We just made our first $55!

Hello all! Sorry for the non existent blog as of late.  Both Jenn and I have been busy getting sick, recovering from being sick, entertaining guests, oh and making our first macaron sale!  That's right you heard me: we are somewhat semi-official. 

It all started last month when Jenn was having lunch with a friend...long story short, we were asked to provide macarons for an upcoming party.  We said yes.  Actually I think it was, "Hell Yes!"  We were stoked, people wanted to buy stuff we were making, it was kind of surreal.   A fancy party wanted some of our macarons. 

Well, last Wednesday the battle began, and when I say battle, I mean hellacious battle.  The Battle of the Jenns' sanity. It was us versus the macarons and the cookies almost won.

It all started innocently enough with me showing up at Jenn's house to start our baking.  We had each made a batch of Swiss butter cream (I made vanilla bean, Jenn: mandarin orange) that morning at our houses so we could just focus on the shells of the macarons, which are really the most important part of the cookie. We starting with the dreaded circle piping:

Jenn has way more patience for this than I.  If it were up to me, I would free hand EVERYTHING in my life. Luckily I have Jenn to show me that we sometimes need structure.

Then we piped cookies:

So far so good.

Then we took our first batch out of the oven and they were a disaster:

Cookies should have bottoms, as a general rule.

We were perplexed. Not once had Jenn nor I had so many issues when making these fussy little French cookies, but every problem known to man was happening to us, batch after batch.  We were starting to panic.  Then we finally had a perfect batch:

After this, it was hit or miss.  It basically took us 6 hours to make 55 cookies and by the end, since they are French, we decided we needed to start being rude to them before they went into the oven.  "F-you cookies", we would both yell as we closed the oven door.  This seemed to do the trick.  By the end of the day we had all the cookies we needed--barely.

Sanity restored.

It feels strange, we still haven't cashed our check, but I am thinking now that maybe we should have it bronzed.

-Jenny