[food] Macarons
Jan. 2nd, 2018 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettAdapted from Hannah Bond's blog for my workflow.
Ingredients
Italian meringue:
200g white caster sugar
75ml hot water
80g egg whites
pinch of salt
almond mix:
200g icing sugar
200g ground almonds
25g cocoa powder (if chocolate)
80g egg whites
ganache:
100g dark chocolate
100g double cream
20g butter
2 tsp orange extract
salt (to taste)
Method
Line three of the (big, Alex!) baking sheets with paper.
Sugar and water go in a pan with the thermometer over low heat. Once the sugar's completely dissolved, heat the syrup up to 115degC.
Combine icing sugar, almonds, optional cocoa powder. (If feeling enthusiastic, first blend in a food processor then sieve, throwing away any lumps, to get absolutely texturally perfect macaron. Personally I Cannot Be Having With This.) Mix in the 80g of egg white, to make a very stiff paste.
In a scrupulosly etc glass bowl, whisk the other 80g of egg whites and the pinch of salt together to stiff peaks. Once the syrup reaches 115degC, pour it into the egg whites in a thin stream while still beating them at high speed, then continue beating for ~5 minutes while the bowl cools down.
Add about 1/3 of the meringue mix to the almond paste and stir it in however (the aim here is to loosen it), then gently fold in the rest of the meringue. The aim is to get it "like lava" (I am quoting this!), with no streaks; a line of batter drawn across the surface should take about ten seconds to subside. (It's better to undermix than overmix.)
Use two teaspoons or a piping bag to make a number of (hopefully approximately equally sized) circles on the baking parchment (choose your own diameter!). Bang the air out of them (drop the trays several times straight down onto a worksurface from half a foot up), then leave them to rest for at least half an hour (but several hours is fine).
Heat your oven to 160degC, and bake the shells for around 20 minutes, until they peel away from the baking parchment easily. Move the parchment from the sheets to a cooling rack as quickly as possible, then remove the shells from the parchment once they've cooled.
At some point, make ganache. Heat the cream up to the point where you're just starting to get bubbles, then pour into a bowl containing the chocolate, broken into pieces. Leave for a few minutes, then stir until it's smooth, then stir through the butter and any other flavourings (orange extract?). This needs to cool to the stage where it's pipeable (or malleable with teaspoons). (You can also use coconut cream, fresh or made from coconut powder, and coconut oil, if you're going for the chocolate-coconut ganache with lime-cinnamon shells, as I did on the previous batch.)
Pair up the shells. Apply ganache to shell. Smoosh.
Leave in fridge to think about what they've done for ~24 hours, ideally, but they'll cope without.
Ingredients
Italian meringue:
200g white caster sugar
75ml hot water
80g egg whites
pinch of salt
almond mix:
200g icing sugar
200g ground almonds
25g cocoa powder (if chocolate)
80g egg whites
ganache:
100g dark chocolate
100g double cream
20g butter
2 tsp orange extract
salt (to taste)
Method
Line three of the (big, Alex!) baking sheets with paper.
Sugar and water go in a pan with the thermometer over low heat. Once the sugar's completely dissolved, heat the syrup up to 115degC.
Combine icing sugar, almonds, optional cocoa powder. (If feeling enthusiastic, first blend in a food processor then sieve, throwing away any lumps, to get absolutely texturally perfect macaron. Personally I Cannot Be Having With This.) Mix in the 80g of egg white, to make a very stiff paste.
In a scrupulosly etc glass bowl, whisk the other 80g of egg whites and the pinch of salt together to stiff peaks. Once the syrup reaches 115degC, pour it into the egg whites in a thin stream while still beating them at high speed, then continue beating for ~5 minutes while the bowl cools down.
Add about 1/3 of the meringue mix to the almond paste and stir it in however (the aim here is to loosen it), then gently fold in the rest of the meringue. The aim is to get it "like lava" (I am quoting this!), with no streaks; a line of batter drawn across the surface should take about ten seconds to subside. (It's better to undermix than overmix.)
Use two teaspoons or a piping bag to make a number of (hopefully approximately equally sized) circles on the baking parchment (choose your own diameter!). Bang the air out of them (drop the trays several times straight down onto a worksurface from half a foot up), then leave them to rest for at least half an hour (but several hours is fine).
Heat your oven to 160degC, and bake the shells for around 20 minutes, until they peel away from the baking parchment easily. Move the parchment from the sheets to a cooling rack as quickly as possible, then remove the shells from the parchment once they've cooled.
At some point, make ganache. Heat the cream up to the point where you're just starting to get bubbles, then pour into a bowl containing the chocolate, broken into pieces. Leave for a few minutes, then stir until it's smooth, then stir through the butter and any other flavourings (orange extract?). This needs to cool to the stage where it's pipeable (or malleable with teaspoons). (You can also use coconut cream, fresh or made from coconut powder, and coconut oil, if you're going for the chocolate-coconut ganache with lime-cinnamon shells, as I did on the previous batch.)
Pair up the shells. Apply ganache to shell. Smoosh.
Leave in fridge to think about what they've done for ~24 hours, ideally, but they'll cope without.