Salted Caramel and Apple Macarons

A few weeks back i stumbled upon this recipe by Pierre Hermé and decided to try it out. Needless to say I didn't know what i was embarking myself on.... 5 hours in my kitchen. The morning of, I had gotten my H1N1 flu shot... by the end of the cooking day, my arm was ready to fall off!

Photo by Anne-Claire

Ingredients:

• Same as the ones for the chocolate macarons minus the cocoa powder (+ yellow food colouring)
• 4 to 5 apples
• 330g of cooking cream
• 60g salted butter
• 300g unsalted butter
• 30g of lemon juice
• 100g caster sugar

1. Beging the caramel filling. Warm the cream and set it aside, be careful not to boil it. 
2. Pour 50g of sugar into a pan and melt it. When melted add another 50g. Continue until all the sugar is melted. Allow it to caramelize to a very dark amber colour (this may take a while). 
3. Add the salted butter and mix with a spatula. Then add the cream and cook until the caramel reached 108 degrees Celsius (very long process).  
4. Pour in a baking dish and put a saran wrap over the surface and put in the fridge until it gets cold. 
5. Beat the rest of the butter for about 8-10 minutes, and then add the caramel into two additions and beat until combined. 
6. Assemble your macarons, put some caramel on one side and sprinkle with apple pieces and put a macaron top to finish off. Put in the fridge for 48 hours!

Serve with chocolate macarons if you wish to impress :)

* Do not eat them immediately, as they are quite heavy. 48 hours later they are much lighter and easier to eat!

* Be ready to spend hours in the kitchen!

Chocolate Macarons

So, I love MACARONS.
Being french and all that, how can I not ey? Ladurée is my sanctuary... and Pierre Hermé is my God. So it is only obvious as to why I decided to try and make them...!

After reading many blogs, and many recipes I finally got it down! Brace yourselves!

Pretty :)

Ingredients: (makes about 25-30 macarons)

• 2x 60g of egg whites (aged - leave them out 24 hours prior) 
• 150g almond powder (get it really thin!)
• 150g caster sugar + 35g caster sugar for the meringue
• 150g icing sugar
• lemon juice
• pinch of salt
• 50g of water
• food coloring (in this case, i used cocoa powder)

Recipe:

1. Heat oven at 145 degrees Celsius. 
2. Whip up 60g of egg whites and add 35g of sugar in three times. You should  get a meringue feel to the egg whites. 
3. In the mean time, boil 150g caster sugar and 50g of water until thermometer reaches 110 degrees. 
4. Once this done, add the sugar syrup to the eggwhite/meringue mixture on the sides of the bowl. 
5. Mix until mixture cools down to 40 degrees Celsius. 
6. In another bowl, add icing sugar, almond powder and the rest of the egg whites (the other 60g) and mix. (for chocolate macarons, add cocoa, if not add food coloring)
7. Add the meringue mixture of the powder mix and fold. 
8. Fold carefully as you do not want to over fold. It should take you about 45 folds in total. Don't worry about breaking the egg whites apart! 
9. You should have a sticky texture by now. 
10. Put it in a piping bag, and make small circles on a baking sheet. 
11. Put in the oven for about 12 minutes. Let cool. 
12. In the mean time, you can do whichever filling you may want to do. For chocolate ganache, I boiled 100g of dark chocolate and 100ml of liquid cream and put it in a piping bag.
13. Pipe some ganache on one side of the macaron and add another shell to cover. 
14. Refrigerate for 24-48 hours. 
15. Enjoy! 

* extra tip: before putting in the oven, i find that letting the baking sheet with the uncooked macaron circles out for 10 minutes helps. 

Good luck!