Baileys™ Caramel Macaron

I love Baileys and cocktails made from Baileys...so why not Macarons? I just learnt that we could easily dye sugar at home as well, so I am dying to try this out to decorate the bailey's macarons, just to make it more fancy ;)

I was very surprised that it's very simple to tint sugar at home. In the shop, they normally sell it for 6-7 euros for a 100g-200g bottle, and the choice of colours is limited. So I'm going to share this simple recipe here with you in addition to the macaron recipe.

DYED SUGAR
50g castor sugar
1-3 drops of food colouring of your choice, here I used red.

Note: if you use powder food colouring, simply dilute the colour with few drops of water and mix to get liquid colouring. The intensity of the colour can be modified easily, if you like darker intense colour add more colouring, if the colour is too dark, add more sugar.


Method:
1. In a big mixing bowl, pour in your sugar.
2. add in food colouring, and mix until well blend (you can wear a glove and do this with your hand)
3. Lay them out on cooking sheet for it to dry. Use on the same day. If you wanna store them, make sure that the sugar is completely dried before storing them away in an air tight container

Mini Macaron :)

FOR THE MACARON SHELL
1 room temperatured egg white(39-40g)
50g icing sugar
30g ground almond
30g castor sugar
1 teaspoon of sweetened cacao powder


Method:
1. Put ground almond, cacao powder and 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. This process is called Macaronage. Start folding with a rubber spatula. Continue to mix until you obtain a smooth lava flow batter.

6. 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

7. Pipe the macaron on a baking sheet over baking tray. Hit the bottom of the baking tray with your hand to flatted out the macarons slightly.

8. 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.

9. 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)


10. 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.


BAILEY'S™ CARAMEL GANACHE

Ingredients

50g white chocolate (chopped into small pieces)
63g Bailey's™ (Caramel Flavour preferably)
40g castor sugar


Methods

1. In a pot, pour in Bailey's and bring it to boil
2. Remove from heat, add in white chocolate, mix well until the chocolate melts completely
3. In another clean pot, pour in the sugar, without any water. Put the pot over the heat to make caramel. This process is easier to make caramel, but you have to watch it closely, once it starts to browned you have to stir it lightly, until all sugar is melt and a nice caramel colour is form. Do not put the heat too high and watch out so it won't burn.
4. When it's ready, pour it over the Bailey's mixture, becareful not to burn yourself, you may have to wear a protective glove.
5. Once pour in, stir quickly, the caramel may cake up. If it does, put it over low heat and continue stirring until it melts.


TO ASSEMBLE

1 egg white
1 cooking brush

Method:

1. Pour the dyed sugar in a bowl
2. When the macaron shells are ready, match up 2 shells in similar size. Put one up one down next to each other. The one facing up will be decorated with coloured sugar.
3. With the brush, dip lightly on the egg white and brush over the macaron shell.




4. Dip the macaron in the sugar, if needed, use a small spoon to put the sugar over to coat the shell more evenly.
5. Let sit for about 1 hour until the shell dry up
6. Pipe the ganache on the undecorated macaron shell then close it up with the decorated shell
7. Voila, it's done!! ENJOY :)