PATIENCE AND CAREFULNESS TO MAKE LEMON MACARONS

Macaron is indeed difficult to make, when you think that you have had a clue, it still fails! There is no other success greater than baking out beautiful macarons!

The way to make macarons could be divided into two, traditional French and Italian. And according to my knowledge, macarons with Italian meringue is more difficult to make than French meringue, but it has an advantage of relatively stable on paste. Actually the outer appearance and taste of macarons are similiar with both ways of making.

Not everybody could accept the sweetness of macarons, I’d like to balance and neutralize the sweetness by the sourness and bitterness of lemon, matcha, coffee and more. Today I use lemon, light, soft and a little aroma from the lemon add to the macarons a heavenly taste, and sooner or later you will become its prisoner.

 

Lemon macarons

 

For the shells
Ingredients A:
Ground almonds: 100g
Icing sugar: 100g
Egg whites: 36g<better place egg whites for 3 days to lose its elasticity before using>
Yellow food coloring: pinch

1. Sift ground almonds, sprinkle them on the oil blotting paper for absorbing extra oil content, and this very step would help make crispy macarons!
2. Draw many circles on the white paper with the help of a coin, in avoid of oversizing
3. Blend icing sugar and ground almonds of ingredients A for several seconds, put them into a big pot
4. Add in egg whites and yellow food coloring<you can omit adding food coloring>, using a scraper to mingle the mixture until there is no particle

For the Italian meringue
Ingredients B:
White sugar: 100g
Water: 25g<I changed 10g with lemon juice>
Egg whites: 36g

1. Mix water and white sugar in a little pot, boil until the temperature arrives at 230F and the mixture turns into syrup
2. Add egg whites and dried egg whites in another big bowl, whip them with a highest speed to a foam
3. Slowly pour the syrup along with the inner pot wall into step of 6, while pouring, keep whipping with a high speed until gloss<if you pour in hte syrup too fast the egg whites would condense unevenly>

For the lemon filling
Ingredients C:
Fresh eggs: 40g
White sugar: 80g
Lemon peels: 4g
Fresh lemon juice: 53g
Unsalted butter: 100g

1. Rinse and peel off lemons, juicing. whisk lemon peels and sugar with your hands, add in eggs and whip to a milk white color, then add in lemon juice, mix well
2. Whip butter to a pale color with an egg beater, add in step of 1, stir well, cover the cream with a plastic wrap and put the cream into the fridge for cold storage

For the mixing

1. Add Italian meringue into almond/sugar paste
2. Mingle ingredients in paste with a scraper until dense and thick
3. Scrape the mixture from bottom to aside of the inner wall, repeat this motion for many times just to crush the bubbles in meringue until gloss
4. The finished paste is sticky, smooth and gloss like magma

For the dressing

1. Put the paste into the pastry bag and install the bag with a tube
2. Cover the white paper on which there are many well-painted cicles with a baking paper, aim the tube at the center of the cicle, and squeeze out paste away from the paper with a distance of 5mm, make sure do not shake your hands
3. Place the pastes for a while until non-sticky to your hands by touching with your finger

For the baking

1. Preheat oven to 338F, into the lowest level of the oven, set an empty ovenware in the middle level, 6 minutes’ baking
2. Reduce heat to 230F, change the ovenware where pastes are into the middle level, set an empty ovenware in the lowest level, 8 minutes’ baking
3. Take away the lowest ovenware and bake another 4-6 minutes until golden and brown in the botton of the macarons
4. Let cool