Macaroons

I made these French Macaroons for my recent photo sesssion. I decided to make these just filled with whipped cream but in future I would make a nice chocolate ganache to compliment them. 

I used the following recipe for these: 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1369639/chocolate-and-raspberry-macaroons

which was very easy to follow and I feel worked very well. I'll briefly run through it and what I did. 

First step is to grind up the almonds and icing sugar in a food processor. I think the idea is to break them down and make the mixture really smooth, however, I struggled with this and found that my mix was still quite bitty. It says to run it through a sieve but mine wouldn't go through so I just poured it in as it was. 

Into that mixture I poured in half of the egg whtie. For convienence I actually used the liquid egg white you can buy and so I could pour and measure the exact amount. I found this quite useful and if I was making them again I would probably do the same thing rather than using actual eggs and splitting them. 

I heated the sugar with water as directed and kept a close eye on the thermometer. I then beat up the egg whites and added it slowly. I certainly find steps like this are much easier with a thermometer and a food mixer. 

Mix it all together by carefully folding it. You want to make sure you aren't losing all the air in the mixture so take your time on this step. 

I piped out the mixture and left it out to form a nice skin. As my kitchen was REALLY warm when I made these it didn't take long at all. 

I added mine to a too hot oven so in future I'll turn the temperature down a little. They took exactly the 14 minutes it stated and they only came off the paper when they were ready. I use the reusable non stick stuff for these as I fine it much better. 

I was please with how these formed the properly little feet and they seemed to work very well. I whipped up some cream and filled them and then it was all about the staging for the photos. I think they came together very well, what do you think? 

French Macaroons

These were certainly fun to make and something I'd like to try again in the future. Maybe with more colours and more varieties. For this purpose they worked well.