Fourth of July Desserts

For the barbeque, we made lemon macarons filled with seedless raspberry jam, and chocolate covered strawberry rice krispie treats. The macarons were okay; the cookie itself didn't actually turn out very lemony, so if I make these again I'll definitely tweak the recipe a bit with some additions of zest and perhaps lemon extract. But I had enough challenges in making these. I was incredibly clutzy for some reason. I dropped a glass from the kitchen shelf directly onto a pyrex bowl, which then exploded all over the kitchen. And then when I was piping the cookies, a breeze came through the open window and blew the parchment over onto itself. Then finally, I left the shells out to dry while we went food shopping, and it took way longed than I thought it would. They dried out too much, and the first batch cracked and collapsed.

But I tried spritzing the rest of the trays with a little water, and rest turned out nice enough to fill.

Matt made the rice krispie treats with strawberry flavored marshmallows. He's pretty much perfected the rice kispie treat recipe and technique at this point. Almost double the marshmallows, slow heat to melt them, and then press them into the pan with your hand inside a sandwich baggie sprayed with Pam.

We popped them in the oven for three minutes to melt the chocolate, and then swirled the chocolate with the back of a spoon.