My First Creme Brulee Tarte and My First Macarons

Saturday night I made my first creme brulee tarte, because I finally bought a blow torch... Well, it's not really that hard as I have made a lot of custard tartes before, the only thing left to be done is the caramelising of the sugar on top...

I followed Michael McCarty's recipe and this tarte is just beautiful.... Must say it is a big tarte, so we had half for dessert after Saturday dinner and the other half, for dessert after Sunday lunch... even the children loved it... This is the link to the recipe http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Creme-Brulee-Tart-350238



I made the creme brulee tarte because I wanted to make Macarons.... so I did it today. Egg whites were seperated 3 days ago, as instructed by Emmanuel Mollois...
Quantity wise, I actually used another recipe, because Emmanuel's recipe contains a lot of eggs, sugar, and I thought, there's no way, I can use up all that biscuits, where can I find an oven big enough to bake all these and I wasn't wrong... Even with that recipe, I think it's better for me to half it, because I found out quick enough, I don't have enough cookie sheets and silicon matts to bake all the biscuits, and if they are not on the right surface, they become sticky and I lost some of the biscuits because of that!

275 grams pure icing sugar
140 grams fine almond meals
4 egg whites
25 grams dutched cocoa powder

and everything is sifted and sifted.... I whisked the egg whites to hard peak, fold in half of the icing sugar and whisk as I would do a French Menringue (of course I did use an electrical mixer, I can whisk by hand, but I think the machine can whisk it a bit firmer...) and then fold in the rest of sugar and cocoa powder and the almond meals.
and Then, I had trouble, we bought that big cupboard thingy for the kitchen and hubby was busy moving things in the kitchen whilst I was stressing out with the macarons... and I was never good with piping... The first bag busted, and then the second... finally got it lucky but after scrapping the batter from one bag to another, I did lose some air bubbles and the biscuits were a bit flatter than I thought it should be....
This is what they look like after 23 minutes in the 140C oven, I do think they could go for 2 or three more minutes, I used Emmanuel's instruction, but he must have got a much better oven than my old 70's very tired oven.
But, it's already exciting enough, after all that, I managed to get 10 reasonable looking macarons, which I only just made a simple ganache for the filling....

100g lindt's 70's cocoa chocolate
100g thickened cream
2 tbsp icing sugar
25g butter
Heat up cream and pour over chocolate (broken down to pieces) and stir to melt the chocolate. add in butter and make sure everything is smooth... add icing sugar, and mix well.
Make sure ganache is cooled down and not runny before you assemble....
I've heard that Macarons are best after chilled in freezer...
Surely they don't look too bad for a first timer? The family did ate the ones that didn't look too good, half stuck ones or the ones piped too close and stuck together, those factory seconds, and they thought the biscuits by itself were yummy enough...