Daring Bakers October - Macaroons

Okay so I'm late sigh! Just one of those weeks, plus the first batch of macaroons got eaten before I even had a chance to photograph them lol!!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Full details of this can be found here

Thank you to Ami for the challenge, as I've been wanting to try macaroons for awhile. Anyways I didn't have that much success with the above mentioned recipe and it seems I wasn't alone, perhaps it's just the way for some of us.

So I turned to a couple of favourite bloggers - namely Tartlette and Audax

I went with Tartlette's recipe from Dessert Magazine.

100g of egg whites - I used fresh home grown chook eggs - thanks Robyn - and I aged them for a day . It hasn't been particularly hot thank goodness, so I just placed them in a glass bowl - no plastic for egg whites!!! and then left them overnight in my microwave. If it's super hot I wouldn't be doing that, but would age them in the fridge for a couple of days, covered and away from strong smells.
50g of granulated sugar - aka caster sugar
110g of almond flour - we call in almond meal here, but I ground my own, from fresh whole blanched almonds - with not that spectacular results, they were still a bit gritty but I quite liked that.
200g of powdered sugar - I used pure icing sugar.

So basically beat the egg whites to a soft foam, add the caster sugar and beat to a nice thick and glossy meringue.



Take the whole almonds, process down a little, then add the icing sugar and process till fine -you should sift the result, but you know me lol! Always short of time.



Fold the almond mix through the egg whites till combined, try to be a little gentle.



Now you can add colouring but liquid will affect your macaroon so I'm told. So I used gel colours. The first time, I added it after the egg white was foamy - but the heat from the over takes alot of the colour out. So the second time I used twice as much and added it to the almond/sugar mix - but it didn't give me a good finish to the colour, a bit streaky. Will see how next time goes if I add to the egg whites again. Plus it was a bit too pink, the first time I made green ones, to go with the rose pink buttercream, but they were too pale, but I definitely went overboard with the colour this time lol!!



Now pipe into 1 to 1 1/2 inch dobs on a baking paper lined tray that you have stacked onto another tray of the same size. And I left them to dry for up to an hour, not quite the hour today and they weren't as good as the ones I made the other day. I think the batter was just a smidge too stiff, perhaps a couple more folds would have done it.

Bake at 150 deg C for about 10 - 12 minutes.



Take out of the oven, cool slightly and remove from the paper - remember moisture is their enemy. I found if they didn't want to come off cleanly, they needed a tad more time in the oven.

Sandwich together with your choice of filling. The first lot I did with buttercream as I already had it made. But this batch I've made a delightful white chocolate frosting from my most favourite cupcake blog - Cupcake Bakeshop and smooshed some frozen thawed raspberries through it as well. I love the flavour of this filling, but it's a bit soft to sandwich macaroons together I think. They wanted to slip and slide, so they had a short sojorn in the fridge. Plus what do I do with the masses of left over frosting. Doh! I should have halved the recipe.

I really enjoyed making these and I think at the end of the day if you find a recipe that works for you stick with it



(finished macaroons with gold sprinkles from Cake about Town - added before they were baked but after drying)

And yes friends, the macaroon shells are both gluten and dairy free!!!!! And yes I'll put dark chocolate ganache in the centre!!!