Most people are fighting with the shells of macarons for it is not that easy to make. Macaron shells are made of powdered sugar, almond powder and egg whites, and the taste is certainly sweet. So whether macarons are tasty lies on the filling, different filling brings different flavor. Macarons that are filled with filling absorb the water content and make themselves soft and dense. I’ve been studied macarons for days and I can fully understand why they are the most popular French dessert. If you’ve learned how to make the macaron shells you will find making filling is more difficult, hahaha…
There are two ways of making macarons, one is French style and the other is Italian style. Today I would make the Italian’s. The macaron shells are affected by a lot of things: hardness of meringue, thickness of the paste, temperature of the oven…So if you are a beginner with baking macarons, the very first difficulty you will conquer is to run in with oven. To settle down the oven is the first step to success. At the very beginning I was self-exploring my oven’s best temperature and time, and wether open the hot air or not. Although it seems simple, but I finally figured it out after many times’ failure. Different oven will differ at temperature and size, so I advise you to use the electronic thermometer for the mechanical one is really not precise. And I am used to open hot air when baking macarons for I feel they are affected by the heat more evenly. And there would be several macarons that were cracking when I did not open hot air previously, so better open hot air.
This time the filling is strawberry and cream flavor. Basic butter coordinates with strawberry jam, you can feel the sour and sweet taste when eating.
Strawberry macarons
For the shells:
100gr almond powder, 100gr powdered sugar, 37.5gr egg whites, 25gr water, 100gr caster sugar, 37.5gr egg whites, pinch dried egg white
1.Mash the almond powder and powdered sugar
2.Sift
3.Add 25gr water and 100gr caster sugar into a pot with medium fire, whip dried egg white and 37.5gr egg whites to a foam, warm up the syrup to 244.4F-246.2F, and pour the syrup into the well-whipped meringue
4.Keep whipping as fast as you can while add syrup, until it’s stiff and the pot temperature is close to your hands’ temperature<95F-104F>
5.Slow down your whipping speed, add pinch eatable toner into step 4, mix them well until the color is what you want
6.Add another 37.5gr egg whites<not whipping> into step 2, mix well until it’s wet
7.Mix the meringue of step 5 per 3-4 times into step 6, mix well while using your another hand to twirl the pot, stir for 25-28 times
8.Preheat oven to 338F<set the temperature among 284F-338F according to your oven’s actual temperature and the size of you macarons>
9.Pour the paste of step 7 into a pastry bag, take out a big ovenware, cover it with glass fiber mat, squeeze out little round paste vertically. Shake the ovenware after squeeze all out to make the round paste more evenly and free the big bubbles in them, the rest unbroken bubbles could be pricked by toothpick
10.Put the ovenware into the middle level, and bake for 10-12 minutes according to the size of the macarons
11.Take out the ovenware, after cooling, take down the macarons
Tips:
1.Better use small milk pot to boil syrup, in order to cut down the wastage
2.Better use “old” egg whites, which means the egg whites that are prepared several days before, thus makes a more stable meringue
3.How to squeeze out same size round macarons? There is a little trick which is matting the well-drawn circles paper under the glass fiber mat,haha…
4.In terms of the temperature of the oven, generally the oven’s temperature would be lowered after preheating and putting things in, so the preheated temperature shall be higher than the actual temperature, and that would be the same baking temperature with the recipe’s.
For the filling:
66.7gr caster sugar, 25gr water, 50gr eggs, 30gr egg yolks, 133gr unsalted butter
1.caster sugar and water into a milk pot, whip the eggs and egg yolks, until the egg wash turns into a pale color, when the syrup’s temperature tuns into 248F, pour the egg wash into it and keep whipping
2.Keep whipping the mixture of step 1 over hot water, remove the fire when the temperature arrives 176F and does not surpass 185F, and whip to cool down
3.Whip the butter until it’s dense and thick, add the egg wash, whip to smooth over hot water