Food & Wine
Strawberry Macarons
Soft, sweet and full of melt-in-your mouth flavour, strawberry macarons are the ultimate indulgence. Be careful - with this recipe it will be hard to stop at just one!
Ingredients:
For macarons:
- 1 1/ 2 cups pure icing sugar
- 1 /4 cups caster sugar
- 1 1/ 4 cups almond meal
- 4 eggwhites
- 3 drops pink food colouring
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
For the macaron filling:
- 1/ 2 teaspoon strawberry essence
- 2 tablespoons thickened cream
- 90g white chocolate
Method:
For macarons:
- Sift your almond meal and icing sugar together in a bowl.
- Grease three large baking trays and line these with baking paper.
- Beat your eggwhite in a bowl with an electric mixture, until soft peaks are starting to form. From here gradually add sugar and beat until dissolved.
- Add your vanilla and food colouring, then beat until the mixture is just combined. Fold in half the almond mixture until just combined. Fold in the remaining mixture until glossy.
- Spoon macaron mix into a large snaplock bag and snip a hole about a centimetre from the corner. Use this hole to pipe rounds of your mix onto prepared trays. They should be about 4cm, and 3cm apart. Tap tray on bench to remove air bubbles and set aside for an hour.
- Preheat your oven to 130°C and bake macarons for 18 to 20 minutes, one tray at a time. Cool the macarons on the trays then carefully transfer to a wire rack.
For macaron filling:
- Chop your white chocolate into little pieces.
- Combine chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on High for around about a minute or until the chocolate has melted. Stir to combine.
- Stir your strawberry essence into the melted chocolate mixture.
- Refrigerate for 10 minutes, until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency
Combining macarons with filling:
- Spread you filling over flat sides of half of the macarons.
- Sandwich the filling-spread sides with the remaining macarons.
- Let the macarons set, then serve and enjoy!