Black Forest Macarons

FOR THE MACARON SHELL
1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
50g icing sugar
30g ground almond
30g castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon of unsweeten cacao powder, plus additional 1/2 teaspoon to sprinkle on top

Method:
1. Put ground almond and icing sugar along with the cacao powder in a food processor or a small blender. Blend them finely.

2. Sift the blended mixture and set aside

3. With an electric beater, Beat the egg white, start from low speed and increase slowly to maximum speed. Beat until frothy (you will see lots of fine bubbles)

4. Now it's the time to add in the castor sugar, add half of the sugar, continue to beat in maximum speed for around 2 minutes, add in the other half, continue until you get very stiff peak.

5. Mix the dry ingredients into the egg whites. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. When you get smooth shiny mixture, stop folding, lift the mixture with spatula, if the mixture falls back slowly in the bowl means you're good to go. You could also check if the lines formed from the lifted mixture, they should slowly disappear in within 30 seconds. At this stage you're good to go. Do not over fold, it will be too liquid and becoming very hard to pipe.
if you're unsure, you could refer to my basic macaron recipe as a guide HERE

6. Line the baking tray with the parchment paper.

7. Fill your piping bag , pipe your macaron (about 2 cm diameter) it should spread a bit as it settles. The point should slowly disappear if the mixture is the right consistency.
If not you could hit the bottom of the tray with your hand to smooth the point out)

8. Sprinkle half of the Macaron shell with some cacao powder. You could put the cacao powder in a sift with very fine holes. Becareful, when you put the cocao in the sift, position the sift on a corner of the baking paper where there is no macaron. This is to avoid huge amount of cacao powder fall on the macaron shells



9. Tab softly on the corner of the sift, over the macaron shells

10. Let your macarons sit for about 30minutes. This will depend on the humidity in your house and the day. Try touching the macaron softly, after 30mins. it should not stick to your hand.

11. Heat your oven to 150 C on the (heating on the top only). When the oven is ready, put your macaron at the very bottom shelf. Bake for 12 minutes, check them in the mid time of 6 minutes, the feets should already start forming. Turn the baking tray to the opposite direction to allow even baking. When the 6 mins is up, change the heating setting of your oven to Bottom only. This will help cooking the macaron and rise the feet more. Bake for another 6 minutes. You can test if the macaron is cook, touch softly on the shell and when the macaron doesn't slide on the feet, it's cooked. if it's not add another 1 mins each time and check.

(This is the method i found the best that works for me after few trial and error. I baked with heating the oven top and bottom and i had crack macarons. Having said that, every oven is slightly different than another, so please adjust accordingly)


11. Let the macaron cool down before removing them. You could wet your working area and slide the baking sheet on it to speed up the cooling process, but do not let it sit there too long, if not the macarons will become soggy. Other wise you can leave them cool at room temperature and remove them.


For the Black Forest Ganache Ingredients

10g liquid cream
50g dark cooking chocolate
8-10 canned cherries
1 teaspoon of kirsch (cherry liqour)

Methods

1. Drain the cherries, squeeze out as much juice as you can in a sift. This is because too much humidity in the ganache will ruin the macaron shells.

2. Chopped the cheries in half.

3. Warm the cream over the stove, until it boil very slightly.

4. Remove the cream from heat, add dark chocolate, mix until the chocolate is melted completely and a smooth texture is obtain.

5. Add kirsch into the ganache. Let cool in room temperature for about 1-2 hours, check back from time to time. The ganache should be soft but not runny.

5. When the ganache is ready (not too runny, not too hard), pipe it on the macaron shell, put the chopped half cherry on top of the ganache, close with another macaron shell.

6. After finish piping all the macarons, pop them in an air tight container. Leave them in refrigerator overnight. You could keep the macarons up to 48 hours in the frige. if not consumed, freeze them up. Because after 48 hours they will lose the texture.