macarons - at last!

I’ve struggled with macarons for a while – reading about them online I found the subject a bit daunting, and to be honest the previous times I tried to make them were quite disappointing (and not worth posting about).

I had a leftover egg white in the fridge, so I decided to give it another shot using the sucre cuit method. I had always tried them with the French meringue method, but after reading about it in Poires au Chocolat (although I am pretty sure I have it bookmarked somewhere), I decided to go with the method and proportions used by Syrup and Tang.

And it worked! It worked. When they started getting feet I was just thrilled.

macarons with toffee filling

They rose beautifully; I baked them for 7 minutes and then let them cool for about half an hour. I wasn’t very careful with the piping (I guess I need more practice) so some of them weren’t as round as I would have liked.

The recipe I used is just for plain unflavoured macarons, and a toffee filling. The filling was quite grainy, but that was probably due to the fact that I decided to whisk it by hand just before I left home to meet some friends. I will however reduce the amount of icing sugar next time as it was also a bit too sweet. Somehow I think macarons work better with fresher, more tangy fillings.

macarons with toffee filling

Please follow these links for the recipes:

Macarons recipe

(from Syrup and Tang)

Toffee Filling recipe

(from honey and butter)

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