Chocolate Macaron With Salted Caramel

When was the last time I made macarons?  Oh....that was years ago in 2011.  It was my first time trying out to bake macarons.  I can't believe it too....first time trying out and everything was smooth sailing for my macarons.  But.... it wasn't so the next time I try out again.  Never been successful after that. 

Well, for me, I can say is baking macarons can be based on "luck".  Sometimes, the expertise can have their macarons cracked on top, right?

There are many ways to bake macarons; the French, Italian and Swiss.  Which type you are most comfortable with?

If you are keen to try out baking macaron, why not try making it in small amount ingredient.  Here I have used Kim of Macaron-Fetish as the ingredient yield only small amount and if it was not success, you won't have to worry of wastage and you can try out again too.

My sister has made macarons using Kim's recipe.  Do check out her gorgeous Kitty Macarons.

Chocolate Macaron Shells
(Yields 12 filled macarons)

Ingredients
1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
50g icing sugar
30g ground almond
30g castor sugar
1/2 tsp cocoa powder

Method:
Put ground almond, icing sugar and cocoa powder in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely. 

Sift the blended mixture and set aside. 

With an electric beater, beat the egg white, start from low speed and increase slowly to maximum speed. Beat until frothy (you will see lots of fine bubbles).

Now it's the time to add in the castor sugar, add half of the sugar, continue to beat in maximum speed for around 2 minutes, add in the other half, continue until you get very stiff peak. 

Mix the dry ingredients into the eggwhites. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. When you get a smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bowl means you're good to go. You could also check if the lines formed from the liften mixture, they should slowly disappear in within 30 seconds. At this stage you're good to go. Do not over fold, it will be too liquid and becoming very hard to pipe. 

Line the baking tray with the parchment paper. 

Fill your piping bag , pipe your macaron (about 2 cm diameter) it should spread a bit as it settles. The point should slowly disappear if the mixture is the right consistency.
If not you could hit the bottom of the tray to smooth the point out).

Let your macaron sits for about 30minutes. This will depand on the humity in your house and the day. Try touching the macaron softly, after 30mins. it should not stick to your hand.

Heat your oven to 150 C on the (heating on the top only). When the oven is ready, put your macaron at the very bottom shelf. Bake for 12 minutes, check them in the mid time of 6 minutes, the feets should already start forming. Turn the baking tray to the opposite direction to allow even baking. When the 6 mins is up, change the heating setting of your oven to Bottom only. This will help cooking the macaron and rise the feet more. Bake for another 6 minutes. You can test if the macaron is cook, touch softly on the shell and when the macaron doesn't slide on the feet, it's cooked. if it's not add another 1 mins each time and check. 
* (I baked my macarons using upper and lower heat.  You need to know your oven temperatures and adjust accordingly).

Let the macaron cool down before removing them. You could wet your working area and slide the baking sheet on it to speed up the cooling process, but do not let it sit there too long, if not the macarons will become soggy. Other wise you can leave them cool at room temperature and remove them.


For the filling for my macarons, I have filled it up with Salted Caramel Sauce.

Check out the Salted Caramel recipe here.

       Here, I used the egg carton box and painted it with food colouring.  How's that?
       I like to keep all those unwanted stuff....but I got complain of keeping 
       of those "rubbish" around...... grrrr......

                        In a glance, the macarons look like eggs sitting in the egg carton, right?

                               

I am linking this post to the Bake Along event created by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours, lena of Frozen Wings and Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids

An InLinkz Link-up