Macaroons step by step with pictures

I went to a macaroon class last Saturday in On Cafe in Clapham Common after sampling their macaroons in hyperjapan. I successfully made a quite decent macaroons in the class which I was happy about, but I was so skeptical that I won't be able to create this at home without the tutor's help. If you're a keen macaroons baker like me, then surely you'll know why I felt this way :D. So, as soon as I arrived home after the class and out and about I went straight to the kitchen and attempt to make some. I was eagerly waiting what the outcome is going to be by standing in front of the oven while the macaroons are baking. I heard you say "what a crazy thing to do", but trust me this is the moment of truth really. I would normally swear as soon as I see something's gone wrong and just bin everything include the one in the oven. However, this time there's no swearing because believe it or not the macaroons turns out perfect (to me anyway).

So, here I'll show you the step by step how to make the macaroons (oh, this is my second batch macaroons I made at home).

Recipe by Loretta Liu from On Cafe London

1. Prepare the ingredients:
    - Egg whites 150 gr (aged egg whites are better, 5 days old is the best)
    - Caster sugar 100 gr
    - Ground almond 180 gr (I whizzed mine in a food processor to make them even more finer)
    - Icing sugar 270 gr

2. Now, whisk the egg whites to glossy firm stiff.

The egg whites, were whisked for 4m 20s in class to get the consistency desired and they were whisked using a stand alone mixer. However, as I only have a  handheld mixer, I have to do a bit of experiment on the timing to get the same consistency. I came up with 3m 25s of whisking using the highest speed.

You will need to add the caster sugar gradually into the egg whites after 1 minute of whisking or when your white eggs look like this:

You should stop whisking when you get this consistency

3. Shift the ground almond (180gr is the amount you'll need after shifting so you might need to weight a bit more)

4. Shift the icing sugar into the same bowl as the ground almond, but don't mix them

5. Incorporate the beaten egg whites into the dry ingredients

6. Add the colouring paste, the fun part in my opinion :)

7. Now for the not so fun part, folding the mix together. Tips: you need to have a rhythm when folding, the quicker the way you fold the better. Beware this folding bit is a bit hard to do as it's quite heavy, by the time you finished folding you'll feel your arm is aching :D. Be careful not to over fold the mixture, as this will result in a very liquidy mixture and brittle macaroons. Your mixture should look like this:

8. Transfer the mixture into a piping bag with a plain nozzle and pipe (in an upright position, not in an angle) onto a silpat on the tray to the size you desire

9. As you see in picture above, the macaroons all has nipple. So, to get rid of it you'll have to do an airing process by lifting your baking tray up and dropping them down, you might need to do this a few times. By doing this you'll make the macaroons batter spread a bit, so remember this when piping to determine the size you'd like to get. The nipple has gone:

10. Leave them to set for about 20 minutes to form the skin, they will need more time to set if you live in a tropical country with humid weather. When the skin is formed, there shouldn't be anything sticking in your finger when touched.

11. Baking time: bake at 150 C for 12 minutes

12. When finished baking, leave the macaroons to cool down. Touching is prohibited at this point even though I know it's a very tempting thing to do ;).

13. When the baking tray/sheet is totally cool, you can start removing the macaroons. If they're a bit difficult to remove you can use a palette knife to scrape them off. Pipe the filling to one shell and pair up with a same size shell. In this occasion, I made some passion fruit cream to fill the macaroons with. End result:

P.S:
If you don't have silpat silicone mat, using parchment paper is fine too but I personally like to use the silpat silicone mat. By using silpat, you'll get all beautifully shaped shell as you can see on the picture above. By using parchment paper, in my experience resulted in some shells turned into horribly funny in shape like you can see bellow:

P.P.S:
I only made half recipe this time and ended up with 26 pairs of macaroons, so it might be a good idea to make half recipe to see how it's going for you and to avoid much disappointment when it fails.

Happy baking :D

xx