Macaron tips and troubleshooting

I often get asked about problems people encounter when making macarons and I thought I'd share a few here.

1. Macarons crack in the oven
• Don't be tempted to bake your macarons until a firm skin has formed on the surface of the entire macaron. If there is any part of the macaron which is still wet on the surface, cracks will form when you bake them
2. No feet form when I bake them
• Your initial temperature is too low - start baking at a higher heat and drop down once your feet form after a few minutes if you are concerned about the macarons colouring
3. Macarons have a bumpy appearance
• I always grind my own almonds from scratch - store bought almond meal is generally too coarse and thus will result in a bumpy surface on the macaron
• Grinding almonds alone in a food processor will result in a big lump of oily almond paste. To avoid this, grind equal quantities of almonds and icing sugar together - this prevents the paste from forming, and saves you sifting the icing sugar! This mixture is called a tant-pour-tant
4. Always follow the recipe you are using - there are two main methods (some say three, but we won't complicate things here):
• French Method: this involves raw egg whites being beaten to a stiff meringue with a small amount of castor sugar. A tant-pour-tant isn't used in this method as there is generally double the amount of icing sugar to almond meal used in this method. This method is faster and less of a hassle than the Italian method below, but is not suitable for making large batches and is pore prone to failure. Most of the amateur cook books and cooking magazines use this method (eg. Women's Weekly, Donna Hay etc.)
• Italian Method: this involves making an Italian meringue using a hot sugar syrup and half of the egg whites, and mixing in the other half of the egg whites with the tant-pour-tant. This method is favored by the likes of Pierre Herme and Adriano Zumbo and is great for making large batches (up to 100 macarons). The failure rate for this method is low.

Hopefully this helps with your next macaron attempt - feel free to email me with any questions I haven't addressed above!

Caramel centered chocolate macarons...

To start these, make your caramel first:

Melt 100g castor sugar until golden

Add 66g cream (carefully)

Then add 100g butter

Combine until glossy, then put in fridge until ready to use

When ready to pipe, whisk with electric beaters until pale and creamy (see images below)

Caramel before whipping

Caramel after whipping

 Next, make a chocolate ganache (100g chocolate, 100g cream), and allow to cool in the fridge.

For the chocolate macaron shells, use the generic macaron recipe but replace 30g of icing sugar with 30g of cocoa powder.

Once cooled, pipe the whipped caramel in the centre of each macaron.

Then pipe around the caramel with the chocolate ganache (be careful not to use too much or it will spill over the edges)

And the finished product:

Donate Your Lunch Money

As part of World Food Day, Foodbank Victoria have this great initiative where you can donate your lunch money here to help the 400,000 Victorians that at some stage in the year miss a meal because of hardship or crisis.

You know those macarons or that slice of cake you were thinking of devouring at lunchtime? why not use the money you were going to spend on lunch and donate it to a worthy cause?

Please make a little sacrifice and support this worthy charity by clicking on the image below.

White Lychee Macarons...

Although I always groan about making them (they really are a pain), white macarons do have a uniqueness to them.

These are lychee flavoured - using a generous splash of Soho Lychee Liqueur in a white chocolate ganache. I have tried using lychee juice and/or chunks of lychee but the flavour is never intense enough without the Soho.

For the macaron shell recipe, see my old post here.

The trick to keeping them white is to bake at 100 degrees celsius rather than 150, and bake for an extra 5 minutes (I kept mine in for 18 mins instead of the usual 13).

Crème brûlée & Raspberry Macarons

Macaron shell recipe as per usual, coloured with pink colouring.

For the filling:

White chocolate ganache (2:1 white chocolate:cream)

Toffee (castor sugar, heated until melted and golden brown) - spread thinly with a spatula onto some baking paper (be very careful). Once set, break into small pieces and stir through ganache.

Raspberry 'jelly' (3:1 raspberries:castor sugar, heated until boiling then cooled)

Snickers (peanut, chocolate, caramel) Macarons...

Inspired by a dessert I enjoyed at Golden Fields last week, here are Snickers macarons.

For the shells, a reminder of the quick macaron recipe (French meringue)


110g ground almonds
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
90g egg whites
colouring of your choice - I used Parisian Browning Essence for these, but you could substitute 2 tbsp of icing sugar for cocoa powder.

Whisk egg white to stiff peaks, gradually adding the caster sugar. Add colouring to achieve intensity you desire. Fold almonds and icing sugar into the eggwhites, "macaroning" until you achieve the correct consistency. Pipe rounds onto baking trays and leave until a skin forms (usually at least 30 mins, much longer if humidity is high). Bake at 150 deg C for 12-13 mins, cool and remove from trays.


For the fillings (there are 3):


Peanut Caramel:
Make a caramel (see salted caramel macaron recipe), but do not whisk - fold through chopped peanuts and set aside to cool

Peanut marshmallow:
Melt 1 cup of white marshmallows with 3 tbsp cream
Fold through 1tbsp smooth peanut butter and set aside to cool


Milk chocolate ganache
Heat 60g cream to almost boiling and add 60g milk chocolate. Stir well until a ganache forms. Set aside to cool.


