French Macarons

Macarons with White Chocolate Ganache

After baking cookies for a friend, I had egg whites left over and I was wondering what could I do with them. The thought of making macarons did cross my mind but all my previous attempts lately were horrendous. Mostly cracked shells and no feet ! Ugh ! It was enough to put me off making them.

Then recently whilst book shopping, I chanced upon a recipe by Hisako Ogita. The recipe seemed simple enough and I thought, well lets give this a try. What the heck !

And boy am I glad I did.

Macarons  (adapted from a recipe by Hisako Ogita)

Ingredients

2/3 cup / 85g of ground almonds
1 1/2 cups / 150g  icing sugar
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 T / 65g caster sugar
1 t vanilla extract

Mix the ground almonds and icing sugar and sift it twice. It is important to aerate the mixture.

In a clean dry bowl, add the egg whites and whip slowly to break the whites and make them foamy. Beat until soft foamy peaks appear. Then gradually add caster sugar and increase the speed of beating the egg whites. Add all the sugar and keep beating till glossy stiff peaks are achieved. It roughly takes about 5 mins with a handheld blender. We have now prepared the french meringue.

If you want to colour the macarons, add colouring, a few drops, to the french meringue and beat well.

Add a large spoonful of the meringue to the dry almond mixture and mix well. You can be vigourous as we are trying to incorporate the mixtures together. We are not looking for a light airy batter. Once mixed through, continue adding the rest of the meringue and fold through. You can beat it a little if you like. Remember we don't want too much air in the batter. Add the vanilla extract. Mix until the infamous lava-like texture is achieved.

If the batter is too thick, beat it a bit more. If you drop a little batter on itself, the drop should disappear slowly.

If the mixture is too runny, I'm not sure how to fix it. So don't overbeat it !

Pipe circles on parchment paper and let the macarons dry to form a skin. Ogita says this step is important to develop the pied (the frilly feet of the macaron)

Not enough drying = Cracked Shells

Too much drying = No pied

The drying times for the macarons vary depending on the temperature and the humidity of that day. It can take from 15 mins to an hour. Mine sat for about an hour and half.

Touch the surface of the macarons every half hour to see if the surface of the macaron is dry to touch. Once our touch does not leave a mark on the shell, they are ready to be baked.

Use two trays to bake these macarons. Ogita says this is important.

Now Ogita's recipe calls for the macarons to be baked at 190'C for 15 to 18 mins. But when I did this, my batch burnt.

So I turned the oven down to 150'C and baked mine for 7 to 10 mins. Once I saw the rims of the macarons browning, I took them out.

Macarons baking in the oven

Et Voila ! Macarons with shiny firm tops and pretty frilly feet !!!

No cracks and Pied on the Macaron

I was jumping for joy in the wee hours of the morning baking these. Hahaha ! I had made a batch of white chocolate ganache before and so I quickly went on to fill these puppies with the ganache.

Let the macarons sit overnight with the filling as for some reason, these taste better overnight. If it's a perishable filling, keep it in the refrigerator.

Enjoy !