Hey guys, happy new year! Sorry for sort of neglecting Hungry at Midnight for the past two weeks. I did bake quite a bit, but didn’t make any posts.. I don’t do new years resolutions, but this year I will keep baking new yummy things. I baked macarons three times in December so it’s definitely worth a post.
This year NYE was celebrated with my family at my parents house. The food theme was Surinamese (my family is from Surinam), so everyone brought a Surinamese dish. As baking is my department, I had to bake at least something Surinamese apart from the mini chocolate tartelettes and macarons I decided to make for NYE.
I bought Adriano Zumbo’s book Zumbo, the book is full of macarons and other intricate sweets. Macarons are one of those hard things to make. I have made macarons for the first time over 2 years ago and then stopped making them. Now was the first time again and this time with italian merengue. It went great! I wanted to make red macarons, but my food coloring wasn’t as pigmented so they became pink. Ah well, the macarons themselves didn’t fail!
Some just looked funny and were lopsided. I think it had something to do with the heat distribution in my oven. Only the ones around the edge of my tray were like that.
A week or so later I wanted to make orange macarons. But when I wanted to make half a batch, they came out different! They were sort of hollow, they looked good but were easy to crack. You can find a photo of them on my instagram @hungryatmidnight. You’ll see the pied is a lot bigger.
The next day I made another half batch but they totally failed! The book states that the recipes are as small as they can be for stable results so, they weren’t kidding. But I think the problem was that I have whipped the merengue too much as they cracked, so too much air. I will give the half batch another shot some time to check if that was the case.
Recipe for Zumbo macarons: here
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is an error in the ingredients list!!! 110 grams of egg whites is missing! The recipe description is correct though.
I filled my macarons with a basic dark chocolate ganache. Of course you can fill it with something fancier if you like.
- 200g dark chocolate
- 175g whipping cream
- 60g room temperature butter
- Chop the dark chocolate in to fine pieces and place in a bowl.
- In a pan, bring whipping cream to boil.
- Pour the cream over the chocolate en let sit for 2 minutes.
- Stir until smooth.
- Dice the butter in to small chunks and add to the chocolate, stir until butter has mixed in.
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Your macarons looks just perfect! I know exactly how you feel about homemade macarons. It is so easy to fail. I am too scare to even give them a try.