Junglefrog Cooking » macarons

Pink macarons with raspberry filling

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 06:00:32 +0000

Pink goodness

O, it was sooooo long since I last made macarons!! I actually had to look it up how long ago it has been and it was – I kid you not – december of last year!! Unbelievable! I made lavender macarons at the time and they were fantastic so why o why did I not make any others..? I have no reasons whatsoever, other then maybe fear of another failure… But when we did our patisserie course (which is now finished) at Douglas Delights, I think we decided in the first lesson that we definitely also wanted to do macarons in the lesson about cookies… And so we did… Carle used a totally different method from the one I had used previously, but I love the end result, so I will definitely be trying this again at home. I will tell you all about it

Macaron batter..

But first let me tell you that I will also dedicate this post to Pink Ribbon for the Mac Attack of this month. You all know the Mactweets website, don’t you?

The wonderful Mac-dominated site set up by the lovely Jamie, from Life’s a Feast and Deeba from Passionate about Baking. I have been following the blogs of both these lovely ladies for quite awhile now and besides being passionate cooks and bakers, they are also wonderful women. You’ll see if you visit their beautiful blogs!

Now by pure coincidence the Mactweets challenge for this month was for Pink macarons in support of Pink Ribbon, since October is the Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I think a lot of us have probably been touched by cancer at some point in our lives, as I believe at the moment the amount of people getting any form of cancer is one in three. That is a truly dreadful number. In the past year we have lost several people close to either us or to our friends to cancer and I truly think it is one of the most horrible diseases out there. Breast cancer – if detected in time – is one of the cancers that has a 98% survival rate, which is high for cancer, but detecting it early is therefore of the utmost importance!

So in support of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this month is all about Pink macarons or as Jamie and Deeba call it ‘PINKARONS FOR PINKTOBER”!

Am I cheating a little bit if I did not truly make these macarons alone? But they are pink, right? So I thought I combine the two and cheat just a tiny little bit..

So what was so different from this method? The very first time I made macarons I used the so called ‘Italian method’, also referred to as the warm method and failed completely. I think I managed to have a few macaron-shells that were not broken, but the majority ended up being one big lump of broken pieces… Still tasty but hardly what you can call a succes. I have since used the famous “French” method or the one where you use cold eggwhites as opposed to warm. If my memory serves me well, the method that Carle was slightly different again, but it worked wonderful and seems to be less fragile then the French method.

Let me start by giving you the recipe that we used:

125 gr ground almonds

125 gr icing sugar

48 gr eggwhites

___________________

125 gr + 15 gr sugar

48 gr eggwhites

To start mix the icing sugar together with the almonds. Make sure there are no lumps so put them through a sieve. Mix the two together well and add the first 48 gr of eggwhites; not beaten!! Heat the oven to 150C.

Put a little bit of water in a small saucepan. It should just cover the bottom and add 148 gr of sugar here. The extra 15 gr of sugar is merely to make up for whatever is left sticking to the sides of the pan once cooked.

Beat the other 48 gr of eggwhites stiff and add the coloring of your choice at this stage into the eggwhites. Boil the sugar to 120 C. While the eggwhites are being beaten add the hot sugar and keep on mixing until the mixture is lukewarm. Really make sure it is not too hot. While pouring in the sugar on top of the eggwhites, do not pour directly on top of the whiskers or that will make a mess.

Once it is cool enough add the mixture to the almond mixture and fold it in together until the mixture resembles thick ribbons and will flow back if you make a peak. Put it on a baking tray. Depending on your oven; it should bake 12-15 minutes.

Piping the macarons on the baking sheet

Raspberry filling

90 gr raspberry jam

44 gr frozen raspberries

1/4 tsp pectine

1 tsp eau de vie de framboise (raspberry liquor)

Put everything together in a small saucepan (except the alcohol) and heat. Make sure you leave it to boil well with the pectine. Take it of the fire and add the eau de vie. Use about 5 gr of filling per macaron. Don’t wait too long or the filling will become gelatinous and will be difficult to spread evenly as we found out. Hence the dots on the macaron shells. We were a bit messy!!

Sidenote: we made the filling but ended up short, so we had to make more, so either we messed up with applying or we had too many macarons…

Perfection from the oven

Piping the filling onto the macarons

And not one, NOT ONE, macaron was broken, cracked or otherwise not perfect. Well, that is not true; some had a very big size and others were tiny, but that was our not so expert piping… Otherwise the macs where just beautiful. I think we left out putting the ground almond through a sieve which account for a not entirely smooth surface, so make sure you do that if you want to have a smooth skin. But did you see their beautiful little feet??

