Lemon Macarons (Ladurée Sucré Bake Through)

These faired a little better than the chocolate macarons, with over half of the macarons forming feet, and fewer cracked tops. I think the problem is too thick batter, even after some hearty macaronage, so it may be a question of more stirring, less gentle folding, or slightly less almonds and icing sugar.

These underwent a very strange reaction in the fridge and became very soft on the outside as well as the inside, perhaps the lemon cream was a bit too wet, and there was too much water absorption?

They were rather melt-in-the-mouth, though, and this was well received. The lemon flavour was excellent, and the combination of the tart cream with the sweet macaron was rather nice.

I have one more type of macaron left (I think - raspberry) before I move onto other types of patisserie, and then I need to locate barquette moulds and savarin moulds! Maybe I'll take a short break to do some Christmas baking instead.

Macarons previously: Macarons, Almond Macarons, Almond Cake with Macaroon Top,  Chocolate Macarons.

Ingredients:
Lemon Cream:
160g granulated sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon (unwaxed)
5g (2 tsp) cornflour
3 eggs
110ml lemon juice
235g butter (softened)
Macaron shells:
275g ground almonds
250g icing sugar
6+1/2 egg whites (separated)
210g granulated sugar
few drops of yellow food colouring (I added more than a few drops of natural yellow food colouring, but did not get the desired colour, unfortunately)

Chocolate Macarons (Ladurée Sucré Bake Through)

Sometimes, even with plenty of macaron experience, they just go a bit wrong, and sometimes, you just don't know why! All had seemed well with these shells, but they never developed feet, and the shells were thin and cracked.

The ganache split, when I was adding the second "part" of the cream. On the upside, that was fairly easily rescued by chilling then beating with some liquid glucose. The leftover ganache is now sitting solidly and innocently in the fridge awaiting being turned into truffles.

Still, they tasted pretty good - sweet shells, with a deep, bitter, chocolate filling - despite the liquid glucose, the ganache still had a wonderful dark chocolate bite. They just won't be winning any competitions for looks.

Ingredients:
Chocolate ganache
290g 70% cacao solids chocolate
270ml double cream
60g butter
Macaron shells
260g ground almonds
250g icing sugar
15g cocoa powder
65g 70% cacao solids chocolate
6 egg whites + 1/2 an egg white
210g granulated sugar

Recipe - Macarons Chocolate from Sucré

Macarons in the past: Macarons, Almond Macarons, Almond Cake with Macaroon Top

Almond Macarons (Ladurée Sucré Bake Through)

You may recall how, post Great British Bake Off, I felt the need for a new baking regime. I chatted to Pigling and we came up with our new bake through.

This is not it. Sorry. I usually bake twice a week, so I thought I'd bake along with her one day a week, and do an independent challenge to hone my patisserie skills separately.

If you've not come across Sucré, or indeed Ladurée, allow me explain. Ladurée is a Parisian bakery, tea salon and patisserie, that has now spread worldwide. Sucré is a book of recipes from Ladurée. It is beautiful, and completely impractical for the kitchen, being pistachio green velvet, with gilded page edges, wrapped in lavender tissue and in a pistacio green box.

The recipes presume a certain degree of baking knowledge, are a little fiddly, slightly more effort than your average cupcake, but usually produce rather spectacular results. (Unfortunately, I failed to take any pictures of the results)

I started at the beginning, with one of their famous macaron recipes (incidentally, there is an entire chapter of macaron recipes) - almond macarons. I forgot the chopped almonds to sprinkle on top, and did not make enough turns of my spatula to loosen the macaron batter (apparently this process of loosening is called macaronage, who knew?!) but the results were eagerly devoured by friends and colleagues. The recipe does produce a fair quantity of macarons, so you may wish to make just half or even just a third of the recipe if you don't have such obliging colleagues.

Ingredients:
Macaron shells
275g ground almonds (almond flour)
250g icing sugar
6+1/2 egg whites
210g granulated sugar
100g chopped almonds
Almond cream filling (adapted as neither almond paste with 65% almonds nor unsweetened almond pulp are available where I live)
150g butter
200g ground almonds
110g icing sugar
200ml double cream

The recipe is the Macarons Amande from Sucré.