French patisserie at its best - macarons!

Crisp from the outside, slightly chewy from the inside, melting in the mouth. Coming in all kinds of flavours. What’s not to like?

I came across them a while ago whilst on holidays and always wanted to try and make them myself.

My first attempts didn’t really turn out the way I’ve imagined it. How hard can it be to get the damn shell right? The tricky bit is not to undermix or overmix the batter. You need to be patient and practise.

I wanted to get it right, so I decided to take a macaron baking class at the fantastic Mademoiselle Macaron here in Edinburgh. A great class with lots of macaron best practises and recipe inspiration.

My homemade ones probably never will be as flawless as professional ones but the taste, oh my.

Happy Baking!

Ingredients

For the shells

110g ground almonds

225g icing sugar

50g caster sugar

125g egg whites (approx. 4 eggs)

Brown food colouring

For the filling

185g dark chocolate

150ml cream

40g unsalted butter

Rose water (or orange blossom water)

Method

Shell

1. For the shell - sift and mix the icing sugar and ground almonds.

2. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl. Once they start to form soft peaks add the caster sugar.

3. Keep whisking until they have stiffened completely and have a glossy shine. Add the food colouring to the egg whites and whisk it in until it has blended completely.

4. Add the almonds and icing sugar in two to three goes. Use a spatula to combine them gently by hand in a circular motion.

5. You need to keep folding and deflating air until you reach the perfect consistency. To see if the mixture is ready, drop the batter off of your spatula in the form of a figure 8. The batter will stream off of your spatula and the figure 8 should take no more than 10 seconds to sink back into itself. If it takes less, it’s overmixed. If it takes longer, continue slowly folding the batter to deflate more air.

6. Pour the mixture into a piping bag.

7. Pipe the batter on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. The disks should be about 3cm in diameter. You can draw circles on the baking paper beforehand to make sure the disks are even in size.

8. Gently bang the baking tray on the counter to get rid of any air bubbles.

9. Let them set to dry and form a skin for about 30-60min. They’re ready to bake when you’re able to touch them without any mixture coming off on your finger.

10. Preheat your oven to 160°C and bake for 12min. Turn the macarons around after 6min.

11. Let them cool on the baking sheet then transfer to a rack. They should come off the baking paper easily, otherwise let them cool for a little longer.

Filling

1. For the filling - break the chocolate into pieces.

2. Heat the cream in a pan over a medium heat.

3. When it begins to boil, pour it over the chocolate and mix.

4. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the chocolate and cream mixture.

5. Keep mixing until you get a smooth ganache.

6. Add rose water to taste.

7. Leave the mixture to chill in the fridge for about an hour.

8. Match the macarons into pairs and add the filling.

9. Keep them refrigerated and take them out 2h before eating.