Spring has arrived and I’ve started craving Macarons again…
I hadn’t made them for years and, with a bit of fear, I got back into it – they are sweets that sometimes don’t come out perfect, but you should NEVER get discouraged, they are good anyway – thanks to this recipe, which comes from the legendary blog of Pinella who is a delicious and undisputed master of Macarons.
I chose to start with these because I’m crazy about salted butter caramel!
Let’s see the procedure to follow step by step to get your Macarons. You need a planetary food processor to easily follow the recipe.
Ingredients for the macarons (for about 40 macarons of 3.5 cm in diameter)
- 50 g of almond flour (buy the flour directly, choose a very fine one)
- 150 g of icing sugar
- 110 g of 2-day-old egg whites at room temperature
- 15 g of granulated sugar
- yellow gel food coloring, a spoon tip (optional, you can also leave them white)
- a very fine mesh sieve and a kitchen thermometer for the sugar
For the sugar syrup (Italian Meringue):
- 150 g of granulated sugar
- 50 ml of water
Salted butter and lemon caramel (I halved the amount compared to Pinella because it was very abundant, I recommend making it first thing or the day before)
- 140 g of granulated sugar
- 65 g of fresh cream
- 100 g of salted butter
- the juice of 1/4 lemon
BEFORE YOU START
1 – Bake the almond flour in the oven for 10 minutes at 150°C and let it cool before combining it with the icing sugar.
Pour the TPT (tant pour tant = equal weight of sugar and dried fruit flour) in several batches into a mixer and turn it on at maximum speed for 5 seconds. Sift everything carefully using a very fine mesh sieve and eliminate the larger granules.
2 – prepare the baking trays by placing sheets of baking paper on the bottom with the dimensions of the macaron shapes you want to make printed on them (3.5 cm in diameter) well spaced apart. You can draw the circles directly on the paper with a dark and very evident color and then position the sheet with the drawn part in contact with the baking tray, you will be able to see your drawings from the other side. This allows you to make them all the same and to have them all regular obtaining a good result both in cooking and when decorating.
CARAMEL FILLING (can also be prepared the day before):
Prepare a dry caramel by heating a low pan very well and pouring in a few spoonfuls of sugar at a time. As it melts and begins to take on a golden color, add more sugar, always a few spoonfuls at a time, stirring gently with a spoon. In the meantime, heat the cream without boiling it. When the caramel is ready, carefully add the hot cream in a thin stream, several times, stirring slowly to blend it into the caramel. Be very careful because the cream will boil and tend to splash when it comes into contact with the caramel, arm yourself with patience and stir delicately.
Melt the caramel well and lower to a temperature of 108°C. At this point add the salted butter cut into small cubes and mix. Add the lemon juice and mix well with a hand blender or with the whisks. Let it cool, put everything in a piping bag in the fridge for a few hours until it reaches a very dense consistency.
METHOD
Sift the almond flour with the icing sugar. Pour the granulated sugar into a saucepan and add the water and over low heat bring the temperature to 118°C.
Meanwhile, put 55 g of egg whites in a bowl and lightly whip them, gradually adding the 15 g of granulated sugar. When the syrup is ready and has reached 118°C, reduce the speed of the appliance in which you are whipping the egg whites and pour it in slowly little by little (when you pour the syrup, either let it drip onto the edge of the mixer or stop the appliance, pour in a little bit and whip a little, add more slowly, whip and so on). Whip until you have a firm and shiny meringue but with a bec d’oiseau shape (eagle’s beak: it is called this when when you lift the whisk it is so compact that it forms like eagle’s beaks).
Then add the 55 g of unwhipped egg whites kept aside and continue processing until they are well combined. When the temperature reaches 40°C, add the food coloring and give a very brief stir. At this point replace the wire whisk with the kappa (leaf) whisk.
Versate in un sol colpo il mix di farina di mandorle e zucchero a velo setacciato e date una girata a bassa velocità controllando in continuazione che si formi un nastro di impasto, colante ma sostenuto.
Line cookie sheets with baking paper using cookie cutters. Place a little dough in the corners of the sheets so that the paper adheres perfectly and you get regular shapes. Pour the dough into a piping bag with a smooth nozzle (size 11) and create little dough buttons, spacing them out as the macaron tends to become a little flat during baking.
Let it rest for about 15-20 minutes (possibly flattening with a wet finger any “tips” that have formed while creating the macaron with the piping bag or even better by tapping the pan as in the video): this step is called croutage, and if you are in a hurry you can also skip it. Turn the oven on to 145°C checking the temperature with a thermometer and bake the pan for about 12-15 minutes and check constantly. The macarons will rise a little and a collar will form at the base.
Remove them from the oven, remove the macaron sheets and place them on a rack until completely cooled.
Detach the sweets and make a small depression with your index finger to allow the filling to settle optimally.
To store them, put them in the refrigerator wrapped in film, take them out 10 minutes before serving and they will be perfect. You can also freeze them (always wrapped in film) and then transfer them to the refrigerator.
And now enjoy them, long live the Marcarons! And thank you to Maria Antonietta for having loved them so much that they have survived to this day!
Editor’s note (that is, from Nicolò, Angelica’s boyfriend). That is, the harsh truth about macarons: macarons don’t always come out right, maybe it’s the humidity, maybe you let them rest too little, maybe your oven, maybe it’s a particularly unlucky day. I have rarely seen Angelica as disconsolate as I saw her in front of the cracked macarons. But don’t give up. In the end they will succeed, and of the ones that come, you will ask yourselves “but why, if I made them in the exact same way, did they crack?!”
