Makes: 50 macarons
Time required: 3 hours
Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Challenge:
When I was asked to bake macarons for a baby shower, my first question was “boy or girl?” I was trying to figure out if I should make blue blueberry macarons or raspberry red macarons … however turns out the sex of this baby was a surprise so I had to come up with something gender neutral. This is where the brown teddy bear macarons come in!
Ingredients:
Macaron shells:
- 4 egg whites
- 180g caster sugar
- 65ml water
- 180g almond meal
- 180g pure icing sugar
- brown food colouring
Caramel buttercream:
- 300g sugar
- 300ml cream
- 260g butter
- pinch of salt
Decorating:
- 100g white chocolate, tempered
- 50 mini chocolate chips
- black candy write (or tempered dark chocolate)
Instructions:
Macaron shells:
- Preheat the oven to 130ºC fan forced
- place two egg whites into a stand mixer
- heat the caster sugar and water over low heat to make a sugar syrup
- once the sugar has all dissolved, turn on the stand mixer to medium speed to whisk the egg whites
- when the sugar syrup reaches 120ºC remove from heat and pour in a slow steady stream down the side of the stand mixer, with the mixer still running at medium speed
- increase the speed to high and whisk for 1 minute and then back to medium for another 5 minutes until the meringue forms stiff peaks
- meanwhile, sift the pure icing sugar and almond meal into a clean bowl
- pour the remaining two egg whites into the almond/sugar mixture. Add 4 drops of brown food colour gel and mix together with a spatula
- fold in 1/3 of the meringue and mix thoroughly with the spatula
- gently fold in the remainder of the meringue. Keep folding until the batter has the consistency of molten lava
- place ~90% of the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a plain round tip and pipe circles around 3cm in diameter
- place the remaining mixture into another piping bag fitted with a smaller round tip. Use this to pipe the bear ears on half the macaron shells
- let the piped shells rest for 20 minutes until a skin forms over the macarons
- bake one tray at a time for 13 minutes
caramel buttercream:
- place the sugar into a saucepan and melt over low heat
- meanwhile, place the cream in a separate saucepan over low heat
- once the sugar has turned to a dark amber colour, remove from heat and melt 60g of butter into the sugar
- At this stage the cream should have come to a boil. Pour the boiling cream into the sugar, stirring with a wooden spoon
- return the saucepan to low heat and stir until it forms a smooth caramel
- stir in a pinch of salt then set aside to cool
- once the caramel has come to room temperature, whisk together with the remaining 200g of butter to form a buttercream
Decorating the macarons:
- pair the macaron shells so that you can place one teddy bear shell over a plain round shell of similar size
- on each of the teddy bear faces, spoon a small amount of tempered white chocolate to form the nose/mouth area of the bear
- place a mini chocolate chip over the white chocolate to resemble a nose
- draw two eyes on each teddy face with a black candy writer
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