I’ve got all inspired to make more macs, so expect to see more of these beauties very soon! O, just for the record; we used eggwhite from a carton and not fresh eggs. If you live in Holland, apparently the brand to get is van Tol eggwhites as Danegg for some reason seems to be less effective when it comes to making macarons.

And then to finalize it, here is the Mactweets logo!

Lavender macarons

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:14:58 +0000

Macarons

My last failed attempt at making macarons has been a while ago and was for the Daring Bakers in october. So when Jamie and Deeba started their MacAttack I could not stay behind! My goal, obviously, to finally produce a decent batch of macarons. One that I would be able to serve to other people then Tom without them bursting in laughing asking me what I was thinking… And today, ladies and gentlemen, it seems that I finally had a 100% perfect batch! As usual I started with aging the eggwhites which I put out yesterday, then whipped them into a meringue today per the usual instructions (see below) and I did make a mistake there as I actually put the lavender sugar into the eggwhites together with the rest of the sugar, making it maybe a tad too sweet, but ok, minor detail…

Then the crucial part came and the part where I think have gone wrong in the past and that is in achieving the correct texture for the macronage (I think it is called that way…!) I do tend to overbeat the mixture resulting in the dough being too soft. Proof of that is actually the fact that whenever I used to make round on the baking sheet they would always spread quite a lot and sometimes merging into one another. This time however I decided to count. It is stated everywhere that you should not fold the mixture more then 50 times. So I carefully folded and folded and counted and counted, coming to a total of 41 turns where I thought the mixture was still a bit too thick. So I stopped. That might sound weird but the last time I thought the mixture was too thick, folded it a couple of times more and the damage was already done!

So not this time! All the powdery stuff was mixed into the meringue and the mixture was quite thick but flowing. And I am happy I stopped there or I am sure I would have over beaten it again. It now actually had the perfect consistency and even when making the little rounds on the trays I felt that it already worked so much better then the previous times. The rounds flattened a little bit but not outside of proportions as they normally do and there were no peaks left on top. I even made a few that were too small as I was so used to them flattening out so much more then they did!

I almost could not resist standing in front of the oven the entire time watching if they would develop feet, but I resisted the urge and went upstairs to work a bit more only to come back to perfect little feet! I checked if they were baked enough after 25 minutes but they weren’t (I always very carefully try to lift one from the tray and if they lose the bottom when I do that I have to keep them in a little longer so I can get them of the baking sheets) so I left them in for another 5 to 10 minutes.

By then they were perfect to get of the trays too and not one of them broke! I had a reasonably successful batch a few months ago but even then most of the macarons broke when I wanted to take them off, so having none break was a first! I almost wanted them to break so I could pop one in my mouth to taste… Luckily I was left with an uneven number so ofcourse I had to eat the uneven one..

Delicate and crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. I still can’t believe I finally managed, so sorry if I keep blabbing about it!

I made a buttercream as per the instructions of Tartelette’s recipe and I made it in two variations; one with vanilla and one with lavender sugar. I liked the vanilla better, but both of them are really good!

Now I did promise someone to save a few if they were good for tomorrow but… not sure if they survive that long!
Violet Macarons With Violet And Vanilla Bean Buttercream
recipe from Helen @ Tartelette
Makes between 30 to 40 macarons

Lavender macarons

Recipe type: Cookies

Author: Helen @Tartelette

Serves: 30

Ingredients

For the macarons shells:
90 gr egg whites (about 3)
30 gr granulated sugar
200 gr powdered sugar
110 gr almonds
2 tablespoons crushed violet sugar or candied violet petals
Violet and Vanilla Buttercream:
1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
2 large egg whites
1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon violet sugar +1 tablespoon water (or 2 tablespoons violet liqueur)
1 vanilla bean, split open and seeded

