01 March 2022

Baking macarons in Singapore - Part 1


First, let's memorize the recipe.

Ingredients for macaron

  • 1 large egg white (about 40g)
  • 30g castor sugar
  • 30g super fine almond flour
  • 50g icing sugar
I feel that this recipe is the best for beginners as it uses only 1 egg and should it fail, the wastage is minimized.
It makes about 32 cookies (16 macarons). 

Tools
  • stand mixer, if possible, otherwise handheld beater is fine
  • flour sift
  • silicone spatula
  • gel or powder food colouring
  • silicone baking mat with round markings
  • piping bag + piping tip (Wilton size 2A, 9 or 10, roughly 4~5mm)
  • toothpick, cake tester (sharp tip) or a clean needle
Steps
  1. Beat egg white with mixer and when the bubbles becomes smaller, add half the castor sugar. Once the sugar is mixed in, add the other half.
  2. Continue beating until soft peak. This is about 3 minutes on #6 of my Kitchenaid mini mixer.
  3. Turn up the speed to #8 and continue for another 6 mins. Every machine is different so do watch carefully and check every 30 seconds after the 4 minute mark. Remember that you can also continue to beat if the meringue is not ready but if you overbeat, the meringue is gone.
  4. Beat till stiff peak.
  5. Sift the almond flour with the icing sugar. 
  6. If you use powder food colour, you can add it to the dry mixture, If you use gel food colour, you can add it to the meringue instead.
  7. Add half the almond flour + icing sugar mixture into the meringue and stir in. Once fully mixed (about 10 stirs), add the other half.
  8. The macaronner (french word, I believe) process is to stir, lift, press and fold. The mixture will come a thick batter which moves and converge when you scoop some up and drop it back. For this recipe, I repeated about 40~50 times.
  9. Pour into piping bag and pipe away!
  10. After piping, either tap at the base of the tray or hit the tray on the countertop and little bubbles will come to the surface of the macaron. I would use a toothpick to pop each bubble away.
  11. Rest the tray for 15~30 mins until the top of the macaron no longer sticks to your finger when touched. **
  12. Bake at 150 degree celcius for 15 minutes, adding an empty tray to the top rack in the oven so that the macaron don't turn brownish.
  13. Cool the cookies before attempting to peel them off the mat.
** Now, I live in the sunny island of Singapore and it's hot and humid here. Piped macarons NEVER dry up if I leave them on the kitchen top. I have tried leaving them in an air-con room but it's not ideal. 
What I do to resolve this, is to pre-heat my oven to 60 degree celcius with the fan function. Then I leave the piped macarons inside for 15 minutes to dry, with the oven door ajar.
Once I checked that a dry surface is formed on the macaron, I change the setting back to top/bottom heat and crank up the heat to 150 degree celcius and continue to bake.

With dry-top macarons, my success rate for getting pieds (feet) on my macarons increases by 50% (based on my last count). Without, it's destined to be doomed as soon as the top cracks open due to heat.

In the next few posts, I will add photos, explain certain tools and steps. As I consider myself a beginner in baking macarons, I hope that my journey will be of help to anyone who is also starting this challenge!