Macarons ! Double Chocolate and Cherry... (Recipe)

Hey - it's been a while since I last made macarons. Too long actually. When a fellow cakey person was having some trouble, I decided it was time to knock up a batch to try and troubleshoot the problems and give her a comparison to try.

I love making these pretty, dainty macarons using our double sided macaron mats. The beauty is that they all end up identical in size and pair beautifully. They look divine packed several together and stood up straight like soldiers in a line.

RECIPE

 makes 75 shells (so you'll need 3 mats or to do 3 bakes) = 37 macarons plus an extra shell

180g powdered (icing) sugar

180g of egg whites - split into two 90g batches

40g good quality cocoa powder

180g ground almonds

200g of caster sugar

80mls of water.

Preheat fan ovens to 160deg C

Put the ground almonds and icing sugar into a blender and blitz until powder fine consistency.

Add this to a large bowl with 90g of egg white, the icing sugar and cocoa powder. Mix together to form a thick, sticky paste.

Put the caster sugar and water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil until temperature reaches 110deg C. At this point, start whipping the remaining egg whites to firm peak.

Remove sugar syrup from the heat at 118deg C. Whipping the egg whites at full speed, slowly pour in hot sugar syrup. Whip until this is meringue like in volume and the bowl is warm but not really hot.

Take a good spoonful of the meringue mix and stir well into the almond / egg white / cocoa mix to loosen. Fold the remaining meringue mix in with a spatula until it's a lava like consistency and a trail merges into the rest within about 30 seconds.

Pipe onto the large side of your REVOLUTIONARY DOUBLE SIDED MACARON MATS available from www.siliconemoulds.com (these baking sheets are available in several colours)- to within about 5mm of the outside of each cell. The mix will relax to fill the cells. 

Pop into the oven at 160deg C for 5 mins with the door a few inches ajar. Then, close the door and bake for a further 20 > 22mins.

I filled these with white chocolate ganache and a very nice cherry preserve. I also filled some others with the same ganache and ginger preserve.

Creating a wall of firm but pipeable ganache helps to stop the preserve oozing out. 1/2 a tsp of preserve is plenty in each centre. Sandwich together and chill overnight before serving

One is a treat, two would be a total indulgence ! I have to confess.... on THIS occasion  we didn't scoff all these macarons. These are macarons - though some still call them macaroons. No comparison to the coconut variety ! Some were gifted to some very lovely people we met last week at the NEC Spring Fair.

Our stand was directly opposite Alan Silverwood Ltd - they have produced the new range of bakeware for DELIA SMITH and very nice it is too ! All UK manufactured and available from independant retailers from this month.

Delia Smith was doing demonstrations in the cookery live theatre and Kathryn was brave enough to ask her to sign the hard back copy of my blog book (2012 recipes). A little confusing though as it's now 2013 ! Bless her.... exciting time for both Silverwoods and Delia at the moment and we wish them both lots of success.

We took lots and lots of stuff with us - but unfortunately there was not enough space to take everything !

Our range of large number silicone birthday cake moulds are proving very popular and we are looking forward to launching many new product lines in the next couple of weeks  - including our new registered design chocolate tractors mould

Sarah-Jane Nash - SiliconeMoulds.com - silicone bakeware specialists