Pierre Hermé的马卡龙Macarons

Lemon Macarons – Pierre Herme “Macaron”

300g ground almonds

300g icing sugar

110g egg whites “liquefied”

1/2g yellow gold food colouring (or 1 / 4 tsp. Coffee)

10g lemon yellow food coloring

300g Granulated Sugar

75g of mineral water

110g egg whites “liquefied”

225g fresh whole eggs

240g granulated sugar

8g Lemon zest

160g fresh lemon juice

350g unsalted butter

100g ground almonds

1. The day before, prepare the lemon cream. Rinse and dry the lemons. Zest the lemons so you have 4g of zest. Rub the zest into the sugar with your hands. Mix lemon juice, sugar/lemon and eggs in a bowl. Put it in a bain-marie. Whisk until the mixture is at 83/84C (this took forever and I’m not sure I got all the way!)

2. Leave to cool to 60C before adding the butter in pieces. Whip until the cream is smooth using an immersion blender, mixing for about 10 min. Pour the cream into a baking dish. Press plastic wrap onto the surface of the cream and keep it in refrigerator overnight.

3. On the next day, sift the icing sugar with the almond powder. I tend to put this almond/sugar mix in a food processor for a good few pulses because the store bought ground almonds are apparently not as fine as a professional kitchens use and this can effect the way the wet is absorbed by the dry goods. Mix the colourings in the first amount of “liquefied” egg whites. Add this to the icing sugar/almond mix but don’t mix together.

4. Boil the water and sugar to 118C. Once the syrup is at 115C, simultaneously, begin to whisk the second amount of “liquefied” white eggs. Pour the 118C sugar syrup onto the whites down the side of the mixer bowl avoiding the whisk. Continue to whisk and let cool to 50C before adding them to the sugar-almond mix.

5. With a rubber spatula, fold it into the icing sugar almond powder whilst turning the bowl through a quarter turn on each fold. When the dough just begins to shine, it is ready. The batter will resemble a cake mixture being a bit runny. Online this stage is often described as looking like magma, which I take to mean the batter should form a ribbon that keeps its shape for around 10 seconds.

6. Pour it into a pastry bag fitted with a No. 11 plain tip. Pipe the mixture into circles about 3.5cm in diameter, spacing them every 2cm on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Tap the baking sheets on a work surface covered with a kitchen towel to let any air bubbles rise out. Let the shells crust for at least 30 min – they should go from shiny to a slightly duller look that wont stick to your finger if you lightly touch one. This rest is to help to develop the proper “feet”.

7. Preheat oven to 180C. Put the baking sheets into the oven. Bake for 12 minutes quickly opening the oven door twice during baking first at 8 minutes the at 10. Out the oven, slide the parchment and shells on the work surface. For me this has always been too high a temperature I cook at around 160C and for a little less time but it all depends on your oven but you don’t want them to brown so bear this in mind.

8. Mix the lemon cream with almond powder. Pour it into a pastry bag fitted with a plain no.11 tip and pipe generous amounts onto half the shells and top with a second shell. Store in the refrigerator overnight to obtain the perfect texture.