Patisseries-Bakers-Pastry-Chefs

Instructions

1. Macarons! What a delicious mouthwatering delight!

BUT! Macarons require precise handling and temperatures if you want them to turn out nice, light and fluffy.

All your utensils also need to be very clean, as macarons don’t like any kind of grease or fatty residue touching them, including your hands.

Method – First Stage

1. Once your ingredients are weighed, mix them together in a mixing bowl using a beater/paddle till it’s completely mixed together. It will look and feel firm, but that is normal; don’t go adding liquids because it doesn’t feel right.

Cover it to stop it from drying out whilst you are preparing the following steps.

2. Now place group 2 into a pot and bring it to the boil till it reaches 115 degrees Celsius. “You can use a sugar thermometer to get the correct temperature.” Whilst group 2 is being prepared, place the egg whites from group 3 in a mixing bowl using a whisk and mix on high speed till it reaches a 3/4 peak, then add the caster sugar on second speed and let it keep mixing till your group 2 is ready.

3. Add the hot boiled group 2 to group 3 in a semi-slow speedy flow and watch the “now a meringue mix” rise to a nice shiny firm meringue which should fill your bowl, and let it mix on second speed for about 10 minutes before using it.

Method – Second Stage

Now comes the fun part, which is very important and will help determine the end result.

This stage is where you add any colourings or flavours, but keep in mind that the best flavours to use here are essences and not flavacols or pastes. All you’re really after here is colours – not water-based colours; gels are best suited, although I personally prefer to use powdered colours directly without being diluted first, which works really well and doesn’t affect the integrity of the mix.

Now for a nice shiny macaron, you need to measure how much of group 1 you want to use for the amount of whichever colour you want to make so let’s keep things simple and use

A. Put 1 kg of group 1’s mix into a bowl and add the colour to it, but don’t mix it in just yet.

For 1 kg of mix you will need 1 kg of the prepared boiled meringue, BUT this needs to be added in 2 different stages.

FIRST! Add 200 grams of that 1 kg meringue into group 1 mix and mix it thoroughly until it’s well mixed in. You can use a mixing bowl here with a beater/paddle on low speed. If group 1 was refrigerated, allow it to come back down to room temperature before using it or it will be too hard from being too cold.
Once you have mixed the 200 grams of meringue, you are ready to add the other 800 grams to that part of the mix, BUT it can only be gently folded in by hand. Folding in anything by hand for best results requires you to have a soft plastic scraper that can bend to the shape of your rounded bowl or use a silicone-based scraper with a handle; this way your hands are kept clean. The folding in motion requires you to run the scraper along the bowl down into the mix all the way to the bottom and back up again on the opposite side and then slightly turn your bowl and do this motion again and keep doing it until you have a nice smooth mixture which hasn’t dropped or become sloppy. If your mix doesn’t become sloppy at this stage, throw it away and start again, as you have failed. Don’t even waste your time cooking it, as it will not work.

You are now ready to pipe your macarons onto baking paper and preheating your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Once piped, lightly lift the tray up and let it drop from about 5 cm high back onto the table to get any air bubbles that might have come from you handling the mixture. Let the macarons sit for about 1 hour before placing them into the oven.

Baking!

Place the rested macarons into the oven for about 11 to 12 minutes, but this will depend on your oven, so it will be best to test them before removing them from the oven by just trying to lift one macaron up, and if it isn’t stuck to the baking paper, then you are good to take them out, but if it is stuck even slightly, then just give it an extra minute or 2, and they should be ready.

Let them cool, and from here you can store them away in an airtight sealed container and then place them in the freezer, as for best keeping results, as fridges solely depend greatly on how much moisture they have within, which can cause the macarons to become damp, soggy and sticky, which you will not be able to use.

FILLING STAGE!

Now it’s time to fill your macarons, and here you can use a few different types of fillings which you flavour as you like, as this is where the macarons get their flavour, which, when biting into them, combined with the taste of the almond-based meringue, creates that magical, amazing, mouthwatering macaron everyone loves.

So the types of filling you can use here will also be determined by how long you want to keep them for and where you’re storing them, either in a dry fridge for display to be sold to customers or just making them for a party in a day or two. Either way, they need to be kept in an airtight container if not refrigerated or displayed in a dry fridge if placed on display.

Frozen macarons, filled or unfilled, will keep for a couple of months, but that depends also on your freezer. If it doesn’t build up with ice, as if you haven’t guessed it yet, any kind of moisture is a macaron’s worst enemy.

Types of filling that you can use range from fudge icing, buttercreams, soft icings, ganaches, ready-mixed types of pastes like Biscoff paste, peanut butter, jams, Nutella, etc.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and you can contact me through my website if you have any questions or problems. Note very few people achieve nice macarons on the first try, as they are extremely temperamental, so don’t be disappointed if your first or second try fails; just try to work out where you went wrong and correct that procedure the next time.