Recipe: Chocolate macarons (Italian meringue)
Macarons are definitely fashionable these days! Here in France they can be found everywhere in hundreds of flavours and even abroad they are now quite popular.
Making homemade macarons is definitely a challenging experience: it requires precision and technique, but with some practice it can become highly rewarding (and you will also save a lot of money since macarons are usually ingloriously expensive)!
Moreover, macarons are a great way to use up your leftover egg whites!
For this recipe, taken from Christophe Felder‘s magical book “Pâtisserie“, the Italian meringue is used: this means that a thermometer is required for a good result (come on, you can buy it, it’s 15€ in my supermarket). In case you’re wondering, the Italian meringue is used in order to confer more stability to the batter and also to make a final product with a longer “shelf life”.
Here is the step-by-step recipe of chocolate macarons… just remember to prepare the ganache filling the day before!
More info on the troubleshooting of macarons coming soon!
Chocolate macarons
Print recipeIngredients
Macaron batter
| 185g | Almond flour (chilled) |
| 185g | Powdered sugar |
| 75g | Egg whites (room temperature) |
| 30g | Cocoa powder |
| Dark red/Brown food colouring (powder - optional) |
Italian meringue
| 50g | Water |
| 200g | Granulated sugar |
| 75g | Egg whites (room temperature) |
Chocolate ganache - Filling
| 200g | Heavy cream |
| 140g | Dark couverture chocolate (60% minimum) |
| 45g | Unsalted butter (diced, room temperature) |
| 15g | Honey |
Directions
1
Put the cream in a saucepan with the honey and bring to a boil
2
Pour the cream over the chocolate. Let sit for one minute.
3
Stir carefully with a spatula to avoid incorporating air. Add the diced butter.
4
Stir again to emulsify the ganache until no strikes remain
5
Mix the ganache with an immersion blender for a few minutes to remove all the air. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for at least 6 hours, or better overnight.
6
Put the almond flour, powdered sugar and cocoa powder in a food processor and mix 2-3 times for about 10 seconds each, with at least 10 seconds of pause
7
Put the dry mixture in a bowl and mix with the first half of the egg whites until you obtain a thick paste
8
In the meantime, put the granulated sugar and water in a saucepan on medium heat
9
When the sugar syrup reaches 104°C, start whipping the egg whites at high speed. Slow the mixer down in case soft peaks form before the syrup is ready.
10
When the sugar reaches 119°C, pour it slowly on the egg whites in a steady stream between the side of the bowl and the beater while the mixer is running
11
Continue beating at medium speed until the egg whites are completely cool. At this point, you have the so-called Italian meringue! The Italian meringue is ready for macarons when it forms a soft peak usually called "bec d'oiseau" ("bird's beak").
12
Using a spatula, fold in a third of the meringue into the almond, sugar and cocoa paste and mix
13
Macaronage: carefully fold in the remaining meringue with an upward movement that starts from the centre and reaches the border of the bowl; at the same time, make sure you slightly turn the bowl in the opposite direction of the spatula
14
The batter is ready when it becomes shiny and it is not too thick nor too runny (achieving the right consistency is actually the hardest part of making macarons)
15
Using a pastry bag fitted with a medium plain tip, pipe the batter into small rounds (about 3-4cm each) on paper-lined sheet pans.
16
Let the piped batter sit at room temperature for at least 20 minutes...
17
... if a tip forms when you touch them, they are NOT ready!
18
When macarons are ready to be baked, they have a thin "crust" on top that ensures a smooth surface
19
Bake at 150° for around 18 minutes. Macarons don't have to darken too much in the oven.
20
Cool the macarons completely before removing them from the pan
21
Press the interior of the baked shells gently (without crushing them!) in order to make more room for the filling
22
Pipe the chocolate ganache in the middle of a shell
23
Sandwich two shells together and store for 24 hours in the fridge before serving
Note
- When the food processor is in action, its blades will heat the almond flour: for this reason it is very important to work with a chilled flour and to avoid overheating it by pausing the processor regularly
- Macarons require precision in terms of quantities, technique and also temperature: use a chilled almond flour, room temperature egg whites and check the sugar syrup temperature with a thermometer
- The macaronage step is the most delicate part of the recipe. As a good approximation, pass the spatula through the batter and if the latter becomes smooth again in around 10 seconds, it should be ready (I usually focus more on the shininess anyway).
- Based on personal experience, silicone mats are not the best choice for macarons as the "crown" at the bottom might not develop well; I prefer the good old parchment paper in this case
- To pipe the batter, keep the pastry bag at a 60° angle and mechanically apply the classical technique: Pipe - Stop piping/squeezing - Move the piping bag in a round path on the macaron to prevent a tip from forming - Lift the pastry bag and move on
- For best results, pipe the macarons alternately in the pan, like in the pictures
- It is possible to scale this recipe, but be careful when scaling down since it can be very difficult to whip well less than 60g of egg whites
- Macarons need to absorb humidity for at least one day in the fridge . Then they can keep for up to 5 days in an airtight container in the fridge and can be frozen as well for several months.
