This is what French Macarons are, they are much more classy and more tea party quality. I am not saying the American macaroons are bad, its just the french ones are more presentable.
These biscuits have a crisp exterior, except when you bit your teeth into them, you are hit with a smooth chocolate ganache. This helps for contasting flavours.
Using the finest and best quality cocoa powder will really help deepthen these Macaroons flavour. It also gives it a beautoful rich colour.
Good quality chocolate is essential for the filling of these macarons. If you want them to be rich, choose a chocolate that is at least 60% cocoa solids when making your ganache.
Packaging these is a pretty tin and displaying them nicely inside would be a lovely suprise for someone. Not only will it be presented good, it will taste so rich and beautiful.
When you package them up make sure you give them a dusting of good qaulity cocoa, this will just add a bit of bitterness to the biscuit and give the biscuit a bit of a kick in flavour!
Serve with a nice hot cappachunio, that has been dusted with dutch cocoa on top. Serve a few macarons on the side. Don't be suprised if the biscuits are all gone before the guest has touched their drink!
Insure the coffee is piping hot, cause no one enjoys a cold cappachunio.
I love the matching tea set, the plate with a blue strip, the mugs with blue and white strips and the tea pot with blue strips down the bottom. I think the white and blue colours really make the chocolate macarons bounce from the photo.
These beautiful macarons have a beautiful smooth top, no lumps and a shiny glossy filling. And there subtle dusting of ducth cocoa. Picture these all symercially lined up in a cafes cabinet, no one will be able to resist them!!
The good thing about these biscuits, although they contain a fair load of calories. Thats besides the point. They are Gluten Free. All french macarons are gluten free. So they are something delicious for those coeliacs to dive into.
Lets begin the recipe..
-Begin by blanching your almonds (taking the skins off) by boiling them for no longer than 2 mins.
-Than place 1/2 cup of almonds in a blender and pulse until it resmebles very fine powder and crumbs.
-Place all your almond meal in a bowl and mix in the powdered sugar and cocoa until its just combined.
-Whisk you room temperature egg whites on medium speed for 2 minutes until foamy. Place all the sugar in at once and turn the speed up to the highest it can go. Beat the peaks until stiff and very glossy (far picture) about 5mins.
-Gradually sift in your dry ingredients in 3 sections. Mixing throughly in betweeen sections.
-Once all dry ingredients have been incoperated. Begin being careful on how much you mix and how little you mix. This is crucial moment if your macaroons work or not. See the mixture I droped a ribbion of mixture and the picture next to it is 30 seconds later. If the mixture almonst sinks back in you are good to go!
Place the mixture in a piping bag and begin piping your macaroons out on a baking tray lined with baking paper and with a template underneath.
-Leave the macaroons to dry on the kitchen table. Once you touch the macaroons and no mixture sticks to your fingers they are ready to be baked.
-Bake at 160 degrees for 9 mins turning the tray at the halfway mark.
-leave them to cool for 30mins before removing from the baking paper.
Ingredients
-90g egg whites
-117g almond meal
-130g powdered sugar
-pinch of cream a tartar
-70g granulated sugar
-30g cocoa powder
Method
-Preheat oven to 160 degrees
-Sift almond meal/flour and icing sugar together in a seperate bowl. Trying to eliminate as many lumps as possible for a smooth topped macaroon.
-Whisk the egg whites until its foamy. About 2 minutes on medium speed.
-Add the sugar in all at once.
-Whisk the egg whites and sugar until stuff peaks have formed. About 5 mins of beating.
-Sift the almond and icing sugar into the meringue in 3 incremenets.
-Gradually folding it in.
-Don't overmix and don't undermix, this is the most crucial part of the recipe. If you don't do this right you won't have perfect looking macaroons. You will have more biscuits that look like bath bombs with cracks or puddles of colours (as Fruss would tell me, after my many many failed attempts)
-Fill a piping bag and pipe onto a tray lined with baking paper and a template resting behind it.
-Lift the tray and bang it 3x on the bench, if you can see little bubbles pop on the surface of your biscuit. That is a good sign.
-Leave the trays on the kitchen bench and let them form a skin.
-When you can gently touch the surface of the biscuit and not have anything stick to your finger. The biscuit has formed a skin.
-Place these in the oven for 9-11mins and turning the tray halfway.
-watch these very carefully. They should develop their feet in the first 5 mins of baking. Don't let these biscuits brown at all!
-When they are finished take them out of the oven adn leave to cool completely.
-Once the have cooled completely you can lift the biscuits off the baking paper. You know when you have successfully made a macaroon is when it looks like one and when you lift it off the paper and nothing is left behind.
-Fill these with your desired filling by piping for a neater look.
-Store in a tupperware for 24 hours ar room temperature to allow the flavours to mature.
-Serve on a beautiful plate at your next tea party,
Thats really it, I hop you find time to make these chocolate macaroons because if you do I am sure you won;t regret it.
Until next time lovelies...
