Mactweets Movie Challenge – King of Hearts and My BFMF (Big Fat Macaron Failure)

I immediately thought of King of Hearts.  For those of you not familiar with this film, it’s French, takes place at the end of WWI and stars Alan Bates as a soldier who is in charge of de-mining a village. He arrives to find the entire town evacuated. Only the inmates of the insane asylum are left behind. They declare him “The King of Hearts”, escape and take over the town.

A young and absolutely darling Genevieve Bujold stars as an inmate/tightrope walker/love interest of Bate’s character.

I first saw this movie when I was a teenager, every time after that I found something new in it’s message.  It says a lot about reality and illusion and the definition of insanity, especially when it comes to waging war.

I still find it funny, touching and brilliant.

I wish I could say as much for my macarons. They were flatfooted, uninspired and embarrassing.

To be fair, I was not in my own kitchen when I made them. I am traveling for three months and was staying at my friend Trudi’s when I made these. She has a dream kitchen, two dishwashers for Pete’s sake, just beautiful. But alas no help for my BFMF.

My plan was to make pastel heart shaped macarons (I love the pastel tones in the movie) with a red glitter heart painted on the shells filled with Nutty World Peace Buttercream.

I did have all my baking supplies together. However, it was hot, I did not have a scale or properly aged egg whites and, as usual, I was overly ambitious. I was also in a damn hurry as I was leaving the next day.

So I got what I deserve…  This:

and this:

and oh dear, this:

I did manage to make the filling and it was delish: 

Ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter
• 2 cups of powdered sugar
• 1/4 – 1/2 cups milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tablespoon each of the following:
• Peanuts
• Pecans
• Cashews
• Almonds
• Pistachios

Ingedients:

• Put all nuts in a food process or or blender pulse until finely crushed almost into powder
• Beat butter
• Add 1 cup of the powdered sugar
• Alternate milk and powdered sugar until you achieve the desired consistency
• Add vanilla and mix in thoroughly
• Add crushed nuts. Mix until just combined.

I gave the buttercream to Trudi and told her to bake something nice and spread it on top.

Trudi’s kids, bless them, loved these failed cookies and were gobbling them up as I left. So my attempt wasn’t a total waste.

Better luck next time.

A big thank you again to Jamie and Deeba at Mactweets for keeping the creativity rollin’! Please visit the Mactweets blog for some wonderfully inspired Macs.