These for me have always been a type of patisserie rebel as it defies all the laws of pastry. Firstly mixing an oil(nuts) with an egg white is quite unpredictable as the two don’t enjoy mixing at the best of times. Secondly the fact that they are better with time (if they last that long) is strange as most pastries are best straight from the oven.
So when a friend of mine asked me to make some macaroons for her kitchen tea, and at first I was a bit nervous to take on the challenge as I have always found that Macaroons are so temperamental sometimes I get them right and other times not so much so in my dilemma I reached for the tool that most of us can’t do with out and that was google.
Google suggested ‘easy Macaroons’, and I decided this was a first, the words ‘easy’ and ‘macaroons’ just don’t seem to flow so well in my repertoire, until now… There is just so much to get right from the smooth top to the crisp and airy centre to the foot at the bottom, I have not got this right until now and this is why I am so excited to share my findings with you.
Luckily for me it was the very first link that came up was such a great link that I have decided to share it with you. And now I truly feel that anyone is able to make macaroons. See below for the link to the recipe as well as the FAQ’s which are both essential and informative. The one thing that I exchanged in the recipe was the icing mixture ( as we do not seem to get that in South Africa) for plain icing which made for a total of 460g icing sugar altogether and for the almond flour I simply blended the almonds until fine and sieved them through.
http://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/easy-macaron-macaroon-recipe/
The one thing I did wrong was to add the icing mixture a little at a time which increased the folding time, rather add all at once as demonstrated in the video.
Another tip in the video is to look carefully at the 2 stages one is the egg whites stiffness, make sure you get your egg whites very stiff almost dry and clumpy and the other is the stage your mixture should look like after your have mixed in the icing and almond mixture.
The whole thing of the French macaroons being so temperamental to make, changes completely when you realise that if you get the right consistency in all stages you will get a good result.
Now anyone can make macaroons………….
It was my kitchen tea that was the “recipient” of the macaroons and WOW! They were awesome :) I ALMOST risked not fitting into my wedding dress! They not only looked good but tasted DELICIOUS!