Macarons: Part III

This will become the last episode for now. I'm about to travel to the Balkan for three weeks so it's more likely that this blog will be updated with savory, stew-like dishes than with fancy French macarons. :) But before my departure I wanted to exercise a little more on the tiny sweets.

With the third try coming, I was quite more experienced than in the beginning and now I can distinguish between a 'good' and a 'bad' macaron recipe. The egg - broyage ratio is very important and too much broyage in comparison with your egg-whites can ruin the batter gravely. So I tried to find a balance ...
Another fault I made the first times was the fact that I didn't beat my meringue enough. It's important that you get a stiff dough so the macarons won't collapse instantaneously.
Another tip: separate your egg-whites 24h before you make the macarons. This does something (good) to the structure of the egg. 
This are the ingrediënts I used:

- 110 g powdered sugar
- 110 g almond powder
- 50 g granulated sugar
- 110 g egg whites

Easy to memorise! An equal amount of egg white, sugar and almond powder.
First I made my French meringue. I slowly battered the whites in a bowl, added the granulated sugar step by step and mixed the whole until stiff.
Then I blended the powdered sugar and the almond powder so all was mixed homogeneous.
Next, I slowly putted the meringue in the broyage until the whole became a sticky dough. I squirted them onto baking powder in tiny rounds:

The consistency was much better then the my first tries! It seemed that these would become 'good' macarons'. Unfortunately the shells didn't harden after about 1 hour, so I putted them into the oven (15 min's on 150°) like this. The result looked much ore like a real macaron.
After three attempts I have to conclude that building up experience is very important in macaron-making. If you exercise a lot, one day all the pieces of the puzzle fit in and out comes a real crunchy macaron!
Enough for a few weeks as regards this chapter. But please continue reading this blog! And if someone can give me the 'golden tip' for macing the perfect macarons, please comment. :)

Cheers,

Thomas