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Ginger Macarons
Recipe by Callum Hann
Try these delicious ginger macarons
- Steps
- Ingredients
Steps
- Preheat oven to 150°C fan forced. Grease and line two large baking trays with baking paper.
- For ginger ganache, place cream, milk and ginger in a small saucepan over a medium high heat. Bring to the boil, reduce heat slightly and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to infuse for 15-20 minutes.
- Gently bring cream back to the boil, pass through a sieve and measure 60ml. Add to the chocolate and butter. Allow to sit for a minute or two and stir until smooth. Heat over a bain-marie if necessary to remove any final lumps of butter or chocolate.
- Refrigerate, stirring occasionally until thick enough to pipe but not hard.
- For macarons, separately sift icing sugar and almond meal into medium bowls or over sheets of baking paper. Repeat process 3 times and re-weigh ingredients. You will need to top up the ingredients as you may have lost some in the sifting process.
- Sift icing sugar and almond meal into a bowl and repeat, ensure there are no lumps.
- Whisk egg whites until doubled in size using electric beaters or an electric stand mixer. While still whisking, gradually add caster sugar, bicarb and food colouring, whisking until mixture forms very stiff peaks.
- Fold almond meal mixture into meringue using a spatula until incorporated.
- Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 9mm round nozzle. Hold nozzle close to the baking tray and pipe 3cm diameter circles onto prepared trays. Tap the underside of the tray to allow macarons to settle and air bubbles to escape. If there is still a little peak on top, dip a teaspoon in water and use the back to smooth the surface. Leave to rest for 15-20 minutes or until the macarons form a skin.
- Bake for 12 minutes. Remove trays from the oven and allow macarons to cool on the tray. They will still be soft at this stage but will firm up on cooling. Once cool, remove from tray, pipe ginger ganache onto half the macarons and sandwich with a second macaron. Serve with a cup of tea or coffee. Serve immediately or store in the fridge. Bring back to room temperature before serving.
Notes
When piping, don’t try and make the circular shape by using a soft-serve ice-cream motion. The shape will naturally form if you pipe the macarons with the nozzle really close to the tray, and squeeze gently as you bring the nozzle away from the tray. Finish with a little flick of your wrist to break off the mixture from the bag.
It is really important you leave them to air-dry before baking or they won’t get the little ‘foot’ at the bottom of the cooked macaron.
When the macarons are come out of the oven, they may seem a little undercooked. They will continue to cook on the tray though even after they are out of the oven. Also, a macaron should be a bit chewy, not hard and meringue-like.
