Raspberry Macarons

Hello! Yes its been forever since my last post.  I've been busy, lazy and distracted lol.  It was my brothers 21st birthday party on Saturday so i had to help out with the preparations and there were tons of leftovers and the most GIANT-normous cake i've seen in my life, no joke and yes i made up the word "giant-nornous" so with the mass amount of food, i haven't needed to bake anything.  Hopefully, since the olympics are over, i can get back to baking and blogging.  Every one of our athletes did an amazing job whoop! Not to mention YAY! for Valerie Adams who gets the gold medal in shot put after that Balarusian woman tested positive for drugs :O Ok people, Don't do drugs.

Now onto the sweet stuff...

I first discovered macarons after watching the final of Masterchef NZ, season 2, where they had to make a macaron tower.  I thought they looked to cute and sounded like they tasted delicious so i found a recipe and they turned out pretty good.  So when it came to making Macarons again for this mission, i was pretty confident.  As you can see from this photo, this time around, they turned out kinda bad LOL.  They shouldn't be this flat or soft...

Macarons are quite easy to make, but at the same time, its really easy to get them wrong.  My mum liked these so much, i gave her the recipe to give them a go...

So this is my mums attempt...I was like "what happened?!" and she gave me a sad face.  It looks like she hacked at it with a chainsaw lol.  I think she just undercooked them coz Macarons stick like crazy to baking paper if they aren't baked long enough.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a perfectionist sometimes so I decided to try again...

This is my second attempt, they turned out much better.  From what i've read, they should be crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.  Don't they look like lil burgers? haha reminds me of Spongebob's Krabby Patties LOL.  One day i'm going to make a whole bunch of these in different colours, i reckon they would make nice gifts.  So I just noticed that the bakery story macarons have a raspberry filling and i just used white chocolate ganache oopss.  You could just add some fresh or frozen raspberries to the ganache.  If you are having trouble with these, like I was, watch some "how-to" videos on YouTube.  You might want to double the batch 'coz these don't last long :)

Raspberry Macaron Recipe

Ingredients

For the Macarons:

• 70g almond meal 
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 2 egg whites (room temperature)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• a few drops of raspberry food colouring

For the Ganache:

• 75g white chocolate
• 3 tablespoons cream
• 3 tablespoons icing sugar

Method

1. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Place the almond meal and icing sugar into a food processor and pulse until combined.
3. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they are frothy, add the sugar gradually and continue to beat until it forms stiff peaks.  Add the food colouring.
4. Using a spatula, gently fold the almond mixture into the egg mixture.  Fold until the mixture folds back onto itself, it is important not to over fold.  It should have a consistency like lava.
5. Place mixture in a piping bag with a 2cm opening.  Pipe onto the lined baking tray about 3cm in diameter.  You should get 12 single macarons on each tray.
6. Leave the macarons to sit on the bench for about 30mins so the macarons form a kind of skin.
7. Preheat the oven to 140ºC.
8. Bake the macarons for 18-20mins.

To make the Ganache:

1. Place the chocolate and cream in a glass bowl and place in the microwave for 1 min.  Whisk gently to combine.
2. Stir in the icing sugar and leave until thickened.
3. Once thickened, place mixture in a piping bag or spoon onto the centre of half of the macarons and sandwich with the other half.  

-Enjoy :)

♡ B