Monday, February 14, 2011

Strawberry macarons

Love In The Air ....
Happy Valentine's Day


With my success with the chocolate macarons, I'm gearing myself to try out other flavours and colours of these lovely macarons.

However, without proper planning and research, it spelt trouble and failure! My attempt to replace the cocoa powder with cranberry sauce only produced flat meringue, not macarons. I first blended the almond powder and icing sugar, set aside, and followed by blending the cranberry sauce. Few mistakes, (a) cranberry sauce is not blended fine enough (there are still bits of cranberry), (b) blending almond power mixture and cranberry sauce produced very gluey batter, which make it very difficult to fold into the egg white without deflating all the bubbles, (c) continue to pipe and bake even though the batter look very unpromising.

I then proceeded to read more blog posts about macarons, and came out with the Strawberry Macarons. I was not very hopeful initially, but the outcome turned out acceptable. The only complaint that I have is the faint colour of red, and the not-so-smooth dome. Anyway, Love is not always smooth, there are ups & downs. More trials & errors in macarons, and practice make perfect!



Strawberry Macarons

Ingredients/ Method:
(Makes about 36 pieces or 18 sandwiches)

50g icing sugar
37.5g almond powder
1 large egg white, room temperature (about 36g each)
32.5g caster sugar
2 -3 drops of strawberry emulco

1) Preheat oven to 150 deg C.
2) Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and have a pastry bag with a plain tip (about 1 cm) ready.
3) Grind together icing sugar with almond powder so there are no lumps, using blender or food processor.
4) In a bowl of standing electric mixer, beat the egg white until they are foamy. Add sugar in 3 batches and whip egg white until very stiff and firm.
5) Add in strawberry emulco to the egg white mixture and beat until colour evenly blended, about 5 seconds.
6) Carefully fold in the dry ingredients in two batches into the egg whites mixture using the mixer on low-medium speed, about 5-10 seconds . When the mixture is just smooth and there are no streaks of egg white, stop mixing and scrape the batter into the pastry bag (standing the bag in a tall glass helps if you’re alone).
7) Pipe the batter like a v-shape on the parchment-lined baking sheets. Evenly spaced one-inch (3 cm) apart.
8) Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake them for 15-18 minutes. Let cool completely then remove from baking sheet.
Filling can be anything, I'd used nutella and peanut butter this round.

Note:
1) Smooth the piped batter if rapping the baking sheet did not give a smooth dome/ surface.
2) There's no need to rest the macarons before baking. I put them straight into the oven after they are being piped.
3) So far I use Glad's baking paper for most of my baking and these macarons can be easily removed using them too.
4) Add more colouring or emulco to have more pretty/ obvious colour.

I'm submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #4: Love In The Air which is hosted by Ellena of Cuisine Paradise for this month's theme.

13 comments:

j3ss kitch3n said...

they still look beautiful! mine is worst the top crack and burst lol i won't be posting it lol!

Cuisine Paradise said...

Cool!!! Your heart shaped mac is lovely :) Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Pei-Lin said...

Still look nice to me lar ... Well, I so agree with you that practice makes perfect, which I'm so lagging behind in doing so nowadays due to job ... LOL!

Happy V-Day to you!

The Sweetylicious said...

still, it look nice! (: and i love the way you put it, love is not always smooth (:

The Sweetylicious said...

may i have your email pls? (:

CaThY said...

Very pretty macarons! ;)

NEL, the batter baker said...

Amazingness! The heart shapes are done so nicely. Very pretty.

Bakericious said...

still looks pretty!

Janine said...

your heart shapes are really beautiful! i did some heart shaped ones and they looked like V shapes instead >.<

olivia said...

i just simply fall in love with these gems... if i ever master the skill of making macarons, i think my bf will marry me ;)

quizzine said...

Hi j3ss,
Tks, but I think lady luck was smiling at me when I was making them. My subsequent macarons can't make it :(

Hi Cuisine Paradise,
Tks and happy belated V-day!

Hi Pei-Lin,
My work is also keeping me a bit crazy, but baking helps to keep me sane :-)) Happy belated V-day!

Hi Sweetylicious,
Tks >**< My email address is estheret@gmail.com.

Hi Cathy,
Tks :))

Hi NEL,
Tks (*.*)

Hi Jess,
TKs (+.*)

Hi Janine,
Maybe you can try making smaller v-shapes? I believe you will succeed in your next try :))

Hi Olivia,
You're funny, but I wish all the best in your macarons making >**<

Lisa said...

Wow, I've heard that macarons are not the easiest thing to make, but yours turned out perfectly. You seem to have mastered the skill. I hope you'll come by and link them up to Sweets for a Saturday #5. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/02/sweets-for-saturday-5.html

Anonymous said...

They looked lovely!!. I made them 5 times 3 out 5 I failed. but still trying.