Hannah's Chocolate Macarons

Before embarking on this month's challenge, I had heard from numerous people that macaron making was not an easy thing to do and often if you succeeded this was down to luck rather than anything else. Suitably worried I decided to do some research and see if i could find a recipe that seemed to be more hit, than miss. Firstly there was the discussion on whether to make french or italian meringue and some people say you should leave the macarons for an hour before cooking, others 15 minutes, also some say to use 4 day old egg whites and others suggest fresh. So after all this conflicting information I thought i'd just try the simplest recipe and keep my fingers crossed.

I used the recipe from Delicious Magazine

The first part is to mix the egg whites in to stiff peaks and add the sugar. In another bowl I sieved ground almonds, icing sugar and cocoa powder, as I was making chocolate macarons. The almonds took quite a while to sieve and I sieved the mixture twice to make sure that it didn't have any lumps.

The plan is then to fold all of the ingredients together. I then added all of my ingredients to a piping bag; I find it easier to put the piping bag inside a vase and turn the outside of the bag around the top of the vase so that I can scoop the mixture in without getting a lot stuck to the side. I found the mixture to be really thick (slightly worrying as most of the recipes i'd seen had said the mixture was really runny). I soon discovered my first mistake of attached a star nozzle, rather than a circular nozzle. When piping the mixture the star nozzle made the mixture come out in swirls, which aren't ideal when wanting a smooth macaron shell. I then dropped the trays down on the surface to get rid of any air bubbles and allow the mixture to spread out.

After 30 minutes (supposedly to allow the macarons to get feet?!) I popped them in the oven. After 15 minutes or so I took them out the oven. They did smell amazing, but looked quite thick and a bit more substantial that macarons normally look.

I used a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book for the filling. The filling is normally used for Whoopie Pies and is made up from unsalted butter, cocoa butter, icing sugar and vanilla marshmallow fluff. The marshmallow fluff is literally a tub of marshmallow, like you get inside of chocolate teacakes.

Once the macaron pieces had cooled, I tried to find equal (ish) sized pieces and pair them together, whilst battling to scrape them off the supposed grease proof baking paper. I then spooned some of the mixture on one side of the macaron and pieced together.

So, the final result tasted really good, however was of thicker texture than a standard macaron and was by no stretch of the imagination a smooth finish. They went down really well with the family and my boyfriend said they tasted like the ones in the shop (however I feel he might be slightly bias).

I'm not sure I would try to make them again, as although they tasted okay they didn't look macaron like and will stick to buying them in future, unless one of my fellow Queen's of Tarts has managed to perfect the art of macaron making ...