Macaroons

Macaroons

(Makes 50 macaroons)

300 g ground almonds
300 g sifted icing sugar
110 g egg whites
300 g castor sugar
120g water
110 g egg whites

colouring and flavouring to taste (use lemon essence, vanilla seeds, coconut essence etc)

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 150°C
Sift together the ground almonds and the icing sugar and add the first lot of egg whites (110g). Mix to form a firm paste
Dissolve the castor sugar in the water and boil up to 115 C – use a sugar thermometer
Start to beat the rest of the egg whites (110g) to almost stiff peaks
Boil the sugar syrup up to 118°C and remove from the heat
Add the hot sugar syrup gradually to the beaten egg whites whilst beating at a high speed. Also add your colouring and flavouring at this stage
Beat for 1 minute at high speed and then another 1 minute at a medium/low speed and cool the meringue for a few minutes
Fold the meringue into the almond and icing sugar paste – the final mixture must not be too stiff.
Pipe the macaroons onto a baking sheet – lined with baking paper
Tap a few times under the baking sheet – to remove large air bubbles and for the macaroons to run slightly
Leave to stand for 15 minutes
Bake for 18 minutes at 150°C. Open the oven once during the cooking period for a brief moment
Bake only one sheet at a time and place your baking sheet in the middle of the oven
Cool macaroons on a cooling rack and sandwich together with chocolate ganache (the filling will give your macaroon most of the flavour – make sure you flavour it well. Natural flavourings eg. lemon and orange zest, vanilla, coffee etc works very well. You can also buy good quality flavourings eg. coconut, raspberry, mint etc from baking speciality stores)

White chocolate ganache

Break 400g white chocolate into very small pieces and place in a glass bowl
Bring 200 ml cream to the boil and pour it over the white chocolate
Add about 5 ml vanilla extract (or flavouring of choice), some food colouring powder and mix until the chocolate has melted completely
Cool completely at room temperature.  Once set – spoon the ganache into a piping bag and pipe the ganache onto the macaroons and sandwich them together before the chocolate sets too hard.

Other tips

Use a plain round tip nozzle for piping macaroons and also to pipe the ganache
Make sure you line your baking tray with baking paper or silicon paper
Do not grease or use spray and cook on the baking paper
Use a pin or toothpick to prick the surface of the macaroons if you see any bubbles forming before baking – it will pop the bubbles and give a smooth surface
Store macaroons in the fridge
You can freeze the shells and fill them with ganache at a later stage