36. Hazelnut Macarons - The Small Slice

Pay day present to myself from good old Amazon.

My second ever attempt at macarons and I didn’t do too badly, if I do say so myself. I haven’t shared the recipe as it’s rather complex and you have to refer to a few sections of the book to follow fully. I also didn’t get to take many step-by-step photos as I was concentrating so hard that I forgot.

I followed a French meringue technique, as instructed in the book, which involves a food thermometer (so stick one of them in your amazon basket while you’re buying the book) to make a sugar syrup.

I made my own ground hazelnuts after lightly roasting some hazelnuts for 8 mins, rubbing to remove the skin, then blitzing to the consistency of sand in a food processor. After sifting what I could to mix with the ground almonds, the remainder became the perfect decoration to sprinkle on my shells before baking.

I also used the moist remains of the ground hazelnuts to make some hazelnut buttercream for the filling. You won’t need as much icing sugar incorporated in your buttercream base if you do this as the fresh ground roasted hazelnuts will add sweetness, and you don’t want to over do the sugar factor with the macaron shells.

My family agreed they were rather scrumptious. I’ll have another go soon with another recipe from my new favourite book!

As said by one of my favourite bloggers Steph from raspberricupcake s, ‘Don’t say macaroon to me. It’s MACARON.’

Follow:

Harleigh Reid

I write about food and eat a lot.

Find me on: Twitter