You need to impress or a non-standard 50th birthday present? Here you go: the best recipe for macarons there is.
Easy-peasy Macarons
What you need (for approx. 16 macarons):
- 75 gr icing sugar
- 50 gr almond flour (shredded, peeled almonds)
- 1 egg white from a large egg (size is important in this case)
- 10 gr sugar
- food colouring
For the filling:
- 100 grams white chocolate
- 50 ml double cream
- flavour (i.e. 1 tbsp pistachios, coffee, 1 tsp cinnamon…)
Instruments needed:
- baking paper or a silicon macaron mat (very recommendable)
- piping bag
- spoon
- two baking trays
recipe is adapted from Aurélie’s blog (german)
- Sieve almond flour and icing sugar into a bowl.
- In a different bowl beat the egg white until stiff. (Turn bowl upside down – if it sticks: perfect!) Then add the 10 gr sugar and beat again slightly. Add food colouring – not too little and not too much as you want a nice pastel colour.
- Heave – in three turns – the sieved flour under the beaten egg white and mix carefully. The mixture should not be runny, but smooth, so it gets a nice, shimmery surface.
- Place on baking sheet in beautiful even circles with the piping bag.
- “Throw out” the air bubbles in the unbaked macarons by knocking the baking tray a few times on your working surface. (Yes this is noisy, but necessary.)
- Leave for 30 minutes. (Also necessary.) Preheat oven to 140˚C circulation.
- Bake in the oven for 12 minutes. During that time prepare the filling by melting the 100 gr. of chocolate. When melted add the 50 ml of cream and stir until very smooth then add you flavouring ingredient.
- Take out the macarons and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
- Lift the macarons carefully from the baking paper and use a spoon to put the filling on the downside of a maccaron. Find a respective size and put the downside on the side with the filling. Voilà!
You can use a piping bag also.
Don’t worry if they are not really perfect, just make sure that you can pair them well, because you’ll need two for one macaron.
Stir, stir, stir. It will become smooth eventually. Then add your favourite ingredient. (In my case I used white chocolate with pistachios and another one with lemon zest; milk chocolate with cinnamon; dark chocolate with coffee, another one with orange juice (reduce cream here) and another one with Lebkuchen spice)
Guideance: 100 gr. White chocolate – 50 ml cream; 100 gr. milk chocolate – 70 ml cream; 100 gr. dark chocolate – 100 ml cream
Of course you can use other non-chocolate based fillings as well, like buttercream, cream cheese or crème fraîche.
As you can see the first batch (in the middle) got a little cracked (too long in the oven), but the other batches came out perfectly!
Different colours and flavourings to make 5 x 10 = 50!
Of course, my mother’s special wrapping skills were needed. Look at that beautiful, embellished 50!!!