Macaroons

Krista and I decided to make macarons as part of the cookie challenge. Since I didn’t have the knowledge to make them myself, and Krista had prepared them according to the instructions of Ragne Värk’s excellent food blog, we used the instructions that can be found on this blog with minimal changes.
We made the macarons twice, the first one was for testing and it’s not worth talking about much of it, but we needed a wet dough, finer almond flour, and most importantly – most of the macarons failed because of this special silicone mat.
If we used regular baking paper, the situation changed drastically.

Preparation time: 1.5 hours
Level: more tricky than average
Quantity: About 40-45 macaroons

Ingredients:
240 g of almond flour
220 g of powdered sugar
In addition, 220 g of powdered sugar and 80 g of granulated sugar
200 g of egg white (it should be weighed for macaroons, not calculated by the number of eggs)
A little food coloring if desired

Strawberry Cream:
200 g of frozen strawberries
2-3 tablespoons of sugar
100 g of butter
100 g of cream cheese (Philadelphia, for example)

Preparation:

1. Pour the almond flour with 220 g of powdered sugar into the food processor and grind the almond flour very finely. Almond flour cannot be ground without adding powdered sugar, so much oil is released from it that the flour is immediately sticky and lumpy. Add a little food coloring to the almond flour and mix.
2. Beat the egg whites with 220 g of powdered sugar and 80 g of granulated sugar into a soft, shiny foam. The foam should not be too strong, it should flow slightly.
3. Using a fine sieve, sift the almond and sugar mixture into the egg white, and mix gently with a spatula. Don’t overmix because it adds air bubbles to the batter. The dough should be slightly runny.
4. Transfer the dough to a piping bag, use a round nozzle, and spray discs with a diameter of about 3 to 3.5 cm on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. The dough expands slightly, it is not necessary to make too big macaroons.
5. Let the baking pan with the macarons fall straight down on the table 4-5 times so that the air bubbles left in the dough come out.
6. Let the macarons stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.
7. Preheat the oven with a fan to 125 degrees C and bake the macaroons for 25 minutes.
   You probably need to adjust the cooking time a bit for your oven.
8. After baking, let the macarons cool down. Macarons that have come out correctly have a characteristic “leg” and they are smooth on top, and when you remove them from the paper, there is no gap below, and the macarons are also smooth on the bottom.
9. While the macaroons are cooking, prepare the cream. To do this, boil strawberries with sugar until the water starts to evaporate. Puree the strawberries with a hand blender, and cool.
10. Mix cream cheese, butter, and strawberry puree. Mix until smooth.
11. When the macarons are ready and cooled, using a piping bag, spray cream on the underside of the macaron about 5 mm thick and press the second macaron against the cream. This is how to fill all the macarons.
12. Place the macarons in the refrigerator overnight, where their flavor becomes more complete.
    Ready!!

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