Macaroons - Sucre Method

I have been obsessed with macaroons since two years ago. This obsession came from when my best friend/sister and i decided to make these macaroons for our bfs. I personally had never heard of what macaroons were, but Amanda assured me that they were the best things ever. So we found a recipe together online and attempted to make them. Not too surprisingly , they were a MASSIVE fail, these flat, sugary lumps. I wish i had taken a photo of these things because they were just pink pieces of poo really.

Ever since that day, I have been obsessed with making the PERFECT macaroon and have made 3 or 4 batches since then. Most of which were fails. One time, i got adventurous and spent a lot of money on some green tea powder to make some green tea macaroons.. but that did not work well at all.

I have to confess, i had never really tasted a proper macaroons until a few months back and i wasn't too impressed at the taste but i am still obsessed with making the perfect macaroon. Especially with their recent popularity due to master chef.

Now I recently found out that there are two ways to make Macaroons - the french way and the italian way. I have always tried the french way which is the easier in terms of steps.. but a lot harder to get the right result. The sucre method (italian) has a lot more steps, but have been known to be easier to get a better result.

I had never tried the sucre method and i decided today was the day i would. I mentioned in a previous post, i have been itching to make these ginger creme brulee tarts, which call for like a million egg yolks which leaves me with a lot of egg whites. What better way to make use of these then make macaroons! These turned out quite alright, but still need some working on in terms of presentation! Now i warn you... these get messy, so when attempting these... be prepared for some mess.


RECIPE - Macaroons - sucre method

Ingredients for macaroon shell:

160g of Almond Meal

140g of Icing sugar

6 egg whites (120g to be exact)

185g of caster sugar

50ml water

food colouring of choice.

• Sift the almond meal and icing sugar first. You can use a processor to do this (YAY from now on i can use my new processor), or a sieve. OR if you are really equipment poor like me, you can be creative. I used this colander (i thinks thats what you call it) and a rice spoon to push the almond and icing sugar through.

• Next, get three egg whites (60g) and put them in a bowl and start whipping. Best to use a electric mixer for this but if you are up to it or don't have an electric mixer, just a hand held whisk is fine but be prepared to have sore wrists the next morning. Once your egg whites are looking frothy, and have peaks (ie stays up for a while and forms little peaks when you lift the whisk out of your hand) slowly start adding in 35g of caster sugar. Mix for approx 4 mins or until the mixture is white and have more prominent peaks.

• Next, place 150g of caster sugar into a saucepan and add the water. Now heat this up to 245 degree fahrenheit. For those of you (including me) who have no idea how to achieve this, just heat up the sugar until its starts boiling and gets to the malleable stage. now get a cold bowl of water, and put some of the sugar and water mixture in the bowl. If you can pick up what you just put in the water and it is malleable it is ready.

• Once your sugar and water is at malleable stage, slowly pour it into your egg white and sugar mixture. Continue beating until it is all mixed in and the mixture is glossy and shiny. Now put this aside for a while.

• Now get your almond and icing sugar mixture and mix it with the remaining 3 egg whites(60g). Mix them all together well and include your food colouring. Remember that the mixture lightens a lot once everything is put together so make the colour a bit darker than you want it. This should form a sticky dough.

• Gently fold in your egg white mixture to your dough like almond mixture. Try to combine them with as less strokes as possible. This should now form a smooth mixture that is ready to be put into some piping bags.
  

• Start piping the mixture onto baking tray on top of some baking paper. The macaroons, if made right, do not expand too much, so you do not have to leave too much space between each one when piping. Lets say approximately 3cms to be safe. Let the macaroons rest for 5-10 minutes before putting them in the oven. As you can see.. my piping techniques are far from professional. Bake these for 20 minutes at 150 degrees Celsius (fan forced)
  

• Once your macaroons are out of the oven, they should have feet! ie, the little extra spongey area that you can see from the picture below. Carefully take them off the baking tray and let them cool down.

Ingredients for Dark Chocolate ganache filling.
100g Dark chocolate
30ml thickened cream

• This is the easy bit! Just get a bowl and combine both, and put the bowl onto of a pot with simmering water. Make sure that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water.

• Once this is made, pipe on the ganache between two macaroons and your good to go!