The next baking adventure in November

So for several months I've been wanting to try making macarons. Or macaroons. It seems like people spell it both ways around here.

I was on the way home with friends from a birthday party, and daydreaming about baking stuff, when I came up with this idea:

French Macarons with a Coconut Buttercream Icing.

Now, I didn't want the coconut to overwhelm the icing, but I did want the flavor and that TINY bit of crunch, so I decided that I'd just do a tiny bit, blend it up so it's really small, and then add it.

Then I went on the great search to find Almond Flour. Which apparently isn't as easy to find as you think it would be. And since we have pretty much ZERO health food stores in our area, I went with the second option that America's Test Kitchen suggests: Raw almonds blended in a food processer (I wonder if you could mill them, too?). When I did finally find some of those that weren't at a ridiculous price, I was pretty thrilled, because I now had all of the ingredients I'd need.

I've been planning on making these for some time now, and I was hoping to be able to do it a couple of weekends ago when Christi was home for the weekend. But we had a mass of company, and with all of that, it wouldn't be fun to watch someone accidentally elbow my cookie sheet of macarons that were sitting and developing their two hour shell.

So I postponed it for Thanksgiving week, when the college siblings will be home.

Now I'll I have left to figure out is if I should let my egg whites age for 24 hours, 48 hours +, and if I should let them sit at room temperature (SCARY.) for whatever time period, or in the fridge. Uncovered, or covered? I need to go check out some of the bestie macaron blogs, so I can figure this out...

Sometime I want to try and make candy cane marshmallows, too. Wouldn't that be cute? I think it would be fun for Abby and I to try doing. :)

Bethan