Salty Mint Choc' Macaron

Time flies and soon we're off for our wedding in my hometown Penang, Malaysia. I can't help but keep thinking the older we grow the faster time flies... Remembering we were planning and looking for venue, ideas for the wedding 2 years ago... and in less than 10 days the wedding is on!

Ok let's get to the topic. I have to admit that in the last few months I hadn't bake macaron that much. So here we go for this month Mac Attack - Chocolate Macaron with twists.

I recentlty had a chocolate with some fine salt - which inspired me : Salty Mint Choc' Macaron. I decided to make use of the pot of himalayan salt that is sitting in the cupboard for a while. Pairing up with fresh mint leaves from the garden... the combination is surprisingly devine :)

I will be back to participate another Mac Attack in July since I will spend the whole May in exotic Asia :)

I hope you'll enjoy this post. Please do not forget to check my new book in previous post.

Happy MacBaking




For the shell

Ingredients

1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1 tsp of mint green colouring


Methods:
1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, food colouring and icing sugar, sieve it and set aside

2. Using an electric beater, beat up the egg white till frothy, add in half of the castor sugar, keep beating till you get a soft peak and then add in the rest of the sugar. Beat to stiff peak.

3. Add the blended dry ingredients to the stiff egg white.

4. Add dry mixture to the stiffed egg white. Keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50 folds. The mixture should be uniformed, shiny and when lifted it should flow down and form a thick ribbon.

5. Stop folding or else it would get too liquid to pipe.

6. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture.

7. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's nolonger sticked to the fingers when touched. Depanding on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

8. Pre heat the oven on 160 C with only top heating.

9. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons, bake for 8 mins, the feet should already start forming at this stage.

10. Change the heating to bottom only, bake for another 6 minutes. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should nolonger slide against the feet.

11. If the macaron is not baked yet, extense the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

12. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet.

13. Match up all the similar size shells, and get the ready for filling.





For Salty Mint Choc' Ganache

Ingredients

1. 50g dark chocolate (chopped up)
2. Few springs of mint Peppermint would be the best - use only the leaves
3. Himalayan salt / French sea salt "Fleur de Sel" - See note
4. 10g fresh liquid cream

NOTE: I use Himalayan salt, if not French sea salt can be use, I dont think this is the right translation annd do not think this term exist in english. Fleur de sel, literally translate as flower of salt, it's a very fine salt that is retrieved on the surface of sea water when they're concentrated.


Method

1. In a small pot, over low heat, warm up liquid cream

2. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Add in dark and stir constantly until a smooth texture is obtained

3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min - 1 hour to cool down.

4. Fill your one macaron shell, sprinkle salt over the chocolate, press a mint leaf on top, on the shell, pipe a pea size of choclate ganache on it, this help secure the shell to the mint leaf.

ENJOY :)