Chapter Two
...continued saga from In a land, far far away...
In days past our tired, plump and spewed upon maid had made two previous attempts at delicate French Macaroons. Neither had been a success. In fact both had been disasters, just of varying degrees. But the tired maid continued in her journey across trecherous marshes and filthy kitchens in her attempt to create the perfect macaroon.
To make her journey easier, the tired maid decided to do the smart, female thing and ask for directions. There was a mass of guides, instructions and you-tube videos to help her on her way (check out some of the fantastic links from Mowielicious). But the most assistance came from a fairy godmother via the magic of text messaging (more about that later).
With a couple of tips in mind the maid undertook her third attempt at the precious peices of whipped egg and this was the result...
Hip, hip hooray! It was a miracle, the fairy gods had rained magic dust down on the tired maid and allowed a batch of macaroons that actually looked like macaroons. It was tremendous!
Here's how she got there...
Pink Macaroons
3 egg whites (it doesn't mention it in the recipe but all the blogs/sites suggest using aged egg whites. There are a couple of ways to do this, including leaving the whites out for 24 hours. I cheated and zapped it in the microwave for 10 seconds. It is about removing some of the water from the whites. It make the eggs whip better or something)
2 tbs caster sugar
pink food colouring
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
1 cup almond meal
2 tbs icing sugar, extra
Grease oven trays; line with baking paper. Beat egg whites in a small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Add sugar and colouring, beat until sugar dissolves.
Transfer mixture to large bowl. (My 2 cents: I got out the food processor and ground together the almond meal and icing sugar and sifted 3 times). Fold in sifted icing sugar and almond meal, in two batches.
Spoon mixture into large piping bag fitted with 1.5 cm plain tube. Pipe 36 rounds, 2 cm apart onto trays. Tap trays on bench top to allow macaroons to spread slightly. Dust with extra icing sugar and stand for 15 minutes. (While the recipe says 15 min my macaroon fairy godmother said 4 hours).
Preheat oven to 150c/ 130c fan-forced.
Bake macaroons about 20 minutes. Stand for 5 minutes; transfer to wire rack to cool. (Again, on the advice of my macaroon fairy godmother I left them to sit for 1 hour).
Filling
The recipe in the book includes a white chocolate ganache, which I am sure is very nice. I was in the mood for something else though and made a Strawberry Lemonade buttercream (recipe from Gimme Some Oven).
The buttercream was delicious. Though my piping bag did explode and the result was ...
The final result. I couldn't be happier, and I am VERY keen to try out some other wonderful flavour combinations.
Oh... and they all lived happily ever after.
The end.
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