Wow, time flies it's pass mid August already... Been baking so much macarons in the past 2 months for the next books, playing with flavours, colours, fillings.... it's just so much fun.... baking macarons is almost addictive, or it is in fact addictive??
I was so excited for the challenge for McTweet this month - Liquor, as I had also been working on the on my coming books. We found a bottle of Raspberry flavoured Vodka and a bottle of Creme de Casses bought a long time ago that has been sitting in the cupboard of my in laws'. I was like coooool I get to play with those in my next macaron flavour hehehe..
I was lucky to still find some raspberry yesterday as it's really the end of the season. I also bought some new paste colouring -brand 'Sugarflair'. I find that paste colouring gives more intense colour but certain colour come off and could possible stains the teeth... so I am not sure how I feel about them... for now the black and purple colour seems fine but I think this particular red one I used to make these macarons left big stains on my baking sheets ....
Anyhow, here is the Raspberry Vodka Jelly Dark Chocolate Ganache Macaron. Hope you guys like it.
For the shell
Ingredients
1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1/4 tsp of red colouring
Methods:
1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder and icing sugar, sieve it and set aside
2.Beat the egg white until frothy, add in half 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. Mix them up roughly but do not fold yet. Scoop one table spoon of the mixture into a small bowl, mix it well until it becomes quite runny. In the main bowl add in red colouring and start folding.
5. 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.
6. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture.
7. Using a toothpick, dip in the white mixture set aside earlier, the dip on the shells lightly making some random stripes. Do not worry too much on how it looks right now, repeat until all shells are done. Now using the same toothpick, dip on the shells and drags the white mixture around to make random swirls and pattern.
8. 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.
9. Pre heat the oven on 160 C with only top heating.
10. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons, bake for 8 mins, the feet should already start forming at this stage.
11. 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.
12. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.
13. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet. You could speed up the process by lightly wetting your working area with a sponge and drag the baking sheets over.
14. Match up all the similar size shells, and get the ready for filling.
For Raspberry Vodka Jelly & Dark Chocolate Ganache Filling
Raspberry Vodka Jelly
Ingredients
1. 12 fresh/frozen raspberry
2. 1/4 tsp of agar-agar powder
3. 1 tablespoon of raspberry flavoured vodka
Methods:
1. Add raspberries, agar agar powder and raspberry flavoured vodka in a pot over medium heat. Bring to bowl while stirring constantly for 2-3 minutes. Watch closely so it wont BURN!!
2. Filter the mixture over a sieve to remove the seeds and any other impurities. On a shallow glass/metal plat, pour over the mixture. Let cool in room temperature then put in the fridge to let it set.
3. It should take about 30mins to for the jelly to set. Cut it into rectangular stripes. If not use immediately, put it back in the fridge.
Dark Chocolate Raspberry Vodka Ganache
Ingredients:
1. 50g High grade cooking Dark Chocolate
2. 40g fresh liquid cream
3. 10g raspberry flavoured Vodka
Method
1. Put chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place it over water bath to melt it
2. In a small pot, over low heat, warm up liquid cream and vodka
3. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Pour over chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth, shiny ganache is obtained
3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min and place into the fridge for at least 1 hour for it to harden up. Place a cling wrap on top touching the ganache prior putting it into the fridge to prevent any crystalisation on the chocolate ganache.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
Fill your one macaron shell with chocolate ganache, put one rectangular jelly on top the, on the other shell, pipe a pea size of choclate ganache on it, this help secure the shell to the jelly. Close it up and viola!
ENJOY :) and ohh, this is my little setup for each of my photo sessions with macarons. I go addicted with my hubby's Sony Alpha 900 :P and he took a photo of me working hehe.
