MacAttack 5 - Blood Orange Macarons

My Entry for MacAttack on Mactweet Round 5. Theme: Spring Flowers

Spring is in the air or is it? Well I hope for it really, have had enough of grey weather.

I was in the market with my family in laws and saw these gorgeous red/orange skin blood orange. Coming from a tropical country, that was my first time seeing blood oranges. Out of curiousity, my husband bought me a few to taste. And my next thought was - Blood orange macaron with vibrant colour to brighten up this miserable grey time.

So there I was creating some macarons with colours that resemble the few first spring flowers. Not tasting flowery - but instead bursting with spring - vibrant colours!





FOR THE MACARON SHELL
1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
50g icing sugar
30g ground almond
30g castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon of Orange food colouring powder
1/4 teaspoon of Red food colouring powder

Powder food colouring

Method:
1. Put ground almond & icing sugar 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. Roughly mix through the dry and wet ingredients. It's ok if you still see some lumps, but just make sure the dry and wet ingredients are well combined.

After roughly folding the mixture

6. Devide the mixture into 2 bowls, one you'll add in the orange colouring, while the other with red colouring.


7. You'll now fold the colouring into the mixture for each bowl, until you get smooth shiny, magma flow consistency.

8. Line the baking tray with the parchment paper.

9. We wanna achieve a marble effect here, so scoop one orange batter in the piping bag follow by the red batter. Alternate this until you have no more batter left.




10. 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)


11. 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.

12. 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)



13. 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 BLOOD ORANGE WHITE CHOCOLATE GANACHE

Ingredients

50g cooking white chocolate
Half blood orange ( Squeeze to obtain juice)
Zest from half blood orange (use organic whenever you could, or wash very well before using)


Methods

1. Squeeze out the juice of the half blood orange in a small pot.

2. Warm it up over low heat

3. Once it start to boil slightly, remove from heat. Add white chocolate and stir constantly until they all melt. If the mixture had turned too cold and you still have some lumps, warm up a pot of water, put the chocolate mixture on top and stir.

4. Add in the zest, mix well. Cover up with cling wrap, put in the fridge for 1 hour.

5. Pipe the macarons and keep chill. The macatons are best to be eaten the next following day. Put out of fridge 10-20 mins before serving.