Macarons or Macaroons?

Australians have been mad about macarons since an early series of Masterchef, where one of the challenges was to make a macaron tower (visit this page for more info). I recall there were 2 flavours - olive and beetroot/raspberry - and the recipe used by Adriano Zumbo was endlessly complicated.

Loving a challenge, Mr T and I attempted macarons using the Zumbo recipe a couple of years ago – big mistake! It was SO complicated, calling for fairly obscure ingredients like 3g of powder eggwhites (which I actually found in Coles, but never used again… what a waste), that it wasn’t until the second attempt that they began to look like macarons.

I had put macarons out of my memory to the point where I couldn’t even remember the difference between macaron and macaroon, but fortunately for me, a bit of googling revealed that Helen from theresnoplacelikeoz.com had posted about this on her blog. And what do you know, she's a Zumbo fan too :-)

So, Mr T and I went to a macaron making class. It was run by Loretta from the On Café in Clapham, who makes macarons too lovely to eat and she shared a bunch of useful hints and tips as well as giving the most thorough and best quality cooking class I’ve ever been to.

If you are have never made macarons before and are thinking about it, here are some do’s and don’ts to help prevent failure (taken from previous experience and Loretta’s class). Oh, and I highly recommend Loretta's class!

1. Try making a French macaron first, this is the most uncomplicated of the different macaron types (more on this one later!).


2. Make sure you age the egg whites for 3-5 days.


3. If using colouring, go for pastes / gels, not liquid (this will affect the consistency of the mix). Warm colours tend to bake better than cool colours.


4. Do not undermix the meringue with the almond meal, else you’ll end up with an unpipeable macaron (or if you still can pipe it, the shell will come out of the oven lumpy).


5. Do not overmix either, else you’ll end up with a flat macaron (like I did).


6. Use a template to pipe the shells, and bake them on a silicon mat else you’ll end up with half the shells stuck to the tray.

Here is a series of photos from the class, it turns out Mr T made probably the best batch of macarons (his ones are the yellow ones). He even got a well done from Loretta! At least I can claim to have made the lemon buttercream frosting to go inside, the chocolate ganache that we got from class was just a bit heavy and a bit sweet.

Happy macaroning!