Nina looked over to Hartleigh, who was smirking.
"You!" I screeched. "You messed with my ingredients!"
"I did no such thing," Hartleigh said haughtily.
"Yes, you did! You put water or oil or something in the bowl." I picked up my spoon to throw it at her, but Nina grabbed my arm.
"Just start over," she said. "Everything has to be perfect, or it won't work. You don't have any other choice but to keep going."
I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Macarons seemed to know when you were unsure or nervous.
Fuming that Hartleigh would just escape any blame for sabotaging me, I went to grab more eggs. It took me time to carefully separate all the egg whites. I also had to use a completely different bowl, because there was no telling what Hartleigh had done to the original one. If it had oil in it, that would just ruin the new batch of egg whites.
This time when I made the meringue, it held its peaks.
"I hope this works." The camera guys were hovering over me, trying to get close-up shots of my folding the mixture together, the food coloring turning the mixture a deep red.
"If you so much as breathe on these cookies, I'm going to stuff you in the oven," I warned the camera guy as I carefully piped the mixture onto the parchment paper. I didn't like big macarons. They should be one bite or two small bites. I made mine about the size of a dollar coin. They were perfect little dabs of color on the parchment paper.
Hartleigh had me paranoid. I checked and double-checked my ingredients while I made the next batch, carefully mixing in the food gel coloring.
After the first set had sat for half an hour, I checked it, making sure a skin had formed over the top. The oven claimed it was the proper temperature, and the thermometer made by Platinum Provisions confirmed it.
"If these are ruined, I'm blaming Jack Frost," I half joked to the camera.
Zane and I camped in front of the oven, watching the macarons slowly rise.
"Hey, these look perfect!" Zane exclaimed, camera glued to the oven door window.
"Shh!" I hissed at him. "No loud noises." They were forming perfect little feet. When the timer dinged, I took the macaron shells out of the oven and set them to cool.
I eased one off the parchment paper and ate it.
"Perfection," I said. "Now I have to do this a dozen more times."
Over the next few hours, I made the rest of the macaron shells and slowly rotated them into and out of the oven.
"I think I was too ambitious," I told Anastasia when she came over to ask me what I was making. I had all the macaron shells made. Now I had to make the filling.
"Are you making your own fillings?" Anastasia asked.
"Of course!" I said, offended that she thought I would do something crass like spread jelly inside.
She looked at the clock. "You better hurry!"
The fillings were supposed to be light but still flavorful. I cut up all the fruit and ingredients then set the multitude of double boilers going on the stove. For the fruit fillings, I made a series of almost translucent gelatins. I also made a glossy chocolate ganache and a tangy orange custard.
I let the pots simmer low and slow, stirring constantly, both hands alternating between the saucepans. Every so often, I glanced at the clock. Time was not on my side.
"Are you going to make it?" Anastasia said, coming over to my station.
"I will if you stop distracting me," I snapped.
"Okay, let's leave her to it," she said, smiling at one of the cameras.
My hair and face were sweaty from the exertion and the hot stove. Finally, things were the consistency I wanted. I strained the fruit fillings and made sure the orange custard was the right uniformity and color. The colors had to match. That was important.
After setting up an assembly line of macarons, I carefully piped a very thin layer of the fillings on their respective macaron shells. I hated a big pile of filling in a macaron; the filling should be unobtrusive, just a thin glossy line between the two shells.
