Vanilla beans macarons with lemon curd

After many fail-carons, I'm finally able to close the chapter with this happy feet-Macarons! It's rather frustrating and annoying whenever the bakes fail, but usually I would try & try until they turn out right. Just like these little macarons, really put my preserverance to test! Urgggh....

With each macaron that failed, I would go in search for other 'easy' recipes. And I'm lucky to find one recipe in Brave Tart that I can manage, though I made a few modifications on the steps. I find her 10 myths and 10 commandments on macaron very useful, and pretty easy to understand.

French Macarons

(Slight modifications, and I did a quarter of the original recipe)
115g almond meals
230g powdered sugar
144g egg whites, temperature and age not important! (I used 5-days aged egg white, room temp)
72g sugar
the scrapings of 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp (2g) salt

1 ) Preheat oven to 150 deg C.

2) Sift almond meals and icing sugar, or blitz them in food processor and sift. Set aside.

3) In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg whites, sugar and beans (not the extract) and salt and turn the mixer to medium (4 on KA) for 3 mins. Increase speed to medium-high (7 on KA) and whip another 3 mins, and speed 8 for another 3 mins.

4) Turn mixer off and add in any extracts or colour and whip for a final min on highest speed, till well mixed.

5) The egg mixture will be a very stiff and dry meringue, where there will be a big clump of meringue in the centre of whisk.

6) Put all dry ingredients into the meringue and fold them in with a rubber spatula. Use both folding motion to incorporate the dry ingredients and a pressing motion to deflate the meringue against the side of the bowl.

7) Transfer the batter into piping bag and pipe onto non-stick baking sheet.

8) After piping, hold the sheet pan and hit it hard against the counter to dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause the macarons to crack.

**The original recipe does not require drying the shells before baking. But I did dry them in the oven which was pre-heated at 130 deg C for about 8 mins (oven is off during drying the shells), a tip I learnt from Honey Bee Sweet.

9) Bake for about 18 mins or until the macarons can be easily peel off from the baking sheet. If it still sticks, continue to bake for a min and constantly check when it's done.

10) Cool the macaron on the baking pan before peeling the cooled macarons from the baking sheet.

11) Sandwich the macaron with your favourite filling, eg lemon curd, and leave in fridge overnight in air-tight container for flavour to infuse and for biscuit to soften.

Enjoy!



Since there are still some aged egg whites in the fridge (though aged egg white is not necessary in this recipe), I'm likely to make the last round of chocolate macarons. Stay tuned!