diy embellished journals.

blueberry cheesecake macarons.

thursday my friend allison and i tried our second hand at macarons, but instead of making a basic vanilla, like we did the first time, we tried making blueberry cheesecake. we couldn't be more happy with how cute and yummy they turned out to be!

so we gathered our ingredients (including the adorable macaron book allison sweetly gave me!)

shell:

3/4 cup ground almonds

1 cup confectioners sugar

2 extra large egg whites

1/4 cup superfine sugar (we just used regular sugar here)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

blue food coloring paste or liquid 

filling:

1/2 cup cream cheese

2 tbsp sour cream

1 tbsp confectioners sugar

heaping 1/2 cup blueberries 

to make the "shell," or the "cookie" part of the macarons, follow these steps: 

first, we used a food processor to grind up our almonds. you will want to make sure your almonds are ground up as fine as possible. 

while allison did a fine job grinding up those almonds, i started whisking together our egg whites and sugar. the trick is to beat them "until holding soft peaks." this will take awhile, but if you have a handy dandy mixer, she will make a gorgeous, glossy meringue for you. once the meringue is nice and glossy, add in your vanilla extract and food coloring. we used a couple drops of wilton "sky blue" to help us achieve the "tiffany blue" color that is so fabulous!  

next, you'll need to combine your confectioners sugar and ground almond and sift. the. crap. out of it. this definitely is the most time consuming part of the whole macaron baking shebang. neither of us own a real sifter so we did it manually...but don't worry, it's a nice arm workout. sifting=nicely toned arms.   

once the almond and confectioner sugar mixture is completely sifted, fold it into your pretty blue meringue, 1/3 at a time.

the batter should have a "thick, ribbon like consistency."

pipe your batter onto a baking sheet using a piping bag and a 1/2 inch/1 cm plain tip. 

use a spoon to help even out your circles if you need to. let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. meanwhile, preheat your oven to 325 degrees. after macaron batter has sat at room temperature, put in oven and bake for 10 minutes. we kept a pretty close eye on them  in the oven so we could take them out earlier if needed, but 10 minutes worked perfectly for us. 

let your cookies cool completely on a cooling rack. 

to make your filling, simply beat your cream cheese, sour cream, and confectioners sugar together until very smooth. crush your blueberries and fold into your cream cheese mixture. when your cookies are completely cool, use this mixture to sandwich your cookies together! 

we are so proud! 

of course we had to sample some to make sure they were adequate. i planned on giving mine as a gift so i needed to make sure they were yummy enough ;) sure enough, they were!   

side note: macarons really do make awesome gifts! i gave mine to my best friend for her birthday, whose favorite color is tiffany blue. find a pretty way to package them, and voila! sweet and personal gift. 

i think allison and i may have started an obsession. first the vanilla macarons, now these...i wonder what flavor we'll try next?! check out allison's post about our macaron experience and let me know if you try making any for yourself :)

life lately.

wore a little sparkle for the 4th... why not dress like fireworks? 

spent a little time eating, catching up, and shopping with my beautiful roommate. 

baked some vanilla macarons with my friend allison.

became inspired by this adorable little macaron book allison so graciously gave me! (we are baking more later this week... blogpost to come)

spent evenings with friends who welcome us with nice little signs :) we were feeling the love. 

baked these lemon blueberry cheesecake cookies...yum ((please dont make me fat)). 

i am a blessed lady. thankful. 

we're still alive.

dear long lost bloggy friends,

we are alive. and i shall return as soon as possible. between trips, power outages, life changing events, and more trips, i havent been able to blog. 

i love you all, though, and happy birthday to america tomorrow! 

best,
courtney