Welcome to howtocookthat.net today we are looking at how to make macarons
For a printable copy of the recipe go to howtocookthat.net the link is in the description below this video
First of all turn your oven to 150 degrees. If you have a fan forced oven turn it down to 125 degrees C
that way the temperature inside the oven is
actually 150 which is what you want.
Then take you egg whites and your sugar
and beat it with an electric mixer for 7-10 minutes until you get a dry stiff meringue mixture.
While that is mixing take your almond meal and icing sugar and sieve it through to get out any lumps or large pieces of almonds.
and just discard those because if you have too many of those your macarons won't work.
Then add your colour to your meringue mixture
You need to make the colour stronger than you think you will need because the colour tends to fade as the macarons cook.
So if you want a pale pink make quite a strong pink.
Take your almond icing sugar mixture and again sieve it through to get rid of any little lumps.
And then what we are going to do is fold it in to the meringue mixture. At first it seems like
they won't mix together but you need to just keep folding. To fold something
you need to go around the edge and then fold it back over the middle.
Continue to do this turning the bowl as you go. You will need to do it about
30 folds, roughly just to give you an idea.
How much you fold it is important in macarons as you will see later when we do
trouble shooting at the end of this video. You need to get it just right.
So keep folding until the mixture is just
start to ooze back down. It should not be so runny that it just oozes back flat but
it should be runny enough
that when you let some drop off the spatula
it gently and slowly starts to ooze back down into the whole amount.
after a little while
Once you've got to that stage you need ot get your piping bag. I like to
put mine over a big vase to hold it still.
and just wrap the edges over the vase.
Then pour all of your macaron mixture into the icing bag.
Next you need to line your trays with quality non-stick baking paper so the macarons don't stick
Take the top of your icing bag, close it and then twist it.
So that when you apply pressure to the bag the mixture is not coming back out the top.
Then to pipe your macarons then what you need to do is just from one side.
squeeze out some mixture and then tick it back across the top.
just like that so pipe from the side tick it back across the top.
and again
just zoom in so you can see that, pipe from the side and then just tick it back across
the top
Continue to do that until you have filled your whole tray with macarons.
Get both sides of your tray and bang it hard on the bench three times,
turn your tray around the other way and
and bang it another three times.
A good guide is you are wanting all those little tick marks to go flat into the macaron.
Bake your macarons in the oven for 20 minutes
They may take a bit longer depending on what colour they are. The colouring can effect the time
it takes to cook quite significantly
Now your macaron problems solved. If your look lumpy like this rather than smooth macaroons
its becuase you mixtures under mixed
You have just mixed it in, you need to keep folding until it looks more like this.
If your macarons turn out flat a bit more like pancakes like these ones
then you have over-mixed your mixture until it was too runny and it looked like this.
Next time don't fold it as much. If your macarons are cracked
then you have not rapped (banged) it on the bench hard enough or enough times
Here I have piped five macarons, rapped it one the bench
and then piped three more so that you could see the difference that .
haven't been rapped on the bench. And you can see same mixture, same cooking time and they've
cracked
Bases sticking to the baking paper like this means you macarons not ready to come out of the oven yet (make sure you use non-stick baking paper)
Even if it is like this it is not yet ready.
Leave it in until they come off
cleanly like this. As I said different colourings can make it take longer to cook.
You can fill your macarons with jam and cream
or my favourite chocolate ganache
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