SO im totally new to this and well jessie was pestering me to post, and well here it is! :)
Macaroons
3- egg whites
2-tablespoons caster sugar
red food coloring and essense of flavouring of your choice (i chose strawberry in this case)
200-gms icing sugar
about 120-gms almond meal (i say about as i dont quite use anywhere close to 120gms)
White Chocolate Ganache
100-gms white eating chocolate
2-tablespoons cream
disclaimer: i dont quite usually follow recipes exactly, baking for me has never been an exact science, so feel free to adjust as you like! i will post the exact instructions and comment on what i did differently :)
1 Beat egg whites in a small bowl until soft peaks form, add caster sugar and food colouring, and beat until the sugar dissolves. When i bake this, i usually add the colouring into the whites during the whisking stage, this is to more evenly spread the colouring through the mixture i find.
2 Transfer mixture to a large bowl and fold in sifted icing sugar and almond meal, in batches.
heres the tricky part for me, and its that i buy one of those small packs of almond meal, and sift that, the only issue with that is that i really only use the almond meal which is as fine as icing sugar, so when i bake macaroons, im pretty sure i only effectively use about 30-50gms of almond meal at all, which is probably why my macaroons come out quite airy.
3 Spoon mixture into large piping bag. Pipe unto tray, approximately 4cm rounds, about 2cms apart. Another bit i mix up around here, is that i pipe a much smaller sized macaroon, simply for the reason that they are so heavy during consumption! probably about the size of our old 50c coin. Also be sure to use double-sided baking paper.
4 Tap trays on bench top to help macaroons spread slightly, and dust with with sifted extra icing sugar; then stand for at least 15mins before putting into the oven. In my latest attempt at baking, i varied how long i left the macaroons to stand before putting them into the oven, and would stress that this is a very important stage of the macaroons, i may be wrong, correct me if someone knows this better, but i seem to find that the longer i left it out, the macaroons baked out with a better footing/base. so obviously not too long, but at least 15-20mins.
5 Preheat oven to about 130-150degrees celcius, on fan force. Not much to comment, but i used approximately 140degrees celcius.
6 Bake for approximately 20minutes, stand on trays for 5 minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool. As soon as my macaroons were out of the oven, i basically just dragged the baking paper off the tray unto my dining table to cool. Also i found that if ur macaroons are sticking to the baking paper, and are not quite solid, you probably have undercooked them, (i may be wrong though)
7 Sandwich macaroons with ganache before serving.
To make ganache:
1 Stir Chocolate and cream in a small saucepan over low heat until smooth. Transfer mixture into a small bowl and refrigerate until mixture is spreadable. I cant stress enough that it has to be low heat, if you are not confident, id suggest using the process of double boiling to avoid over heating of the chocolate. maybe have a read on
