Macaron oh Macaroon!

My first burning question before posting this entry is the difference between macaron and macaroon. I found that everywhere (well. almost everywhere) in the blogosphere that bloggers use these two words interchangebly. It's rather confusing for an inborn spell-checker like yours truly :). (Spell-checker? Reaaaalllly?... my children would laugh if they read this post)...

So, what's the difference actually?

According to wikipedia, macaron is a sweet confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food coloring. The macaron is commonly filled with buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies.

Macaroon is a type of light, baked confection, described as either small cakes or meringue-like cookies depending on their consistency.

Therefore for a layman like me, I can conclude that basically macaron is two macaroons sandwiched together :). Is that correct? Wow, that's a relief to know!

Although this post is late, I would like to document my adventure baking these little creatures. They have feet you know, that's why I refer them as 'creatures'...

I tried several times, the last one better than the previous ones (Thank God!). Anyway, it does not matter if you got it wrong, although they don't look as you expect them to be, the taste is still the same. In other words, if your macarons become a disaster, you can rename it to macaroon, isn't that swell? :)

As you can see here, this is my first try... they looked nice on the baking tray, looking all pink and healthy...

This pic is during the 'drying' phase, before putting it into the hot oven...

This was my first batch :( ... the 'feet' went all over the place. The 'feet' growed on heads, shoulders and bodies :(. They should be where all feet should be - at the bottom.

This was my second (or third) batch. They looked better, don't they? The 'feet' all dutifully stays at the bottom :)

Here's all the 'good-looking' macaroon-that-turned-into-macarons. They are filled with buttercream filling.

And here are the all the macaroon-that-stay-as-macaroon in a plate. They can also be called as meringue cookies! That's a glamorous name for discarded macarons :).

In conclusion, there is still room for improvement!

This adventure is just the beginning...