Oh, I love these little pastries! They are a puff of sweetness and colourfulness. And so nice to look at. They look like little jewels.
Do you know the nice little macaron shops of Laduree? When I go there I can never decide which taste and colour I should choose. I always want to have them all. And when I bake them myself I have the same problem: Which taste and which colour is the best to combine? In one go I can only manage 2 different types of macarons so the next time I choose another combination of taste and colour. There are endless combinations. I started to bake my own macarons at a time when I couldn’t get them in my town. I learned to bake macarons with Aurélie Bastian in Halle. It took me 2 attempts to visit one of her workshops. The first time my train to Halle never arrived because of high water. Then the 2nd time that summer the train made it to Halle. And now I’m able to bake my own macarons. The difficulty is to get the little “feet” underneath the meringue. These little feet emerge while the meringue rises in the oven while baking. If you exactly follow the following instructions you will be successful in baking macarons. And at the end it’s not as difficult as it seemed.
Recipe for 20 Macarons
45 g finely grounded almonds (very fine)
75 g icing sugar
36 g egg whites (from an egg which should be at least 5 days old – fresh eggs don’t work!)
10 g sugar
food colouring paste
Mix almond powder and icing sugar and screen the mixture through a very fine sieve. Mix the egg white with a hand mixer. When the egg white starts to get fluffy, add the sugar. When everything gets nicely white, add the food colouring and beat the egg white until it gets stiff. Now add the almond-sugar-flour mixture in three portions. With a dough scraper carefully stir the mixture into the beaten egg white. Hang a forcing bag with a round tip into a glass. Fill the macaron mixture into the forcing bag. Put baking paper on a baking tray. With the forcing bag form little round macaron blobs (3-5 cm ø) onto the baking paper. Keep a gap of 3 cm between the macarons. When you are ready, carefully hit the baking tray flat onto the table until the air bubbles in the macarons burst. Let the macarons rest for 15 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 150°C. Bake the macarons for 15 minutes on 140-145°C until they rise with the famous little “feet”.
Take the baking tray out of the oven and pull the baking paper carefully onto the countertop. Wait until the macarons cooled down (which takes about 5 minutes). Now lift the macarons carefully from the baking paper.
Choose 2 same macaron sizes which fit together and start to put them together with the filling in between.
Ganache (Filling)
100 g chopped chocolate (dark, white or wholemilk)
fresh cream (100 ml for dark, 50 ml for white and 40 ml for wholemilk)
Heat up the cream and pour it over the chopped chocolate. Stir both together until everything is smooth. Cover the ganache and put it into the fridge for 30-45 minutes. Beat the ganache again, fill it into a forcing bag and give it onto a macaron half. Put another macaron half on top.
I filled the macarons in the picture with pistachios ganache:
3 tablespoons finely grounded pistachios
50 g cream
100 g white chocolate (chopped)
Heat up the pistachios with cream and pour it over the chocolate. Continue with the instruction above.
