Mac Attack Entry - Pink October Macaron

Guest what, I was browsing through some flyers today and saw some advertisement for Christmas decoration - ALREADY! In most shop here the xmas decorations are u. Just thinking it wasn't so long ago it was xmas. And we're counting down to christmas again... to me it's just so surreal.

Anyway, the cold air and the falling leaves certainly remind me that we're at the end of the year. On the mountain there is already some snow and I have to remind myself that soon my 'torture season' is back - seeing how my bunnies are fattening up with fat cells and wools, I think we're going to have a cold winter.

So Pink is the colour against breast cancer, here I present you the Pink Ribbon Macaron - with Szechuan Pepper Soya Milk Chocolate Ganache .



Enjoy the entry :)

For the shell

Ingredients:

1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1/2 tsp red food colouring
6. 1/2 tsp SzeChuan Pepper



Methods:

1. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, icing sugar, Szechuan pepper and food colouring, 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.

4. 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. Scoop up a tablespoon of the mixture into another bowl. Add more red colouring in the extra bowl to get darker pink colour.

5. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture. Using a chopstick, dip into dark pink batter and slowly, draw a ribbon over piped shells.

6. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's no longer stick to the fingers when touched. Depending on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

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

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

9. 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 no longer slide against the feet.

10. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

11. 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.

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


Szechuan Pepper Soya Milk Chocolate Macaron Filling (dairy Free)

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 tsp Szechuan Pepper
2. 50g dark chocolate
3. 45g organic unsweetened soya milk


Methods:
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 soya milk with Szechuan pepper. Let infuse for 10 mins, then rewarm the mixture again.

3. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Pour over chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth, shiny ganache is obtained.

4. 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.

5. Fill up the macaron shells and enjoy!