Mother-Daughter Bonding over Macaroon Making on Good Friday

Dear All

On Good Friday, my elder girl and I made our very 1st macaroon.

She googled a few macaroon recipes and we decided on a simple one. Simple = ingredients that are readily available at home or supermarkets, at reasonable or cheaply!! Also, the steps must be easy too.

We came upon this website to make French macaroons with a video on how the macaroons should look like at each stage. We also checked on-line for videos on mistakes to avoid when making macaroons.

My girl love macaroons, but they are very expensive. Hence, I've never really tried one, haha.

So, that's why she wanted to make her own. The ingredients are so much cheaper than $2 per piece of macaroon!!

To save cost, we bought almond flakes instead of ready-made almond powder. A packet of flakes is only $2+/250g compared to $4/100g of  powder.

There are many steps that can go wrong in making macaroons :

1) The almond powder must be extremely fine to get a smooth uncracked macaroon shell
2) The egg whites must be whisked to the right texture. Too wet or over whisked, the shell comes out wrong
3) Separating the egg whites from the yolk is extremely important. Not a single drop of egg yolk is allowed as there's a chemical process going on in combining the whites with the sugar.
4) Temperature setting and time setting is important. Too high and the shells get burned. Too low and too short time, the shells never get cooked
5) If you take too long in getting all your batches baked, the last few batches won't rise, as the egg whites mixture has turned more liquid

Adding more red colouring to egg white & caster sugar batter, after whisking it till foamy & white:

As we started our ingredients from scratch, meaning we had to grind the almond flakes into powder about 3x to get it really fine, it took us whole day to work on this activity. We started around 2pm and ended at almost 9pm when the last batch of macaroon was out of the oven, fillings placed in, and everything packed into the fridge plus the great washing up!!

Sifting the almond powder & icing sugar mixture (below):

The process of doing it was fun as we experimented with the process along the way. My girl got hands-on experience in the kitchen, handling measuring off ingredients on the weighing scale, whisking the buttercream all by herself, piping the macaroon batter, seiving and operating the electric oven!! She also learned how to wash up the utensils without leaving any oily residue!

Sifting the almond powder & icing sugar mixture another time into the egg white batter (below):

(Above 2 pixs): Mix the almond & egg white batter together till it's stiff & not runny

I also discovered an aspect about myself and hers. When I hold my impatience and temper as I allowed her to make a mess of the kitchen, she was more calm and responsive to my instructions. She showed she can be responsible and reliable and I was very pleased with her, I just had to give her a kiss on her cheeks and exclaim, gosh, she's really growing up fast!

OK, even talk and reflection, and let's get down to the recipe and photos!!

French Macaroon Recipe
- 4 egg whites (about 140g)
- 70g caster sugar (or lesser if you want it less sweet)
- 230g (or lesser if you want less sweet) icing sugar
- 120g almond powder (if using flakes, weigh it first and give a bit more before you grind it)
- food colouring (we used red)

Method for Macaroon
1) Preheat oven to 160 degrees C
2) Combine egg whites with caster sugar by whisking continously with hand mixer (or electric if you have one) for roughly 10 minutes to get it stiff enough to not drip off your mixer. Then add colouring and whisk it in. Add in 2 drops at a time. We put in about half teaspoon of colouring. You should make it darker as it gets lighter after being baked.
3) Mix the almond powder and icing sugar well then sift the mixture and discard any almond lumps that are too big to pass through the sieve. (As I started from flakes, I sieved the almond powder first, then placed the lumpy ones back into the grinder and then sieved that batch and any lumpy ones went back into the grinder and seived again till almost all the flakes are used up).

This step 3 is important. The almond powder and icing sugar mixture must be extremely fine to get a good textured macaroon. You don't want to waste all your effort just because you were laxed on this step.

4) Next fold the almond powder/icing sugar mixture into the egg white until the mixture is smooth and viscous, and not runny. Don't overmix otherwise it'll be flat.

Method for Buttercream filling
Ingredients:
- 100g softened butter
- 180g icing sugar

(Below): Whisking the butter & icing sugar into buttercream

(Below 2 pixs):Transfer done almond-egg white batter into zip-log bag, then cut a small hole in a corner to pipe it onto non-stick baking paper.

1) Place butter in bowl and sift icing suger over it then whisk it until creamy and smooth
2) Add 0.75tsp rose essence to mixture and whisk it till its all mixed in
3) Use butter knife to butter 1 shell of macaroon and take another macaroon shell to make it sandwich-like.

(Below) Our 1st macaroon shell, and it's perfect!! Yay! :)

Buttering on the buttercream onto 1 shell, then placing another shell over it (below):

(Above pix): Our final product. The shells are not perfectly sized the same, but the shell are crunchy and simply delicious

It's a cheap parent-child bonding activity where most of the ingredients are most likely what you've already have in your kitchen cabinet. What's best is the final product is something my girl enjoys and will be sharing with her friends! Yummy!

Love
Theresa