Lockdown Recipe – Hibiscus Tea infused Macarons, with Ginger Cream – Courtesy of Laura Gosling

Well, the weather has got a little bit cooler, so our friend has produced a recipe for feel good Macarons, I hope you enjoy them.

This recipe makes around 20 macarons

Ingredients:

Macarons-

• 100g icing sugar
• 80g ground almonds
• ½ tsp cut Carslake Hibiscus Tea
• Gel food colouring (optional)
• 80g caster sugar
• 72g egg whites (from roughly 2 eggs)
• 30ml water

Ginger buttercream

• 200g icing sugar
• 100g salted butter
• 2 tbsp ginger syrup (or 1tsp ground ginger)

Method:

• Sieve the ground almonds and throw away any larger pieces that don’t pass through the sieve. Then pulse in a food processor a couple of times if possible, and sieve again. Don’t over-blend as the almonds will begin to release unwanted oils.
• Mix together the ground almonds, icing sugar, half of the egg whites (around 36g), the hibiscus tea and a drop of food colouring to form a very thick paste. Given the colour of the hibiscus tea, a small amount of pink or purple colouring would be ideal to add, but colouring isn’t necessary – the Macarons in the photo I took have no food colouring.
• Moving onto the Italian meringue, whisk the rest of the egg whites in a separate bowl until frothy.
• In a small pan, heat up the caster sugar and water over a medium heat until the syrup reaches 118℃. If you don’t have a culinary thermometer, this temperature is likely to be reached a few seconds after the syrup begins to rapidly bubble.
• Whilst whisking the egg white again, slowly pour the hot syrup into the egg. Continue whisking until the mixture thickens and can produce glossy peaks which slightly drop when you pick up the whisk.
• Mix a small amount of the Italian meringue into the almond paste made earlier – you can mix this fairly vigorously. Then slowly fold in the rest of the meringue. The mixture is ready when it falls in ribbons from the spatula, but doesn’t immediately sink into the rest of the mixture when it lands.
• Heat the oven to 170℃/150℃ fan/gas mark 3-4. Line baking trays with parchment paper and pipe out the mixture into 3cm diameter circles using a piping bag with a larger round nozzle. You can also buy silicon macaron sheets with circle indents to make piping out the Macarons even easier or there are templates available online to print out and place under the parchment paper. Lift the baking sheets very slightly and drop them on your counter, this will bring air bubbles to the surface of the Macarons which you can pop using a cocktail stick. Leave the Macarons to rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. They will be ready to bake when they form a skin which is dry to touch.
• Bake the Macarons for 10 minutes, turning around the baking tray 5 minutes in so that they evenly brown. Leave the Macarons to cool before peeling them from the parchment paper.

Ginger buttercream:

• Mix together the icing sugar, butter and ginger syrup until the mixture is smooth and glossy.
• Using the same piping bag and nozzle as before, pipe buttercream into the centre of a macaron shell and then sandwich together with another macaron shell.
• The Macarons can be eaten straight away but have a better texture if left at least overnight.