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
- 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.
- Continue beating until soft peak. This is about 3 minutes on #6 of my Kitchenaid mini mixer.
- 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.
- Beat till stiff peak.
- Sift the almond flour with the icing sugar.
- 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.
- Add half the almond flour + icing sugar mixture into the meringue and stir in. Once fully mixed (about 10 stirs), add the other half.
- 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.
- Pour into piping bag and pipe away!
- 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.
- Rest the tray for 15~30 mins until the top of the macaron no longer sticks to your finger when touched. **
- 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.
- 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!