Macarons (Easy)

Ingredients

75g almond meal

140g icing sugar

10g granulated sugar (about 1 Tsp)

60g egg whites (about 2)

pinch of fine sea salt

Instructions

Start by getting your "hardware" ready. First, 2 cookie sheets lined with a silpat or baking paper. Also, a piping bag with a round tip of about 1 cm diameter (I just cut it when I'm ready to start piping). If you want your macarons to be really perfect and uniform in shape, just draw circles (the first time I did the piping I used a round cookie cutter for the shape) on the baking/parchment paper and lay it upside down on the cookie sheet, it will be your guide for piping later on.

Add almond meal, then add the icing sugar (make sure you sift the icing sugar) to the bowl, set it aside.

Make sure you wipe your bowl with clean paper towel and white vinegar so there is no residue of egg yolk [even if using for the first time]!!

Get your bowl clean and dry and put the butterfly on. Add your granulated sugar, salt, egg whites and whisk for 4 minutes / 3½ / MC off. Your meringue has to be really, really firm, slightly glossy and looking maybe a bit too dry. Actually, it should all be stuck to the sides of the bowl.

Pour the meringue into a big bowl and add almond meal and icing sugar mix to it. Now, usually you’ll be told to do it in spoonful additions and to be gentle about the folding… but in one macaron class I attended we were told to put it all in at once and to be not-that-gentle, really. So, just be steady, going at it with the classical folding motion but don’t pamper the batter, it actually has to deflate and get a thinner consistency. It should make ribbons that disappear into the batter after some 20 seconds. For this amount of batter, I usually get to this stage after 20 folds, more or less.

Pour the batter into the piping bag, cut the tip and pipe the cookies onto your sheets, spacing them about 5cm apart. My recipe makes 50 wafers, or 25 filled macarons.

Now, a crucial step: lift the trays straight up, holding level from both sides (parallel to your work surface) and then just let go of them so that they tap hard on the table as they land. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat until you do all 4 sides. You’re letting out all those air bubbles which would cause the surface to crack if they stayed inside the macaron, not pretty.

Preheat your oven at 120ºC / no fan. The macarons will develop a “skin” while the oven is getting hot, maybe they’ll take a bit longer than your oven, about 25-30 minutes, you really don’t need more than that. Bake one tray at a time in the middle rack for about 18 minutes, rotating mid-time to get even baking (well, my oven requires this).

To check if they're done, just lift the corner of the baking paper and try to peel it from the bottom of the cookie. If it sticks, it isn't done. If it comes off, just take the tray out and put the 2nd one in. Cool on the rack and make the filling them with your favourite ganache, jam, lemon curd.

Variations and some tips

Try using pistachios or hazelnuts instead of almonds.
For chocolate macarons, add 10 grams pure cocoa powder with the icing sugar for the sifting.

For coffee macarons, 2 tsp espresso powder.

For lime, lemon or orange macarons, add zest of 1 or 2 fruits along with the blanched almonds when making the almond meal.

Macarons are better after 24 hours.

If you want to decorate the tops, sprinkling has to be done while the surface is still wet but painting when the skin is already formed.