Macaron Heaven.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I want to try my hand sometime at making macarons. When I see them, I just fall in love with their perfection and am amazed by the array of flavours that they are created in. This is what has always scared me. Every single one I have ever seen and tasted has been faultless, so they must be ridiculously complicated to make.

I bought a Donna Hay magazine the other week and to my delight there was recipe after recipe of macarons in all different flavours. And they werent that hard!

So today was the day! I went for a long walk in the sunshine and popped by the supermarket on my way home to gather my ingredients. Then walked home with a spring in my step, eager to get started.

All went smoothly until the piping of the mixture onto the baking trays. It helps to have a piping bag, but a zip lock bag with the corner cut off seemed to fix tthat problem - kind of. The mixture just wasn't piped as perfectly as i would have liked; that's all!

Left them to sit for 20 minutes as advised and then popped them into the oven. Note to self for next time: perhaps it would be a good idea to check on the macarons a little before the reccomended cooking time because not all ovens are the same and therefore may require slightly different cooking times! Yes, this means that my macarons were slightly browner than in the picture, but believe me, they still taste good. And still have the soft, delicious inside.

The vanilla buttercream: WOW! I ate my body weight in this and raw macaron mixture before I had even tasted a final product! For some unknown reason, I have always wanted to be able to cook something that required a vanilla bean that needed to have the seeds scraped out of it...got to do it today! So delicious!

Once the individual macarons were cooled, a rather large dollop of artery clogging goodness was spooned onto one side of the macaron and sandwiched with another to create a heavenly treat!

So, bride-to-be (you know who you are!), I have given them a practice run, and they will be just perfect (hopefully) for your kitchen tea! :)

Vanilla macarons with vanilla buttercream

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups icing sugar

1 cup almond meal

3 eggwhites, at room temperature

1 tablespoon castersugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees.

2. Sift icing sugar and almond meal into a bowl and mix to combine.

3. Place eggwhites into electric mixer and whisk on high for 30 seconds. Add the caster sugar and whisk for 10 minutes until stiff peaks form.

4. Fold through almond meal mixture in two batches until smooth.

5. Place the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1 1/2cm nozzle and pipe 4cm rounda onto baking trays lined with greaseproof paper.

6. Allow to stand for 20 minutes or until a 'skin' forms on the top of the macarons.

7. Reduce oven temperature to 130 degrees and bake macarons for 17-18 inutes or until crisp on the outside and moist in the centre.

8. Allow to cool completely on trays before spreading with buttercream.

Vanilla Buttercream

Ingredients

125g softened butter

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

1/2 cup icing sugar

1/2 cup almond meal

Method

1. Place butter and vanilla in electric mixer and beat for 6-8 minutes or until pale and creamy.

2. Add icing sugar and beat for a further 10 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add the almond meal and beat until combined.

3. Spread the vanilla butter onto half the cooled macarons and sandwich with the remaining macarons.

Makes 12.

Source: Donna Hay Magazine, Issue 59, October/November 2011