Instructions

For the whites: the day before (24hrs), separate your eggs and store the whites at room temperature in a covered container. If you want to use 48hrs (or more) egg whites, you can store them in the fridge.
In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites to a foam, gradually add the sugar until you obtain a glossy meringue. Do not overbeat your meringue or it will be too dry. Combine the almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor and give them a good pulse until the nuts are finely ground. Add them to the meringue, give it a quick fold to break some of the air and then fold the mass carefully until you obtain a batter that flows like lava or a thick ribbon. Give quick strokes at first to break the mass and slow down. The whole process should not take more than 50 strokes.
Canon Eos 5D mark II
Test a small amount on a plate: if the tops flattens on its own you are good to go. If there is a small beak, give the batter a couple of turns.
Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) with the batter and pipe small rounds (1.5 inches in diameter) onto parchment paper or silicone mats lined baking sheets. Sprinkle with the crushed sugar or violet petals. Preheat the oven to 280F. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to harden their shells a bit and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on their size.
Let cool. If you have trouble removing the shells, pour a couple of drops of water under the parchment paper while the sheet is still a bit warm and the macarons will lift up more easily do to the moisture. Don’t let them sit there in it too long or they will become soggy. Once baked and if you are not using them right away, store them in an airtight container out of the fridge for a couple of days or in the freezer. To fill: pipe or spoon about 1 big tablespoon of butterceam in the center of one shell and top with another one.

Buttercream

Put the sugar and egg whites in a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly, keeping the mixture over the heat, until it feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. The sugar should be dissolved, and the mixture will look like marshmallow cream. Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat the meringue on medium speed until it cools and forms a thick shiny meringue, about 5 minutes. Switch to the paddle attachment and add the butter, one tablespoon at a time, beating until smooth. Once all the butter is in, beat in the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 6-10 minutes. Divided the buttercream in two portions.
For the violet buttercream: microwave the violet sugar and water for 30 to 45 seconds. Let cool completely before folding it into the buttercream. If using liqueur, just fold it in the buttercream.
For the vanilla buttercream: add the seeds from the vanilla bean to the buttercream and fold with a spatula until fully incorporated. If not using right away, refrigerate for up to a week or freeze for up to 1 month.

Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

My entry for Macattack!

Daring Bakers; French macarons

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:00:08 +0000

Macarons

I want feet, I want feet, I want feet.. But…. as you can see…. no feet (again) When I saw that the Daring Bakers challenge for october was making french macarons I figured I had a potentially good chance of succeeding. It would of-course be my fourth attempt at making macarons and with two fails and 1,5 success I figured it would be time for another little success… But noooo, it was not meant to be!

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.

The recipe that I normally follow is the one that I got from Helen (Tartelette) but Ami chose a slightly different recipe which didn’t involve drying the macarons prior to putting them into the oven, but instead baking them on a very low temperature first and then continuing the baking on higher. Which should basically get you the same result. Ofcourse the most important part would still be the macaronage and it appears I failed there again. Well, the good thing was that they did come off the baking sheet very easily (as you can see in some they are slightly browned due to their prolonged time in the oven) and they were absolutely delicious, so in that sense it was a success. And my friends wouldn’t notice that they didn’t have any feet, as they don’t really know the traditional macarons anyway, but I do so I was still slightly disappointed about the results.. O well, I will keep on trying!!

With red currants and mascarpone filling

As for the filling; I made two different versions, one with red currants and one with blackberries. Both are combined with mascarpone which I think works beautifully with the macarons, but the blackberry filling came out looking very very lilac which didn’t really look very pretty with the pink macarons, but still nothing wrong with the taste.

I actually preferred the blackberry filling as I had also used lemon zest and since I love lemony flavours that was my favorite. Tom preferred the red currant one as it was less lemony (is that even a word??) and you could taste the currants better that way. To be honest I loved them both and they were gone in a heartbeat so really that was the good part.

I do prefer the method that I am sort of familiar with now that is described here as for me that seems to get better results. Not perfect results (yet) but at least I had a few macarons with feet with that method as compaired to this method which had no feet whatsoever. It’s most likely entirely my fault since a lot of other daring bakers have made gorgeous looking macarons, so I am just bad at making them.

If you want to give it a try with this recipe here it is!

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami’s note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons.

Color clash macarons!

Lemon-mascarpone macarons

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:02:23 +0000

Lemon mascarpone macarons

It’s been a while since I made my first macarons and since this evening we are going to visit my parents in law I figured it would be a perfect day to make a new batch of these delicate cookies. I think officially I am not supposed to call them cookies, but for lack of a better word…

The first time I had successful macarons (I am not counting the first failed attempt) I had made a filling of chocolate ganache and while that was truly delicious I did think it was a bit heavy. After two macarons we were feeling very full, so this time I wanted to attempt something a little bit lighter in taste and texture. I still had a jar of mascarpone in the fridge and had bought fresh limes and lemons at the market this morning. And since I love lemon I figured that would be a perfect filling for the macarons. I had incorporated a little bit of lemon zest into the meringue while making the macarons and added a tiny bit of yellow powdered coloring. Ofcourse a tiny bit of that very potent powder means that my macarons are bright yellow instead of the more subtle color I had in mind, but ok… I really have to get a better feel of how much is needed when it comes to coloring the macarons! I go from bright pink to bright yellow! Nevermind; the meringue did have a slight hint of lemon taste which is what I wanted to achieve.