To assemble, spread one macaron with milk chocolate ganache then top with peanut caramel. Spread the other macaron with peanut marshmallow, then sandwich together,

Popping Candy Macarons

This idea was originally thought up by my sister. I wasn't sure if the candy would stay "unpopped" in the ganache for long enough, but so far so good!

For the shells:
150g ground almonds
150g icing sugar
150g castor sugar
38g water
110g egg whites

Method:
Sift almonds and icing sugar into a bowl. Add 55g of egg whites and set aside.
Place 150g castor sugar with 38g water into a saucepan - heat until it reaches 118 degrees on a sugar thermometer. When this mixture reaches ~110 degrees, start whisking the remaining 55g of egg whites until soft peaks form.

Carefully pour the sugar syrup into the egg white mixture whilst beating (to make an Italian meringue)
Fold the meringue mixture into the almond mixture, put into piping bags and pipe into rounds.
Rest until a skin forms, then bake at 150 degrees for 12-13 mins.


For the filling, make a white chocolate ganache with strawberry oil and 3 packets of Pop Rock!

You can feel the candy popping in your mouth as you eat the macarons. I tried a few without the strawberry oil but I think it needs the extra flavour.

And a reminder that you can follow this blog on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/MacaronsbyErica

New macaron trays from Karen

Had to share my new macaron trays with you all - hand delivered from Shanghai by my friend Karen. They're great :-)

Salted Caramel and Praline Macarons for Sarah

These are for new mum, Sarah.

For the shells:
150g ground almonds
150g icing sugar
150g castor sugar
38g water
110g egg whites

Method:
Sift almonds and icing sugar into a bowl. Add 55g of egg whites and set aside.
Place 150g castor sugar with 38g water into a saucepan - heat until it reaches 118 degrees on a sugar thermometer. When this mixture reaches ~110 degrees, start whisking the remaining 55g of egg whites until soft peaks form.
Carefully pour the sugar syrup into the egg white mixture whilst beating (to make an Italian meringue)
Fold the meringue mixture into the almond mixture, put into piping bags and pipe into rounds.
Rest until a skin forms, then bake at 150 degrees for 12-13 mins.

Filling:
200g castor sugar
200g good quality unsalted butter
150g fresh cream
7g good quality salt flakes

Method:
Make a toffee with the sugar (heat until melted and golden)
Carefully add the cream in slowly (continue to whisk but beware of steam burns!)
Add the butter in gradually in chunks until melted and combined
Cool in fridge over night (or for a few hours)
Whisk until it becomes pale and fluffy (I used my electric mixer for ~5 mins) then add in salt flakes

Food Safari - Pierre Herme

Not a new recipe but for those of you who are interested, Food Safari met Pierre Herme on last night's episode and they made macarons...

You can view the episode here

Black Forest Macarons

For the filling:

Chocolate ganache with a splash of liqueur of your choice - I used Drambuie

Morello cherry jelly - I used a jar of morello cherries with juice and 4 gelatine leaves (I would recommend 6-8 leaves as mine was very soft)

I cut the jelly out with a circular cutter and placed onto the ganache (you really need ganache on both sides of the macarons so to make the whole sandwich stick together.

Salted Caramel Macarons

Green Tea (matcha) Macarons for Karen

A friend at work has been requesting these for months. I thought her birthday would be a good time to make them!

For the filling:
White chocolate ganache
Green tea (matcha) powder to taste, available from Japanese grocery stores
I found dissolving the green tea powder in the hot cream worked best.

Turkish Delight Macarons

The swirly pattern is made by adding powdered macaron colouring to the batter before putting the batter in the piping bag.

The filling is made by folding chopped turkish delight and some rosewater through a milk chocolate ganache.

Honeycomb Macarons

Filled with a milk chocolate ganache with crushed honeycomb folded through. The honeycomb melts into the ganache after a while, so you don't really get the crunch of the honeycomb.

Pear Crumble Macarons

The filling:

Pear ganache

Pear jelly

Caramel

Crumble

Resting

Completed filling

Pear ganache and pear jelly

Caramel added

Finished product

Peach Macarons

The flavour of these is quite subtle even though I used the Chilean juice powder from Casa Iberica again...

Lemon Curd Macarons

Speckled Strawberry Macarons

Strawberry ganache:
125g strawberries, blended and put through sieve
70g white chocolate
40g milk chocolate
(Heat strawberry puree, pour over chocolate and mix until ganache forms)

Speckles:
Pastry brush
Pink food colouring
Disposable glove
Dip brush in food colouring and use fingers to flick onto macarons before resting.

White marshmallow macarons

This time, I used more marshmallow and less chocolate - probably only about 40g of white chocolate, just to break the marshmallow bonds up a bit (they're really sticky!)

Pineapple Macarons!

For these, I used the same juice powder from Chile (purchased from Casa Iberica) that I used for the watermelon macarons. The flavour is very intense!

I found a website that sells the stuff and ships internationally:

http://www.mexgrocer.com/brand-zuko.html