Beginner's Luck

Mostly over the past couple of years I have been happily oblivious of the insane buzz about macarons taking the internet by storm. But ages ago I did clip from Gourmet or Bon Appetit a page on macarons from Pierre Herme, and every time I flip through my loose-leaf kitchen binder I think, gotta try that sometime! (I've had an on-and-off again relationship with both magazines since about 1990, but it was never true love and it is definitely now all off since Gourmet folded unceremoniously. I remember when I was in high school my brother had a friend whose mother was a devoted reader of Gourmet for decades. The top of her kitchen cabinets was a carefully cataloged collection, year by year, each year month by month in proper order. Something about those serried magazines made a lasting impression. They bespoke a kind of house proud accomplishment that was about a million miles at least distant from my own upbringing.)

The time finally arrived last week with mixed results.

The very first sheet was absolutely perfect. And then the following three sheets sprawled and crinkled and looked nothing like macarons. They were delicious, mind, but not photogenic. I was stumped by my beginner's luck and did a fair amount of reading to try and understand what might and might not have happened, but don't consider myself any more enlightened now than when I pulled that second tray out of the oven what was the difference. Especially since it turns out that according to every one of the forty-three macaron blogs I subsequently browsed I didn't do anything right with the first sheet.

Another one of life's mysteries!