Ingredients
• 150g almond meal
• 150g icing sugar
• 150g sugar
• 40ml water
• 110g egg whites (aged for two days and brought to room temperature, or straight from the carton and brought to room temperature)
• Gel food colouring of your choice - I used peach, yellow and rose
Note: you don’t need to use pure icing sugar, and the small amount of usually corn or tapioca flour can help to stabilise the mix.
1. Place your almond meal and icing sugar in a bowl, and using a hand held mixer, blend’ the two ingredients into a fine mix. There is no need to sift if you have blended’ the two together well.
2. Pour 60g of the egg white on top of the almond and icing sugar mixture (tant pour tant - half and half).
3.In a small saucepan, place your sugar and water, and heat on the stove to 118 degrees, brushing down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush.
4. While the sugar is coming to temperature, start mixing the other 60g of eggwhites in a stand mixer, the eggwhites should be foamy by the time your sugar syrup is the right
temp.
5. Slowly pour the syrup into your beating eggwhites in a thin stream down the side of the bowl to stop from creating spun sugar. You can also slow down the beaters while you add in the syrup.
6. Increase to your highest setting and beat until the bowl is warm to the touch, and the meringue holds its shape, but isn’t stiff and dry.
7. Add the meringue to the tant pour tant and egg whites, start by slowly folding in the meringue until the ingredients are incorporated. Fold from the centre, slowly turning the bowl.
8. To get the three tone effect we’ve created, separate the mix into three separate bowls and add gel colouring.
9. Carefully mix the colour into the mixture while simultaneously deflating the mix. When the mixture falls from your spatula in an even ribbon, you’re ready - STOP MIXING!!
10. Fill each of three disposable piping bags with each colour.
11. Fit the fourth bag with a 2cm round tip, twist the piping bag at the top of the tip and push the bag inside the tip with your thumb - this will stop the mix leaking out and going all over your bench while you’re working. NB I use a tall stein glass to hold my bags while filling them and in between trays.
12. Use a 3cm circle cutter to trace even circles on a piece of baking paper the same size as your tray, place a second clean piece of paper over the top of your template and pipe in the rounds. This way you only need to make one template, and you can slip it out and reuse under another piece of paper.
13. Take out your frustrations with the tray on your bench, this will bring any large bubbles to the surface and pop them for you.
14. Leave to develop a skin for about an hour - you can tell when they are ready when you can touch the top of your mac and the mix doesn’t stick to your finger. Make sure to carefully test the sides of your mac too. Another way to tell is that they will lose the wet shine, and become a little matte.
15. Leaving them too long will develop a thick skin, which will give you a hard crunchy shell. Macarons should be moist, with a delicate shell - avoid making macs that end up with a regular meringue type top on them.
16. Your oven will determine how long your cook them for, and on what shelf - I cook mine in a gas oven where the heat isn’t direct or strongon a perforated tray at 160 degrees for about 12 minutes. In an electric oven with the heat source at the base of the oven, the temperature is much more direct, and I cook them on an insulated tray at 150 degrees for 10 minutes. It really is worth piping a few onto half sheets of baking paper and testing out your oven.
17. The perfect macaron has a ‘foot’ created when the heat below the macarons lifts the mixture up, and the skin created by leaving the macarons rises to create a perfect shiny shell. Macarons should be moist, and wonderful to eat as individual biscuits.
18.To fill, pipe a generous amount of buttercream (like the peach buttercream we made for the ginger cake), salted caramel, chocolate ganache, jam or other filling. I’ve made a chia seed jelly using chia seeds, lemon juice and castor sugar, with fresh peach to fill some super food macs - think outside the square for some surprisingly delicious combinations!
19. To get the beautiful bulging filling that you see in patisseries, twist the shells together rather than plonking and squishing them together.
20. Once filled, to get the gorgeous texture that we all just love in our macarons, leave them in the fridge over night.
7. Add the meringue to the tant pour tant and egg whites, start by slowly folding in the meringue until the ingredients are incorporated. Fold from the centre, slowly turning the bowl.
8. To get the three tone effect we’ve created, separate the mix into three separate bowls and add gel colouring.
9. Carefully mix the colour into the mixture while simultaneously deflating the mix. When the mixture falls from your spatula in an even ribbon, you’re ready - STOP MIXING!!
10. Fill each of three disposable piping bags with each colour.
11. Fit the fourth bag with a 2cm round tip, twist the piping bag at the top of the tip and push the bag inside the tip with your thumb - this will stop the mix leaking out and going all over your bench while you’re working. NB I use a tall stein glass to hold my bags while filling them and in between trays.
12. Use a 3cm circle cutter to trace even circles on a piece of baking paper the same size as your tray, place a second clean piece of paper over the top of your template and pipe in the rounds. This way you only need to make one template, and you can slip it out and reuse under another piece of paper.
13. Take out your frustrations with the tray on your bench, this will bring any large bubbles to the surface and pop them for you.
14. Leave to develop a skin for about an hour - you can tell when they are ready when you can touch the top of your mac and the mix doesn’t stick to your finger. Make sure to carefully test the sides of your mac too. Another way to tell is that they will lose the wet shine, and become a little matte.
15. Leaving them too long will develop a thick skin, which will give you a hard crunchy shell. Macarons should be moist, with a delicate shell - avoid making macs that end up with a regular meringue type top on them.
16. Your oven will determine how long your cook them for, and on what shelf - I cook mine in a gas oven where the heat isn’t direct or strongon a perforated tray at 160 degrees for about 12 minutes. In an electric oven with the heat source at the base of the oven, the temperature is much more direct, and I cook them on an insulated tray at 150 degrees for 10 minutes. It really is worth piping a few onto half sheets of baking paper and testing out your oven.
17. The perfect macaron has a ‘foot’ created when the heat below the macarons lifts the mixture up, and the skin created by leaving the macarons rises to create a perfect shiny shell. Macarons should be moist, and wonderful to eat as individual biscuits.
18.To fill, pipe a generous amount of buttercream (like the peach buttercream we made for the ginger cake), salted caramel, chocolate ganache, jam or other filling. I’ve made a chia seed jelly using chia seeds, lemon juice and castor sugar, with fresh peach to fill some super food macs - think outside the square for some surprisingly delicious combinations!
19. To get the beautiful bulging filling that you see in patisseries, twist the shells together rather than plonking and squishing them together.
20. Once filled, to get the gorgeous texture that we all just love in our macarons, leave them in the fridge over night.