Recipe: Macaron (Plain, Chocolate & Coffee) with salted caramel filling
Salted Caramel filling (from Pierre Herme’s recipe) this recipe is quite good, kinda sweet without overly sweet
120 Sugar
200g Whipping Cream
103g Softened Unsalted Butter ie 18g + 85g
(optional) sea salt
Direction for making salted caramel can refer to Tastebook
Macaron shell recipes are from Rohani Jelani:
* I did tried making a hazelnut chocolate ganache, but it was very hard to pipe even when i used a larger nozzle, next time have to use the largest nozzle due to the hazelnut paste i use is with hazelnut bits which stuck to the nozzle
** I have tried using milk chocolate button to make chocolate ganache and the macaron is just too sweet. Macaron shells is best paired to dark chocolate to balanced out the sweetness of the shell
A very good website with many tips for macaron making: BraveTart & Zumbo Baking
My previous macaron baking adventure.
Shell (Original):
120g sieved almonds
200g icing sugar
100 egg white
40 caster sugar
Shell (Chocolate):
110g sieved almonds
200g icing sugar
4 Tbsp cocoa powder
100 egg white
40 caster sugar
Shell (Coffee):
120g sieved almonds
200g icing sugar
1 rounded teaspoon instant coffee
100 egg white
40 caster sugar
Important to note when making macaron:
1) Finished texture can’t be too watery (ie meringue have to be beaten till soft peak and not moving, some website did seem to beat till hard peak which i have yet to try, i just find it is easier to incorporate almond-icing mixture into soft peak)
2) Almond can’t be over mixed during sieving by pressing into sieve else the end mixture will collapse and watery due to oily nut (ie cocoa powder/espresso powder/icing must be presieved before sieving together with almond)
3) The piped macaron have to be placed in air-conditioned room till the shell is COMPLETELY not stick when touched. (If it still feel sticky, leave it in the aircon room as long as it takes to be dry to touch, else rest assure the macaron will crack on top while being baked)
4) Sieve the dry ingredients for 3 or 4 times. (due to me not having a food processor)
5) I find putting the baking pan slightly nearer to the lower heat source works well (just a hunch, i could be wrong)
I made 3 shells: plain, chocolate and coffee, The best is the chocolate macaron shell surprisingly, cos i thought chocolate ones will crack more easily. I think i might have master chocolate macaron as it is the one which has most with feet.
Some additional tips which may or may not be important 😉
1) egg white room temperature
2) Fold in your dry ingredients in at least 4 additions. Do not dump the whole thing into the beaten foam or you might end up with a runny batter (oops, i think i have to follow this, my batter sometimes end up runny and very hard to set even left in air conditioned room for very long)
Variation:
* On one instance, I did doubled macaron recipe but forgetting to double the caster sugar (used 20g instead of 40g), and the macaron shells is so hard to harden and dry. thus almost all have no feet and top crack (except some chocolate ones which ends up having feet, so far chocolate macaron shells is my best bet now), so i guess there the amount of sugar in macaron recipe can’t be reduced.
I find Lauduree, TWG macaron quite good, with good flavor without too sugary sweet, and one thing is there are very shiny on top, and from what i see from other’s website, their macaron batter are quite smooth and soft, mine might just be slightly undermix and grainy fearing the batter will be overmixed and become runny, perhaps i should mix it further to make the end product have a ‘shiny’ top, instead of a slightly ‘grainy’ top.
Picture Time…
recipe from Rohani Jelani
Pierre Herme caramel recipe, i reduced the amount the whole recipe to corresponds to 200ml of whipped cream i bought
egg white broken and left to ‘aged’ in a container in fridge for 3 days to 1 week
sieve the dry ingredients together. Many recipe specify to use a food processor. Having no food processor, i just triple or sieve it for four times.
prepare the nozzle to pipe mac shells
egg white
mix egg white and dry sieved ingredients
spoon into piping bag with bottom sealed, the batter looks running, urgh
looks kinda runny to me
runny batter cause the feet to slightly spread out
still look decent enough here
cool
chocolate macaron
nice macs
only 1 or 2 crack, yay!
nice feet and shiny top
coffee macs, slide it onto baking sheet
rap the sheet a few times to remove air
use a small toothpick or chopstick to smooth the top of visible air bubbles
smoothed
yuck, look like cookie, not pretty at all, there was a ‘mishap’ while making this batch of macaron, the oven i used was suddenly shut itself off due to fuse burnt, and i have to switched to a smaller oven and switching to a smaller baking sheet, and resulting in this super ugly macs
waiting to be filled
caramel prepared earlier and to be left in the fridge
cooled, just took out from fridge
whip it up to dreamy sweet caramel
pipe
Tadaa
