Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Basic Macaron Recipe - Cappucino Coffee Macaron


Yield about 24 macaron shells (12 filled macarons)

MACARON SHELLS
1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
50g icing sugar
30g ground almond
30g castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon of colouring in powder (you could also use cacao powder or matcha powder, ground coffee in this recipe)

Method:
1. Put ground almond and icing sugar along with the ground coffee in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely.


2. Sift the blended mixture and set aside

Blended and sifted ground almond, icing sugar & ground coffee

3. 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)

Frothy egg white

4. 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 othe half, continue until you get very stiff peak.


Stiff Peak Egg White

5. Mix the dry ingrediants into the eggwhites. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. When you get smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bolw 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.



It should flow like a lava and hold up a large ribbon when lifted


Smooth shiny batter. It's good to pipe

(I'll attach a video to show the stage when your mixture is good to be piped. Sorry I couldnt find any other video in english that explain better. The video is in French.
Please have a look at the method when the mixture is mixed, the process of macaronage is very important, especially from 3.50-5.12)



6. Line the baking tray with the parchment paper.

7. 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)


Tips: I normally stuff the bag in the piping head to avoid the batter runs out while being filled up

I am clumsy, so I put my piping bag in a plastic container while I pour


Push down your batter slowly

8. 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.



I sprinkled some ground coffee on top


9. 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.

( This is the method i found the best that works for me after few trial and error. I baked with heating the oven top and bottom and i had crack macarons. Having said that, every oven is slightly different than another, so please adjust accordingly)






10. 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 COFFEE CHOCOLATE GANACHE

Ingredients
1. 1 teaspoon ground coffee
2. 50g dark chocolate (chopped finely)
3. 10g liquid cream

Methods:
1. In a small pot warm up the cream, until it boil lightly.
2. Remove the pot from heat. Add in chopped dark chocolate & ground coffee.
3. Stir and mix until you obtain a shiny, smooth consistency.
4. Fill up your macaron shells and enjoy!

TIPS:

1. Whenever you could, age the egg white in room temperature. I had tried age egg whites and room tempeature egg whites, I see no difference apart than age egg white achieve stiff peak easier. It doesn't affect the macaron.

2. Weight the egg whites. As the dry/wet ratio is very important.

3. Underfold will result in no feet, rough looking macarons. Makesure you fold sufficiently but do not overfold. I would say about 50-60 strokes.

4. If you use food colouring, the macaron tends to take longer to dry and form a shell, so you might have to leave them drying a bit longer.

5. I only use powder food colouring as it doesn't add anymore liquid to the mixture. Also the colour is more intense.

6. You could find some icing colouring in the store or on ebay. I tried them and they're excellent!

Have fun baking!

61 comments:

  1. Very good and precise instructions with excellent step by step pics. Bravo!

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  2. Thank you Pamela :) I am not very good at explaining this with words hehe easier with photos

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  3. Hi! is it okay if i use instant coffee instead of ground coffee? :)

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  4. I don't know if my macarons are either overbeaten, or underbeaten, or whether its the weather and temperature over here...
    the macarons won't stop sticking to my fingers! do you have any good suggestions for what I can do?

    thanks!

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  5. hi,

    as long as your meringue has the right coonsistency then it should be ok. By overbeaten or underbeaten, do you mean overfold and underfold? for the egg whiteit should reach stiff peak. When you mix the dry ingrediants in your stiff peak meringue, you have to fold a fair bit until you get the magma lava flow. post. it should normally takes 50-60 gentle strokes. to know exactly when to stop folding, you could see the link i attached on this for the consistency. The mixture should slowly fall down whn lifted, any points should dissolve within 30-40 seconds

    as for the shell to dry it depands a lot on the humidity in the air, more humidity means longer to dry. beware also if you use colouring, when you use more colour the macarons tends to tke longer to dry as well. personally now i bake my maarons without the drying process. it turns out just the same. The most important is when you fold your dry ingrediants to your meringue

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  6. Hi Kim, I have bad experiences with macaroons :(, they always dont develop the feet, I did let them stand for at least 30mins before baking. and another problem I hav is they are always stuck to the baking paper,even the non-stick ones, what should I do?
    I only have a flat bladed hand mixer, is that why I cant get the stiff peaks?

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  7. @FantasyElf

    They wont develop feet if the macaronage is not done properly. You need to have a vry stiff peak because then you can do more folds in order to mix everything fully. I have never used a flat bladed before. that could be the problem. wire blade allow more air to be incorperated i suppose.
    if the macaron sticks means it's not cook, please refer above to see how to test if macaron is cook or not. depending on your room humidity, you might have to let it sit longer or shorter. when the macaron no longer sticks, it can go into the oven, personally i bake them witout letting them sit now and then, it works just fine, just the macarons look more 'dome' shape. making macaron is not always easy it took me 10-15 batches to get it right, so keep trying!

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  8. Hi Kim!

    Thanks for such a great tutorial on making macarons :) Loved all the pictures with it so I knew if I was doing things correctly or not. And my macarons turned out great!

