hOw to make Macaroon

To day I'll show you how to make your own Macaroon.

The basic macaroon formula isn’t hard. There is only one recipe for the biscuit: fine almond powder, icing sugar, beaten egg whites, caster sugar and food colouring. Sounds simple but, as Sucheta explains, macaroons are tricky; he regularly throws away whole batches if they’re less than perfect.
There are two methods: the French (easier) and Italian (for the pros). Both are similar, except that the Italian method first heats the sugar in water while the French uses plain caster sugar.

Ingredients:

• 250 gr almond powder



• 250 gr icing sugar



• 200 gr egg white



• 280 gr caster sugar



• 70 ml water

Instruction :

1. Heat oven to 180 degree celcius.



2. Prepare all equipment, mixer, pan for cooking the sugar, baking tray, piping bag with the cube.



3. Place almond powder, and icing sugar into the bowl. Add 100 gr fresh egg white and mix well.



4. Beat up another 100 gr fresh eggwhite with mixing machine. In separates place boil sugar and water until 121 degeree celcius. Pour into eggwhite , and beat untill mixture stiffen.


5. Add almond/icing sugar mix and stir until you get a shiny and smooth texture.


6. Pour the dough into piping bag


7. Pipe out the dough onto baking tray covered in parchment paper.


8. Rest the dough about 20 minutes.


9. Put in the oven for 10 minutes, when ready take them out and let it cool


10. Decide on your filling ; jam , ganache, lemon curd, or butter cream are good options


11. Pour the filling into a piping bag and squeeze out small dollops onto one biscuit and then attach its matching hat to complete the sandwich.


12. Set in the fridge before eating.

MAKING CHOCOLATE

THE MANY SHAPES OF CHOCOLATE


Chocolate bars


Bars of many types are available today, from baking bars to super premium estate chocolate ( made by both boutique and mass-market producers). Single-estate chocolate, made from beans of the same provence, often carry high price tag. BUt not all of them are better than chocolate made blends of cacao beans. Carefully reading the lable of chocolate will give you an indication of their quality and will allow you to weed out those lesser grade, but the only way to find out your favorites is to taste as may of them you can.



Chocolate pistoles


pistoles-rounds, sightly mounded I-inch disk- are what most professional pastry chef use. Because they are small, they do not need to be chopped before they are melted, thus saving us time. you can't use chococlate chips instead of pistoles, because the cocoa butter content is not the same. pistoles are coverture chocolate, and will be labeled as such if they are.



Coverture Chocolate


Coverture is the only type of chocolate you can temper. Its contain a higher percentage of cocoa butter than regular baking chocolate, at least 31% which allow it to be spread or molded into a much thiner layer.



Chocolate chips


Many brands of chocolate chips contain less cocoa butter than the same bran and percentage of chocolate sold in bar form, in order to retain their shape better when baked. Some include filler such as vegetables oil instead of cocoa butter. They can't subtituteted for chococlate bars or pistoles because their coposition is different.



Choco nibs


Nibs are the coco bean it self,roasted, shelled, and broken into tiny pieces. they have purest chocolate taste in my opinion, because they haven't been mixed with anything. I like to add them to bread, cookie, pralines, for added taste and mixture.



Chocolate liquor


Choco liquor (also called cocoa liquor) is the purest form of chocolate, the liquid resulting from nibs being crushed through a powerful mill. The liquor can be pressed to make cocoa powder, or it can be combined with cocoa butter, as well as milk, sugar, and other flavoring agents to make chocolate. On a lable, chocolate liquor will often appear as " cocoa mass". Combined with cocoa butter, it indicates the total cacao percentage of a chocolate.



Cocoa butter


Cocoa butter is vegetable fat contained in the beans themselves. when the bean are ground, the liquid that comes out of them is called cocoa liquor. When that liquor goes through a giant press, all the cocoa butter ( vegetable fat ) is extracted and collected. the dry part that remains is cocoa powder, and the cocoa butter is then kept to be mixed with the liquor to make cocolate as we know it.



Cocoa powder


To make cocoa powder, ground cacao beans ( chocolate liquor ) are pressed to extract any remaining fat contens ( cocoa butter ). The resulting mass, wich is a dry powder, can then be alkalized, which turn it basic and reduces its acidity. the prosess, invented in 1828 by Conrad Van Houten from holland, its called Dutch process; it also change the cocoa colour and tones down its taste so that is milder.



Gianduja


Gianduja is hazelnut flavored chocolate made by mixing hazelnut paste with the cocolate ( it does not contain large piece of hazelnut ). It can be purchased in supermarket and speciality stores, and online.

MELTING CHOCOLATE

You can melt chcoclate is in the microwave or on the stove top over double boiler. The key is to make sure that no water touches the chocolate at any time or it will cause it to seize. in that regard, the microwave is a bit saver. However, you have to make sure to melt the cocolate only in short increments, stirring between each, to ensure that the cocolate melts evenly and does not burn. Always melt chocolate just before using it in a recipe, since most times it will need to be warm or hot.

DOUBLE BOILER

Fill a medium pot one-third full with water and bring it to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Place the chopped chocolate in heat -proof bowl that will fit snugly on top of the pot but not touch the water. Reduce the heat to low and palce the bowl over the pot. stir occationally until the chocolate is melted.

Note: You can also use double boiler method to reheat ganache and glaze that have cooled and thickened, or to finish melting chocolate for a ganache if the hot cream or milk that was poured over it did not melt it completely.

MICROWAVE

Place the chopped chocolate in a microwave-save bowl . Microwave it on high power for 30 second, then remove the bowl and stir the chocolate. Return it to microwave for another 15 second,( depend how many chocolate you melt ) remove, and stir. Repeat until chocolate is completly melted. stiring the chocolate, especially as more of it melts, will go along way in melting the whole amount, so make sure to let the remnant heat and the stiring do their jobs before deciding if the chocolate needs more time in the microwave. Otherwise, the chocolate that has already melted might thicken too much. The total time will depend on quantity of chocolate you are melting. If only a little bit of chocolate is still hard, reduce the time in the microwave to 10 seconds.