*Warning*
This post is devoted to all macaron lovers out there, who are dying to eat them, but unfortunately it will cost you the earth to buy them. For those who don’t have a sweet tooth, you might want to skip this post or else you will die from a sudden sugar attack/diabetic attack from just reading this post. HAH!
Sooo..
Have you ever tried to make macarons?
Have you tried it before but failed?
And you don’t know what went wrong?
Here are some answers to your problems!
I’m not a big fan of macarons to be honest. The first time I had them was last year, when a senior offered me one of her pretty macarons. And my first impression was,
“Woaaa, too sweet!”
Oh well, I don’t blame macarons for being sweet, and that is not the reason why I don’t eat them that much, it is just me. I bake a lot, but I don’t often eat them.
Let me remind you, that everything you are about to read, is based on my experience ONLY, and this is my first time making them, and they turned out good!
Lesson number one: find a GOOD recipe. I rarely use recipes from the internet, cause I just don’t trust them, most of the time you will end up wasting all of your ingredients for nothing. This time... I had no other choice that meant browsing through a few websites to pick the right one. So I picked this one Martha Stewart
Lesson number two: FOLLOW the recipe. When it says, fold..it means fold, NOT beat. I have to admit, making macaroon is not an easy job. You need to know when to stop whisking the egg whites, and when to start piping. Basically if you follow the recipe from the above link, you should be right. Trust me.
Critical steps:
- Whisking the egg whites: use a high speed electric mixer till there is no “liquid” present. Everything should be foamy. You should be able to hold the bowl above your head and don’t have to worry about anything.
- Make sure you sift the confectioner’s sugar together with almond meal for a few times. I did it twice, but I was being very, very thorough.
- Folding: Fold the sugar and almond meal and the whisked egg white until the sugar and meal is just incorporated. I separated them into two batches, mixing the two slowly, and I stopped once the powdered streaks were gone. Remember, you don’t want to lose the volume of whipped egg whites.
- Piping: I have an advantage because I have a few years experience piping whipped cream/buttercream/royal icing, in short anything that can be piped. My advice to a new beginner is start slow, it’s okay if they are not perfectly round, but make sure there is no air trapped inside each blob. Make sure to tap HARD on the tray and use a tooth pick to prick each air bubble that appears on the surface, by this you eliminate cracks and uneven surfaces due to expanding trapped air.
- The texture of batter should be in a thick consistency and a bit runny once you have piped the small blobs on a tray.
Here are the few pictures of the final products;
p/s: confectioner’s sugar means icing sugar, and granulated means castor sugar. Remember the temperature used in the recipe is in Fahrenheit, if you convert it to Celcius, it will be around 180O. If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments box! Thanks!
