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Gemma's Bigger BolderBaking French Macaron "Donuts"
French Macarons are delicate and delicious and extremely finicky to make. Michelle D
trusts me to show you how to make them. The thing is: I've never made them before. I spent
the week making batch after batch until I got them right. So today, I'm not just going
to show you how to make regular macarons. I'm going to show you how to make BIG & BOLD
Jelly Donut Macarons. So let's get baking!
Ada Law asked me to show you the best French Macaron recipe. Now the ingredients are always
the same, it's the technique that people really struggle with. So I'm hoping today to make
it easy for you and for me.
We're going to start out with a clean metal or glass bowl. Not plastic because plastic
soaks up grease. And make sure also that your beaters are clean because you don't want any
grease in your egg whites.
We're going to whip our egg whites in the bowl until they form soft peaks.
For your eggs whites, it's really important that there's no yolk in them and that they're
room temperature. Room temperature makes them really easy to whip.
When your egg whites have reached soft peaks, we're going to slowly add in the caster sugar
spoonful by spoonful.
And we're going to whip our egg whites until they're thick and shiny.
And this is what you want, a nice stiff meringue. And this is going to give your macaron really
great body and lift.
Next we're going to sift our ground almonds and our confectioners sugar into our egg whites.
And we do this to get out any lumps in the sugar and in the almond meal. Any almond meal
left in the sieve can't go into the macarons but always set it aside to use it in something
else.
Now we are at the most crucial part of the macaron technique, and it's the folding in
of the almond flour into the eggwhites.
My tip to success is concentrate on your mixes. Go slow and count. 2.
And just gently go around the bowl and fold it all in.
I do the same movement around the bowl each time. It just makes it easier to count.
As you can see it's really thick. It's nice and bubbly. But we're still not there yet.
We've got more to go.
You can see it's starting to loosen up a little bit.
Keep folding your mix over.
Our mix is starting to get a little bit looser.
So we're almost there but keep going. So stop mixing
And take a look at your mix. And see how long
it takes to fall off your spatula. It takes quite a long time.
It's like thick gooey lava. And when it lands in the bowl it takes a while to disappear.
This is what we're looking for.
This took me around 37 mixes.
Ok. I'm pretty sure we got it perfect so let's pipe these guys out and get them in the oven.
An easy way to fill your piping bag is to sit it in a cup and fill it while it's standing
up.
Before we start piping, prepare your tray with a nice big sheet of parchment paper and
just make sure it hasn't been used before and there's no grease on it.
Also, use a good quality baking tray that has a nice thick bottom to protect your macarons.
We're going to pipe our macarons onto this stencil
and I'm going to put a link in the description below so you can print it off yourselves.
Pipe your macaron by putting a little bit of pressure on the bag and just filling up
the circle.
And remembering it will spread a little bit too.
These rounds are going to be the base for the macaron donuts.
For the tops of the donuts, put very little pressure on your bag and just draw around
the outside of the circle.
The circle will get smaller in the middle as they rest so try and do a thin line.
Before we let our macarons rest, you want to take the tray and bang it against a hard
countertop to release any air bubbles that might be in there.
So the hard part is over. Now we're going to let them rest for an hour. We're going
to let them form a skin and by resting they develop these lovely feet that give them that
lift. Also, while they're resting don't let them sit anywhere humid. They do not like
humidity so take them into another room. Put them somewhere dry and it will help them out a lot.
While the macarons are drying, we're going to make our jelly buttercream filling.
In a previous video, I've made my signature buttercream and I put a link for that in the description below.
To this, I'm going to add good quality raspberry jelly.
You don't have to use raspberry jelly, I just think it works really well.
You can use strawberry or whatever kind you like.
If you haven't done so already, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to my channel for more great
recipes like this one.
Now that our filling is done, we're going to pop it into the fridge until we need it.
The macarons have bee resting for an hour and you know when they're ready when you touch
them and you can feel a bit of a skin and it's not sticky against your finger so now
they're ready. We have the oven well pre-heated at 300 degrees F and we're going to bake them
for 15 minutes.
Our macarons are out of the oven and we know that we made a perfect mix because they look great.
They have all of their little feet on the bottom
and they're nice and smooth on top. And they didn't spread out too much.
These are going to make gorgeous little donut macarons.
Let your macarons go totally cold and we're going to transform them into jelly donuts.
To decorate our macarons, we're going to need a variety of sprinkles and a frosting made
of confectioner's sugar and water.
Frost the top of your donuts and spread your glaze evenly.
Decorate it with your favorite sprinkles.
Then turn over your flat base
and pipe the raspberry filling around the edges.
and add a drop of jelly in the middle.
Then place on your glazed top.
You can create a variety of colorful and delicious flavors.
So there is a favorite for everyone!
Thanks so much for watching and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to my channel by clicking the
box below. I'll see back here again next Thursday for more Bigger Bolder Baking.