Macaron is a sweet meringue-based biscuit made from egg whites, icing sugar, almond flour and sugar. Making macarons looks like science, thus sometimes you have to try it many times until you get the best result. Success in making macarons depends on the oven, baking mat, macaronage technique. My tips on how to make macarons successfully are below.
Ingredients (for 10 pieces):
83 g almond flour
83 g icing sugar
58 g egg whites (room temperature)
58 g sugar
Note: It’s important to follow exact amount of ingredients!
Here are really matter kitchen tools:
Kitchen Scale
Mixer
Sifter
Silicone or teflon mat
Piping bag with a round nozzle
Silicone spatula
Firstly, put a silicone mat on the baking tray (my mat size is 43x31 cm). Also prepare a piping bag with a round nozzle for a macaron batter.
Method:
1. Sift almond flour and icing sugar. Combine with a whisk.
2. Beat up the egg white with a mixer on a medium speed until light “foam”.
3. Continue to whip, add sugar spoon by spoon.
4. When you add all sugar, increase the speed of the mixer and beat up for about 3 minutes. You should get fluffy and smooth meringue. Continue to beat until firm peaks (when you lift up your whisk, peaks will form, but curl down at the ends). Add the food colouring and beat until combined.
5. Add almond flour mixture to the beaten egg whites. Use a spatula and gently mix until combined.
6. Continue to stir slowly until the batter fall in a thick continuous ribbon from the spatula. Don't over mix! In this case, the macaron batter will spread over the baking mat.
7. Transfer the batter into a piping bag with a round nozzle and start to pipe immediately.
8. Hold the bag vertically to the tray, with the piping nozzle about 1cm from it. Pipe rounds about 2.5cm in diameter onto the prepared silicone mat (leave a space between each macaron). Better to pipe in a checkerboard pattern.
9. Leave macarons to rest for 30-40 mins. Macarons should develop a “skin”, which means when you touch macaron, your finger doesn't stick to it.
10. Preheat the oven for 140°C. Bake macarons for 16 mins.
11. Let them completely cool
In my oven at 140°C, it took 16 mins. When I used lower temperature macarons were “wet” inside. Higher temperature - tops of macarons were burned. So, the best option for me is 140°C (without convection), 16 mins.
It’s perfectly normal if you need a few attempts at making macarons. Just remember what you did and, in case of a faulty attempt, try to change something next time (baking mat, temperature, baking time). My important tips to get proper macarons:
- good quality ingredients
- silicone baking mat
- proper consistency of meringue and macaron batter
- right temperature in the oven
Macarons filling
Macarons are traditionally filled with ganache, jam, buttercream. My favourite filling is cream cheese+jam
Ingredients (approx. for 10 macarons)
180 g Philadelphia
30 g icing sugar
Cherry jam
1. Combine Philadelphia cheese with icing sugar.
2. Put it into piping bag and pipe a swirl of filling on half the biscuit.
3. Add a half teaspoon of jam in the middle of the biscuit.
4. Stick halves together
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