    Quick question... if i want to make it less sweet, do I take out some sugar and in its place add more ground almond? You mentioned that the dry/wet content is very important for macarons, so if I took out some dry ingredient, will it need to be replaced with something else?

    Thanks so much for the recipe! Love your blog!

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  9. Hi Maple, thanks for your comments and i am glad to know that my blog is helpful for you.You could try experimenting with less icing sugar and subsitute with almond. I've never really tried it before, if you did try it, please let me know how it turns out

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  10. Hi Kim,
    Thank you for having this very detail crystal clear blog about making a macaron. i'm obsessed with it now. i used your basic recipe and at the site of the FEET i jumped and cried. i did it this time after tons of frustration. Thank you so much. I'm a malaysian too. Malaysia boleh!!

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  11. hi , you re welcome. glad that the recipe works for you

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  12. Hi Kim,
    I loved your blog. Your descriptions are very clear, thanks for all the imaginative and inspiring combinations.
    Sadly my oven only heats from the top. It has a fan also, but well, no heating from the bottom.
    I still got macarons that looked nice and round, though, OK without any feet, but I am thankful to you for that.
    While baking, the macarons took on this mushroomy look by 6 min, which I thought would give feet, like you said they would by 6 min, but instead they cracked -although cracks disappeared later...
    I was wondering if you would have any suggestion on what i should do given my oven?
    Thanks again

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  13. Hello macaronseeker

    I would suggest you to low down your oven temperature to around 140 C and also give a few more stroke when you fold your mixture. It might be underfold. Also make sure that your macaron has form a skin before baking.

    Hope it helps

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  14. Hi Kim,
    Thank you very much for your reply. 140 ended up being too little I am afraid, they did not start growing at all, on the other hand 160-170 was too much... Never mind, I will keep testing with fan, possibly changing temperature mid-way etc :) If I find a way, I will post it here, so that if there is anyone with a similar oven it may help as well... Still, even though they have no feet, they are the best looking among the batches I have tried, so i am so glad to have found your blog! Keep up the good work!

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  15. Hi, just wonder if i could try it by using a hand whisk..right now i'm using a flat bladed mixer, as told by some of the commenter above, and the results keep dissapoint me. It has been 3 tries for me now, and I'm glad to see a good result now and then.. so I'm just want to know wether it's ok to whisk by hand, as I don't have those utilities with an attached wire whisk. I want to just trying using a large hand balloon whisk for the moment.

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  16. Hi Fariz, if you wanna use hand whisk mathod, i suppose it's ok however i think it would take lots of efforts and time. I have never tried it before so can't tell you exactly ...have fun

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  17. Hello :)
    Loveeed ur blog .. I tried this recipe but it didnt work well for me :(
    Did u use medium egg??
    Cuz i used 2 eggs rather than 1 ..
    Thanxxx

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  18. Hi i use large egg however, the eggs white weight varies from one to other so always make sure you weight your egg white. Keep on trying, it took me a while to get it right too

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  19. I will :) thanxx alot dear :*

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  20. I am looking for a macaron recipe that uses less sugar. Could you advise how I could either reduce the amt of castor sugar or icing sugar or both?
    Thanks!

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  21. Hi this recipe already contain less sugar that the ordinary recipe. personally i do not think we could reduce the castor sugar further as it will result in very fragile meringue.

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  22. Thanks for your prompt reply. I absolutely adore the look and texture of these exquisite treat, but I really don't like things too sweet. Imagine the irony of putting something so so lovely into my mouth, yet to be disappointed by the immense sweetness. Is it possible to reduce amount of icing sugar instead? say equal amount of almond & icing sugar? Would really love to hear your expert opinion on it. p.s. love your new book!!!

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  23. You could have a play with the portion of almond and icing sugar, i had tried it before but the outcome didn't please me :) glad that you like my new book :0)

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  24. Thanks! I will try some more batches, and let you know if I manage to find a 'low-sweet' version!

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  25. no problem pls keep me update

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  26. Hi Kim,

    I followed every steps. But the macarons won't rise and there is no feet. Sad. I tried many times. Is it got to do with the humidity in my hse? Btw i stay in singapore.

    Pls advise. Thanks.

    Regards,
    Macaron lover

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  27. Hi there

    Yes humidity does count as a factor. I did bake macaron once in malaysia but it was in an air condition room and it worked. If your macaron surface is rough (with some tiny bubble) and puffy it's probably not enough macaronage. Other wise your oven might not be hot enough.

    Hope it helps
    Kim

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    Replies
    1. Ahh.. that explain why my macaron look just as u described @_@ ok i think i will fold uses the scarpper instead of spatula..

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  28. Hi Kim,

    Thanks for the prompt reply. I am happy to come across your blog. It indeed gives a full details of baking macaroon. Yes. There were tiny bubbles. So it can be the fact tat i underfold the macaronage? I counted tat i fold ard 50 counts. SO it is not totally mixed tat cause them not to rise or have feet?

    Thanks again.

    Macaroon Lover

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  29. The 50 fold is approximately you need to check how it flows to see if it's probably mixed. Please have a look at the method when the mixture is mixed in the video in the post, especially from 3.50-5.12

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  30. Hi
    Thanks for the step by step instructions. I have just baked my 1st ever macaroons.....and I will be trying again tomorrow. My macaroons didn't develop feet and cracked...Oh well I will practise until I get them as good as yours.

