Macarons Finally!

2 more days to 2015! Happy new year to all in advance!

It's been a looooong time since we've updated, sorry about that! The kitchen was under renovation for some time and we stopped baking, but we're back again! :)

Last year, me and Oink had tried baking macarons but failed miserably. Cracked shells, feetless, brown, etc etc. We had almost every problem that a macaron can have. We kept trying though that time, 'upgrading' from the small packet of almond powder to the 1kg packet. We somehow forgot all about it and left the almond powder there sitting in the cupboard. When we were going through our ingredients last week, we realised that we had almost 2kg of almond powder and they were expiring at the end of this year! (omg) We then set a year-end resolution for ourselves, which is to successfully bake macarons! Every single night we tried to bake them at least twice. We failed every single time but we did not give up! We went to many websites, looked through their recipes and troubleshooting guides, tried different ways to salvage our macarons and we finally succeeded!

Below is the recipe that we put together from a few websites and it worked for us! Hopefully it will work for you too (:

Ingredients for Macaron Shells

• 70g egg whites
• A pinch of cream of tartar
• 35g caster sugar
• 115g pure icing sugar
• 60g almond meal
• gel/powdered food colouring (optional)**
  * We halved the recipe from How To Cook That.
  ** We personally prefer using powdered food colouring (:

Method for Macaron Shells

1. Sift almond meal and icing sugar at least 1-2 times.
2. Beat egg whites on medium speed until foamy.
3. Add in a pinch of cream of tartar. Continue to beat egg whites on medium speed until soft peak.
4. Change mixer to high speed and add in caster sugar, one tablespoon at a time. 
5. Gently fold the almond mixture into the egg white mixture. Lift from the bottom, up around the sides, and toward the middle, being careful to not overagitate the meringue and lose too much air.
6. When there are no traces of almond mixture left, use the flat side of the spatula and press the batter down, pushing them to the sides of the bowl. Scrape more batter from the sides to the center and push them to the sides of the bowl again. Keep repeating this until you get the right consistency. 
7. Pipe onto trays lined with baking paper, rap trays on bench firmly.
   [Many other recipes will ask to let the macarons sit and let them dry. However, as Singapore is really humid, we adapted the steps from The Baking Biatch and modified it slightly to dry the macarons without having to wait for hours!]
8. Preheat oven for 5 minutes at 200 degree Celsius. 
9. Turn off the oven and open the oven door, leaving a small gap of about 5cm. Leave it this way for about 3 minutes.
   [We tried to put the tray in immediately without waiting as indicated from the site and it ended up "over-drying" the macarons and started baking them instead.]
10. Place the baking tray into the oven with the oven still turned off and leaving the oven door open with a small gap of 5cm. Allow the macarons to dry for 5 minutes. Check the drying of the macaron shell by touching the surface. If it is still sticky, remove the tray from the oven and repeat from step 9 to 11 again.
11. Preheat oven to 150°C. (We try to go slightly below 150°C)
12. Place tray into the oven and bake for ~13-15 minutes. Halfway through, rotate the tray for even baking. If your macarons brown, place another tray above after rotating the tray to prevent browning. 
13. Check if the macarons are done by removing them from the baking sheet. If they come off cleanly, they're done. If they still stick to the baking sheet, they're underbaked. If they are browning, they may be overbaked.
14. Once they are done, remove them from the oven and cool them on baking sheet placed on a wire rack.
15. When fully cooked, assemble them with your choice of filling.

Recipe adapted from:

How To Cook That

The Proper Pinwheel

The Baking Biatch

Some useful links:

How To Cook That (Troubleshooting)

FoodNouveau (Troubleshooting)

Pictures!

Foamy egg whites.

After beating the egg whites to stiff peak.

Adding in of icing sugar and almond meal to the egg whites.

Waiting to go into the oven~

Feet feet feet feet!

Our final product!
Baby blue macarons with blueberry buttercream.