White chocolate & Raspberry Jelly Macarons - 27 April 2013

I have a recipe for Pierre Herme's Ispahan macaron's waiting to be tried and tested but have not yet dared to attempt them. Instead i decided to do a simpler version with just a white chocolate/vanilla ganache and raspberry jelly

See recipe at the bottom of the post - note that i halved it to make a smaller batch.

White Chocolate & Raspberry macarons
(based on "Macarons" by Pierre Hermé)

makes about 72 macarons

For the raspberry jelly:
420g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
35g caster sugar
2 leaves of gelatine (2g each)

For the macaron shells:
300g ground almonds
300g icing sugar
110g 'liquefied' egg whites
red food coloring
+
300g caster sugar
75g mineral water
110g 'liquefied' egg whites

White chocolate ganache
200 gr white chocolate (broken into pieces and put in a bowl)
100 gr double cream
Vanilla extract


Start by preparing the raspberry jelly. Soak the gelatine leaves for 15 minutes in cold water to soften.

Using a hand blender, blend the raspberries and sugar to a purée. I used frozen so i heated them in the microwave to soften first. Strain the purée to remove the pips. Heat a quarter of the purée to 45°C.  Squeeze out the water from the gelatin andadd to the hot purée. Stir and add the rest of the raspberry purée.

Pour it into a gratin dish lined with clingfilm up to a depth of 4mm. Allow to cool for 1 hour at room temperature then put the dish in the freezer for 2 hours. Turn out the jelly and cut it into 1.5cm squares. Return the jelly squares to the freezer.

For the ganache:
Heat the cream and pour over the chocolate and added vanilla extract, stir until combined and then pour into a piping bag and put in the fridge to cool.

For the macarons: Mix the almonds and icing sugar in one bowl.
In another bowl, put in the 110 gr eggwhites and be ready with an electric whisk

Put the castersugar and water in a pan on the hob and heat until 118 C - also add your color at this stage. When it is getting close to this temperature, start whisking the eggwhites on medium until frothy. Slowly pour the hot sugar syrup (whilst whisking the eggwhites on high) into the eggwhite bowl. Whisk for about 5 minutes until it is glossy and starting to cool down.

Then empty the rest of the liquefied eggwhites into the bowl with the ground almonds/ icing sugar, give it a quick stir and then add the whisked eggwhites.
Combine until a nice flowing "lava" texture. Scrape into a piping bag and pipe 2 cm rounds on to a silicon paper. Let rest for about 15 min until a skin has formed then put into the oven (heated to 135 c) for 14 - 16 min until firm to the touch.

Let cool, then pair up. Pipe some ganache on one side of the macaron and s small blob on it's other half. then add a piece of jelly and sandwich together.

I dusted them with freeze dried raspberry to make them look pretty. Let them rest in the fridge overnight, bring back to room temp before serving.

Bon appetit!