Saturday June 28, 2009
Tokyo, Japan
ABC Cooking
Hot and Humid
Very excited to go to my cake class today as we learned how to make Macarons. Unlike Macaroons, Macarons are the famous French cookies invented by the famous patisserie Laduree of Paris. They are VERY popular in Japan and all the famous patisseries of France who have an outpost in Tokyo sell their version of the macarons. Not only are they delicious but also gluten free!
Here's how I made them:
Ingredients (for 8 macarons)
- 30 grams of egg white
- 30 grams of fine sugar
- 35 grams of almond powder
- 30 grams of powdered sugar
- food coloring
- For the ganache filling: 40 grams of whipping cream, 30 grams of chocolate
How to Make:
- Put egg white in bowl and break them with a fork or with the beaters of a hand held mixer. Then beat at high speed until soft peaks form. Then add 1/2 of the fine sugar, beat again and add rest of sugar. Continue beating until the egg whites form stiff peaks. Its important that the egg whites become stiff.
- Sift almond powder and powdered sugar twice. Gently add the sifted powder and powdered sugar to the egg whites and blend very gently with a spatula. Add desired food coloring (8-12) drops and fold very gently.
- Now comes the tricky part. You need to "break" the egg whites. You do this by scraping all the "dough" to one end of the bowl with a spatula. And then spread the dough along the side of the bowl. Do this 1 to 3 or 4 times until the dough becomes shiny and elastic. DO NOT OVER DO THIS. Be very careful
This is what the dough should look like prior to "breaking" the egg whites
This is how you break the dough
This is what it should look like after breaking the egg white. Shiny and elastic
- Put dough in pastry bag fitted with a No. 8 decorating tip and make 3cm round cookies on a cookie sheet covered with cooking paper. Make sure its not a "mountain". One can do this by squeezing the dough out by holding the pastry bag perpendicular to the pan. First make a 2cm cookie and then place the decorating tip inside the middle of the 2cm cookie and squeeze some more dough gently. This way the dough spreads outwardly instead of piling up so you get a mountain. Make 16 cookies.
- De-gas the macarons by tapping the pan on the table several times (IMPORTANT!). Poke any left over air bubbles with toothpick (work fast!)
- Then let the cookies sit for about 20 minutes so the skin of the cookies dries a bit. This way when you bake them the heat escapes the bottom so you will get a smooth surface (IMPORTANT!)
- Then bake in 140C electric oven (130C gas oven) for 13-15 minutes.
You know you succeeded it the top is smooth and "pieds" feet formed (see photo below)
- While the cookie is cooling (do not remove from cooking paper until cooled!) make ganache by heating the whipping cream in a 500 W microwave for 30 seconds. Add the chocolate to the whipping cream and whip until stiff. One can add freeze dried fruit powder (sold in specialty stores) to add flavor to the ganache. Be creative!
- Assemble the macarons by spreading the ganache on one side of the cookie. Top with another cookie. Twist the top a bit to make sure its sticking and voila you made a macaron! Refrigerate the macarons to make sure the ganache remains stiff
I made strawberry, mango, green tea and coffee flavored macarons!