Getting the mascarpone to the correct taste I had to add quite a bit of lemon and lime zest plus some juice of both. O and I added a bit of lemon curd as well that I still had leftover from the Daring Bakers august challenge.

As for the macarons themselves… hmm, not so successful! While baking them I could tell that the top of the macarons became a bit wrinkled almost. Not smooth as they were before putting them in the oven. I had rested them for an hour prior to putting them in the oven. Could that have been too long? They also didn’t rise as good as the previous time and getting them off the parchment paper was a nightmare, to say the least. The ones you see here are the only ones that came out in one piece – more or less. As I have mentioned before; my oven is really not the best and doesn’t warm evenly. The macarons at the end of the oven where ok, they came of the paper the easiest. But I couldn’t keep them in any longer as the shells began to brown a tiny bit. But the ones on the other end of the oven where no where near done.

Other then buying a new oven (which is in the planning, but you know how those things go) I am not sure how to solve the oven issue.

As far as taste goes, they were totally delicious but they are hardly something I can bring to my parents in law this evening. It’s mainly all broken bits and pieces. I am sure they will still eat it, but well, I am sure you can understand why I don’t want to bring them!!

A bit disappointed… but no one ever said that making macarons would be easy right? I do think I overbeat the meringue possibly. Initially it was too thick as the meringue didn’t flow in a thick ribbon from the spoon, but rather in chunks. So I gave it a few more folds, but that was maybe a few too many? On to attempt number four then…

The recipe for french macarons can be found in various forms on the blog of Helen aka Tartelette aka the Macaron master…

For the mascarpone filling I really just added it to taste but it was more or less the below quantities:

250 gr mascarpone

zest of 1 lime and zest of 1 lemon

juice of 1 lime and halve a lemon

few tbsp of lemon curd

Macarons 2nd attempt!

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:29:51 +0000

Whoohoo!! Ofcourse I could not resist making another batch of macarons yesterday as I really wanted it to work better then the first attempt. I had received full instructions from Helen via an article she had written previously for dessert magazine (look on page 38) and following those… I got the above results! The whole French method is sooo much easier then the Italian one I did previously that I was pleasantly surprised.

I had gone to Amsterdam in the morning to buy ground almonds (I bought a kilo…. so more macarons to follow… ) and a tip that would be in the right size, so I would not have so much issues with the piping bag. In the end I used whole almonds and ground them myself as I had bought those previously and ultimately I needed to finish those before the ground ones. I didn’t really have old eggwhites so I used Helen’s recommendation to microwave them for 10-20 seconds before using them as that apparently replicates the effect of using old eggwhites.

I had also bought powdered coloring of which I used a bit too much. You need just really a tiny amount to get any color into the meringue. I had never used powder before, but I know for next time now.

As for the taste; they were good although I would say not quite there yet. Compaired to the Italian version the French ones use less almonds (the previous recipe had 200 gr powdered sugar and 200 gr almonds, while this one had 200 gr powdered sugar and 110 gr almonds) so I found the taste to be a little bit more sugary. I am not sure if it is save to experiment with the sugar/almond combination but I might try to do that for next time, or add some other nuts to the mixture which I am sure will work really well as well.

I also found that the recommended 12-13 minutes was not enough. I ended up letting them bake for about 25 minutes before the bottom was firm enough. I think that was the mistake I made the first time as they did not want to come of the parchment paper. Keeping them in a little longer was all that was needed. (we do have an oven that is not really working as it should, so that is possibly one of the reasons)

For the filling we used chocolate ganache with no other additions and that was delicious but rather heavy as well. I have some left over which I will fill with something else just to see how that will compair with the taste. The chocolate was almost too overpowering…

All in all I am really pleased with how my second attempt turned out and they really were delicious!

I was right by the way, about my friend laughing really hard about my first attempt…. I bet she was here now to taste my second attempt!!

For the recipe I followed click on the link above to Dessert Magazine and have a look at page 38.

Next thing I will be doing is trying to experiment with the flavours and getting it to be perfect. Varying with the filling as well.

O and let’s not forget the practising with the right size as these were a bit on the large size really and definitely not all the same size either. That’s the least of my worries though. Taste and flavour is most important. I am sure getting them the right size is gonna be a thing you – hopefully – learn over time!

Junglefrog Cooking » macarons

Pink macarons with raspberry filling

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