    Regards
    Karm

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  31. Hi Kim,

    Thank you for your recipe, they are so so so GREAT!!

    I let the batter sited almost 3hours, but it still sticky (Perhaps the batter is too watery or not enough macaronage?), should I give up n throw it away or wait until it is not sticky? Thank you in advance!=)

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  32. It has to do with room humidity not the macaronage i personally had baked many macarons without letting it rest and the result is almost the same

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  33. Kim, you are right. It has been raining through these few days here in Singapore. Here is so humid, wonder is that possible to make macaroon without in air-conditional room.

    Just now I tried let the batter sit for 30min, still it does not form any layer on top. So I decided to turn on the oven to lowest temperature, and put in the batter, open the door let the water escape, then quickly close it back. It works! After 5 min, it form a layer!

    So I continue preheat to 150C, and follow the step, still there is no feet at bottom part. and they are cracking. Do you have any idea why? so frustrated...

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  34. like i mentioned in the previous posting you can try baking them without letting it forming a skin. I am afraid humidity is a huge factor and cracking is from over heating of your oven always make sure to use fan setting too . :) good luck

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  35. Hi, this is my first time making macarons, and i was just wondering if i am able to use food colouring instead of food powder. I wanted to make them in various colours. Thanks :)

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    Replies
    1. Hi Liquid food colouring will only add humidity in your mixture and the colour will be pale and faded after baking. if you are doing this for the first time i suggest you just try to do without the colour

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  36. Hi,this is also my first time baking macaron and it didn't turn out well. it doesn't develop skin and feet either. I started adding the castor sugar when the egg white became stiff. does that affect the batter and the macaron?thank u ^^

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    Replies
    1. Hi please watch the video providing above about how to fold your mixture, it is probably due to over or under mixing. You should add the sugar when the white is frothy not stiff. Hope it helps

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  37. Very impressive macarons you got there. Truly a queen of macarons. I've tried to bake macarons a few times but never get feet (other recipe). I thinks my batter is under mixed. May I know what type of oven u have? Mine is fan assisted with element on top. I guess if we have pretty much the same kind of oven, I have better chances to get decent macarons. Thanks
    JJ, Malaysia

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    1. Thank you for your kind comment, i have electric fan oven. however i think it is very likely you batter is over or under mixed if you do not get feet. it is very tricky

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    2. Hi Kim
      I've tried your recipe and method a few times and my macarons came out with high pretty feet. I was so thrilled. However, most of them cracked on the side. I tried to bake like you did (top heating, later bottom) at 135C fan on, they came out cracked. Same thing happened when I baked at 130C fan on with oven door cracked open a bit for 18 min. Any thought on how to rectify this? Thank you so much.

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    3. Hi Jong JJ i am afraid you just have to do the trial and error as each oven heats up very differently. Usually the oven is too hot when the macaron crack. Maybe try adjusting the temperature to 120 C and left the oven door with the slight opening by putting a towel in between.

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    4. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep on trying until I get macarons as pretty as yours

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  38. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  39. Hi, is it fine if I change icing sugar to fine sugar?

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    Replies
    1. Hi no you have to use icing sugar. In my experience using normal sugar didn't work. Icing sugar contains corn starch which makes it different from fine sugar

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  40. Hi! Thanks so much for your recipe, my macarons turned out really pretty!

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  41. i hv no idea y it takes FOREVER to hv them dried...
    can i slightly put them in the oven to fasten the process?

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    Replies
    1. hi if you,live in a country where it is humid and you do not,have an air conditioning room the shell will not formed. You can try to bake them,without the shell

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    2. I live in Louisiana, I use to think it's the humidity bc my macarons would never dry! I would let it sit out for an hour or two and it still never dried. SO! I figured out the solution. I realize that I'm not putting enough sugar. I usually only put 1cup of powdered sugar with 1 cup of almond. well I used 2 cups of powdered sugar and it dried within less than 10 mins! :D I've had many batches that didn't dry all the way but SUGAR was the solution!

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  42. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  43. Youtube has a feature in beta now that will translate the closed caption for you. It does a pretty decent job and allows you to follow what's happening if you don't speak French. Great blog btw!

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  44. I love your recipe :3 It took me some time to find a macaron recipe with the lowest icing sugar/egg white ratio, and it's wonderful because I've always thought macarons are too sweet! Mine turned out perfect, was they were crunchier than the other recipes with a higher sugar ratio. Do you think the sugar contributes to that, or maybe it's because I left it in the oven a minute or two too long (they weren't brown though)?
    Thanks for this recipe!

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  45. How long can I store macaroons after making them? Should they go in a fridge or tin?

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    Replies
    1. They should be stored in air tight container in the fridge, best used in 2 days. They can also be freeze for up to 6 months

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  46. Help ! When my macarons are baking in the oven , they form feet . But when I take them out of the oven , the feet disappear ! How can I fix it ?

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    Replies
    1. Hello your macarons are probably not cooked and the weight of the top shell kinda crush the soft uncooked feet

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