Macarons, my nemisis

My first macaron was in Paris, from Pierre Hermés, a whole box of dainty, colourful and mouthwatering macarons. We couldn’t resist comparing them with Ladurée’s macarons, for good measure. They were both so delicious!

I decided that this was something that I had to try out.

But who could have thought that such a small treat could provide such a challenge! Looking at the ingredients; sugar, almonds, egg whites and icing sugar, I thought that this should be doable. Well… I was proved wrong.

My first batch seemed to go well, I followed the recipe from start to end. Even tried with a bit of red food colouring for pretty pink macarons. To my horror they came out flat, grainy and… orange!? I was so disappointed that I made a new batch straight away. But the second one was not much better than the first. I tried modifying the recipe, less almonds, no food colouring and a lower oven temperature. Nothing really seemed to work for me.

However I was determined that I would make them and make them right.

So I started reading different recipes and discovered the two quite different approaches to meringue, the French and the Italian way. The French mix dry granulated sugar straight into the egg whites, while the Italian method of making meringue uses a sugar syrup that then gets whisked into stiff egg whites. Having used Eric Lanlard´s recipe which used French meringue and failed to achieve the result I wanted so I started looking at alternative recipes.

While watching one of Lorraine Pascale’s tv shows, I noticed she made a sugar syrup while making macarons and that got me thinking, melting the sugar must give the macaron a more glossy finish. So I had a go… New eggs were bought, and sugar melted to a syrup. The result almost resembled a macaron.

Last weekend, after hundreds of macarons, I finally did it! Perfect, glossy, mouthwatering macarons!

So here are my 5 tips for beautiful macarons:

1. Use the italian meringue technique. Melt your sugar into a syrup and combine with whisked stiff egg whites.

2. Use a good brand of food colouring, for chocolate macarons use cocoa powder. Be careful of destabilising the mixture with a watery food colouring.

3. After piping the macarons on the baking sheet let them dry for 30 minutes until they have formed a skin and are almost dry to the touch.

4. Bake on 150° celsius, at the bottom of the oven, with the oven door ajar.

5. Bake for 15-16 minutes until the bottoms of the macaron are dry and easy to peel off the baking parchment.

What are your tips for great macarons?