On Macarons

Every day's a school day: that phrase is definitely true about baking. Every day is, indeed a chance to learn something new and broaden your knowledge, and that knowledge can come from anywhere. I've been binge watching all the seasons of the Great British Bake Off since I wasn't living here when the older ones aired, and they did a challenge all about macarons in the first season. If you watch closely, GBBO can teach you a lot about baking.

This episode, in particular, struck me because I love making macarons almost as much as I love eating them. As it turns out, the recipe style I was using is the French macaron style, and it isn't the only way to make macarons. This style means that you beat egg whites and caster sugar together, without cooking the egg whites, before you fold the whites into your dry ingredients of icing sugar and ground almonds.

This way seemed at first to be the easiest way to make macarons, but there are a lot of steps in the French macaron process that can go wrong. The hardest thing to master is knowing just when to stop folding. If you fold too little, you get gloopy, cracked messes on the baking sheet. If you fold too much, they run and won't rise properly. The only way to know when you've folded enough is practice.

In addition to that, these macarons' egg whites are not very stable. French merengue--beating egg whites and caster sugar together--is the least stable of all the merengues, and thus you have to work quickly once you've finished beating your egg whites to stiff peaks.

The other method of making macarons is the Italian style. This means that you make a hot sugar syrup, which you beat into your egg whites to create your merengue that will be folded in your dry ingredients. Italian merengue is much more stable than French because the hot sugar syrup cooks the egg whites, which will thus not collapse. This also means that the merengue (if you're just making merengue) can be eaten safely without baking it, and therefore can be used for icing or if you plan on blow torching for decoration.

But the best thing about this method is that it is much harder to mess up the folding process, and the whole macaron will not be ruined as easily.

***Remember when I spoke about the baker's ratio? Well, here it comes back into play. With macarons, in both French and Italian style, it is imperative that you weigh your egg whites. You can make macarons with any number of eggs you happen to have in your pantry, but the egg whites must be 40% by weight of the weight of your icing sugar and ground almonds combined. This means that in the following recipe, if I use 100g ground almonds and 100g icing sugar, I have 200g of dry ingredients. I take 200 and multiply that by 0.4 (for 40%), and find that I need 80g of egg whites. So I will measure my egg whites until I get 80g. This is why the metric system is handy--it provides a standardised base with which to work.

Italian Lemon Macarons

Makes ~20 sandwiched macarons

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Baking time: 15-20 minutes

100g ground almonds

100g icing sugar

80g egg whites

Bake-safe food colouring (if it is not bake-safe, it will not be the same colour after baking)

100g caster sugar

40ml water

Filling: store-bought lemon curd

Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper. I use three because I like to spread my macarons out a bit further than necessary just in case.

Blitz the almonds and icing sugar in a food processor for about 45 seconds. Remove and sift into a bowl. Discard any large bits that won't go through the sieve. Add half of the egg whites (40g) to the dry mixture, and mix to create a paste. Colour to your liking with food colouring. I used yellow here for lemon. Vanilla macarons are traditionally left uncoloured. Set aside

In a small saucepan, place the caster sugar and water. Heat over low, stirring very, very gently until the sugar is melted. Stop stirring as soon as the sugar melts, increase the heat to medium, and cover with a lid for 1 minute to melt any sugar crystals on the side of the pan. Remove lid, and heat sugar syrup until it is 115ºC, the soft-ball stage.

Meanwhile, while your sugar syrup is heating, whisk the remaining half of the egg whites to soft peaks. When the sugar is ready, pour slowly down the side of the bowl while whisking the egg whites. When all of the sugar syrup has been added, whisk the whites to stiff peaks.

Add 1/3 of the egg whites into the almond paste and stir to loosen up. Add the remaining egg whites to the paste, and gently fold the mixture together with a rubber spatula until combined. The mix should run off the spatula in a ribbon when it is all mixed together.

Place batter into a piping bag, and cut a 2cm opening in the end. Pipe discs onto your baking sheets, making sure to keep about 1/2 an inch in between each macaron.

When all the macarons are piped, bang the baking sheet firmly 3-4 times on your counter to release any large air bubbles. Make sure to bang both sides of the sheet on the counter. If you don't release large air bubbles, they will crack the tops of the macarons.

Preheat oven to 150ºC while the macarons rest. Bake the macarons one sheet at a time for 15-20 minutes in the centre of the oven. They are ready when they peel off the baking parchment easily and dryly when cooled a bit.

Fill half of the shells with lemon curd and sandwich the other half on top. Macarons are best on the same day, but can be enjoyed 3-4 days after you make them.