French Macarons

Okay so we attempted to make French Macarons. Let me tell you it's not AS hard as everyone makes it out to be. I think get that daunting fear out your mind and make these little suckers. Here's our tried and tested recipe. We halved our ingredients so we could experiment more times without it costing an arm and a leg. If you do use this recipe and you encounter problems, tell me what the problem is and I can guide you on what the cause is.

Ingredients:
55g Icing Sugar (half a cup)
50g Crushed Almonds
1 Egg White
Half a third cup of Sugar
Flavour and Food Colouring of choice

Okay, let's get started!

1) Sift Icing Sugar and Almonds three times.

2) Using an electric mixer with a whisk attachment - Whisk the egg white until peaks start to form and add the sugar and keep on whisking until your egg white is stiff and glossy.

3) This would be a good time to add your flavour or food colouring. This is optional and you can be creative with your colours and flavours.

4) Important part: Fold your dry ingredients into your egg whites until combined and has a lava like consistency. Do a test by putting a blob on a plate, is a peaked piece won't smooth down in a second then you need to mix a bit more until it does that. Basically it shouldn't be too runny or too stiff.

5) Pipe the mixture on to a tray with baking paper on. Do 1 inch dollops and space them out nicely.

6) Smack your tray down a few times to get the air bubbles out.

7) IMPORTANT! Leave your unbaked macarons to stand for an hour before putting them in the oven. This process should not be skipped because this is how the 'feet' are formed.

8) Pre-heat your oven while your macarons are standing for 60 mins. I'd say like 15mins before you put them in.

9) Tricky part is getting your temperature right. Ours worked best on a low temp 130degrees for 12mins. I think 150degrees for 10 mins could also work. This is where you'd probably need to experiment a lot because everyones ovens are different.

10) Take them out of the oven and DO NOT attempt to lift them until completely cooled!

Get creative with your filling. For our ones we were just experimenting so we just had caramel in a can for our filling. A nice buttercream filling with the flavouring to match your macaron flavour would be a nice classic choice.

Have fun and get back to me with comments if you ran in to any problems with yours.



Remember to leave them to stand for an hour.



They have the 'foot' at the bottom.