Hello everyone! Sorry I have almost completely “disappeared” since my last post two weeks ago.. life has been hectic and I have been busy cleaning the house and working and getting some good exercise (swimming) in preparation for the baby’s arrival in December. Which is why today’s blog post is especially brought to you by my Guest Blogger for the day – the lovely Seah Ho from Pink Cupcake Possum aka @pinkcpossum on Twitter. Enjoy!
It was almost like, 7 months ago when Kimba asked me if I could do this guest post thing.
Well, at first I said yes, but then though ‘Errrr… How am I going to do this? Where am I gonna start?’ So yes, it took me over half a year to decide to write about my macarons. (Thanks for having me on your blog, Kimba!!)
Firstly, I’m not a macaron master or anything, I am just a typical woman who likes baking. Oh… wait, let me fix it a bit here. I’m just a typical woman who is obsessed with baking. I LOVE baking. I wouldn’t say I am good at it but I can say yes, I am a bit crazy when it comes to baking.
That doesn’t mean whatever I bake comes out beautifully like a picture from a magazine. I sometimes struggle with all kinds of baking disasters. I sometimes look at my cakes and cry. Trust me, I’m not a patient person, but the good thing about baking is if you don’t see the perfect result in front of you, you can just eat it and give it another go!!
Luckily, I struggled only twice with these babies. I’m not saying this recipe is the best to try but this one works for me. When you deal with macarons you should be gentle with the temperature of your oven and mindful of the humidity in the house. Okay, I am sure there are some people saying “What about all the gorgeous macarons that we can buy from shops even after 100 days of rain!!” Honestly, I don’t know…
There are a lot of recipes out there for macarons but they will all fall into one of two categories, French or Italian meringue. I prefer the French meringue, it’s simpler, easier, and tastes better to me.
As a starting tip before I use egg whites for macarons I separate the egg whites then leave them on the bench for two days. This thins the egg white and works best for meringue.
Recipe
Egg white 60g + Sugar 30g
Almond powder 60g + Icing sugar 100g
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees
Place baking paper on 3-4 trays before you start. (You don’t want to muck around with those things when your macaron batch is ready to sit beautifully on the tray!)
Prepare a piping back with a nozzle (I used a 1cm one).
- Mix the almond powder and icing sugar then blend them for a few minutes and sift at least three times.
- Make a French meringue. Simply whip the egg white and sugar until it is firm and glossy. (If you want to add any food colouring or flavour add it at this stage, but not too much)
- Mix the meringue into the icing sugar and almond powder mixture until it’s quite runny, but be careful. If you get rid of too much air from your meringue mixture it won’t rise and you will end up with one big flat slab of macaron. It’ll still be yummm though, just not quite what you’re after 😛 It should be runny but hold together.
- Pipe the mixture onto a sheet of baking paper into pools of about 3cm diameter with some space between each macaron (they will spread a bit as time passes). Hopefully it will look like this:
Now it’s drying time. At this stage the macarons will form a crust (or feet).
Let them dry until when you touch the surface of the macarons gently you don’t get anything on your finger.
It will take about 1-2 hours depends how humid your house is, but remember it doesn’t matter how long it takes you should be patient until they dry.
After drying them out put the macarons into the oven then turn the temperature down to 140-150 degrees and bake for 15-20 mins. The time depends on your oven it might take less or more time to bake.
Make sure they don’t burn and don’t take them out undercooked. It’s all about oven temperature. You can take them off the baking paper once they have completely cooled down otherwise they will all stick to the paper.
While you are drying your macarons you can make filling for the. You can simply sandwich Nutella between macarons, easy and heavenly yummy!! or you could whip some whiped cream with coco powder or coffee then sandwhich it between the macarons or whip some cream cheese with lemon zest, a little lemon juice and icing sugar. It’s a great chance to be creative. If you want to try something different you could go with pig’s blood filling like Andriano Zumbo 🙂
So far I’ve made lemon, chocolate, salted caramel, green tea, white chocolate, Korean cereal, coffee, strawberry flavours.
Once you get that right feeling of macaron mixture then you will be a champ!
Kimba's Living 
hmmm….i heard it's very tough to get these right.
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These sound so challenging. A project I would love to tackle someday. They look so delicious.
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they look scrumptious..!! i am already drooling..!!
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