire up the ideas and pull you into an imaginary world of cameras, lights, costumes and scenery. You are the screenwriter, the director, the cast and crew… now to produce an award winning cinematographic macaron!

My mind was set on this film, that was partly shot in India. The title Eat, Pray, Love reflected everything I felt about macarons, maybe not in that order though, so seemed the natural choice! I L♥VE macarons, it’s probably one of the only things I would PRAY for feet to appear, and EAT? Oh YUM YUM,  these little creatures make for absolutely delightful mouthfuls! Pure indulgence and a joy to feast on, feet or no feet! Well, I dressed them up in costumes!!

So my story this month is … Look Mom, NO  FEET!! Call me cynical, call me persevering, call me silly, obsessed or whatever, but I continue to try month after month, and am so prepared for the lack of feet that it doesn’t seem to bother me anymore. The way I’m going, I’ll probably faint with joy if feet showed up in the near future. That’s not to say I don’t brainstorm my faults. I do, I do! I read every written word I find about macarons, I analyse, I take the help of mac masters, I get help from friends like Bina who send me egg white powder, I play around with oven temperatures, I try different recipes … Oh well, to cut a long story short, maybe they just don’t want to grow feet in the humid UGH temperatures of North India as yet. But since I am a co host, I can’t say I didn’t try {several times actually}!

So here we are. My EAT, PRAY, L♥VE macarons for MacTweets this month, feetless but certainly delicious. They got their nice deep brown colour from Valrhona cocoa that Shayma recently sent to me as a gift. Using this fabulous cocoa, paired with David Lebovitzs recipe, I was pretty convinced that this time I would win my battle with feet! After all, David’s Chocolate Macaron recipe had found me feet in the past. Not this time though. All such convictions were Gone with the Wind within 5 minutes of baking, and I was staring at The Good, the Bad and the Ugly! Talk about themes … teehee, I did love the call we sent out this month because I knew I would find so many perfect fits!

Eat, Pray, Love didn’t help me find feet, but did give me some darned delicious macs that were cute like buttons. Also gave me a chance to dress ’em macarons up in some royal icing. The feetless characters made for very yummy mouthfuls, sandwiched with a milk cum dark chocolate ganache. I added some  light olive oil to the ganache once it was made as I had eyeballed the cream and it was slightly less. Olive oil gave the ganache this super shine, wonderful texture and taste. It’s always a fun journey trying to find feet, and to there’s always something new waiting to be discovered.

Do you want to join Jamie and me making MACARONS?? If you do, you are most welcome to join the ‘Attack’. You can find all the information at our dedicated macaron blog MacTweets. The rules for can be found here. You can always join us next month. Just drop us a mail or tweet.