These macarons taste like little brownie treats. Flavourful, chocolatey and simply delicious. The secret to the great brownie flavour is adding home made walnut paste to your ganache.
Special material requirements
Mixer
Thermometer
2 Piping bags
Round nozzle (I used Ateco 12 & Wilton 1A)
2-3 Silicone or teflon mats for macarons (optional)
Recipe
Yield: approx. 40 macarons | Difficulty: medium
Ingredients
Chocolate macaron shells (Italian meringue)
85g powdered sugar
85g almond flour
31g egg white (approx. 1 egg white) at room temperature
3/4 tbsp cocoa powder
brown food colouring (e.g. gel)
red food colouring (e.g. gel)
31g egg white (approx. 1 egg white) at room temperature
85g caster sugar
25g water
1/2 tsp egg white powder (optional)
Brownie ganache
80g walnuts
15g powdered sugar
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp glucose
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
1/8 tsp salt
80g dark chocolate
36g heavy cream
10g butter (room temp.)
Decoration
25g walnuts
80g dark chocolate
Directions
Chocolate macaron shells
Preheat the oven to 150°C fan and place the silicone mat/baking paper onto the back of a baking tray.
Sieve the almond flour and powdered sugar, removing bigger bits of the almond flour. If there are many bits you remove, add some additional almond flour to even out the weight.
Place the powdered sugar, almond flour, cocoa powder, first part of the egg whites and food colouring in a large bowl and mix with a rubber spatula until you have a paste. You will need a few drops of the brown food colour and just one drop red food colour. The red will give the brown a more chocolatey colour.
Place the caster sugar and water into a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.
In the mean time, place the second part of egg whites into a bowl and start whisking on medium speed, until you have soft peaks. Here you can optionally add the egg white powder.
When your syrup reaches 118°C and your egg whites are at a soft peak, remove the saucepan from the heat and slowly pour the syrup to the egg whites, while still whisking.
Keep whisking the egg whites on high speed until they have increased in volume and are fluffy and shiny and the meringue has cooled down.
Add one third of the beaten egg whites at a time to the almond flour paste, incorporating it completely every time.
IMPORTANT: mixing the macaron dough is the most important step. Mix your dough with a rubber spatula in circular motions, starting from the outside working yourself towards the centre. Spread the dough along the walls of your bowl and then scrape it down, again working in circular motions from the outside in. Repeat this process several times. Check in between if the dough is ready. The dough is ready when you pick up some dough with your spatula and let it drip back into the bowl. If it comes off in chunks it is not ready yet. If the dough flows down in one string without breaking, it is ready to be piped.
Transfer the dough into a piping bag with the nozzle (Ateco 12) and pipe circles with 2.5 - 3cm diameters onto the silicone mats. Try to pipe all of the dough at once. Use baking paper to pipe on if necessary.
Tap the bottom of your baking tray to release any air bubbles. If you have air bubbles on top that won't pop, use a toothpick.
Bake the shells in the middle of the oven for 9 minutes. Depending on your oven you may need to adjust the temperature or baking time.
Take the shells out of the oven and let them cool completely. Then gently remove them from the silicone mat/baking paper.
Brownie ganache
Roast all walnuts (also those for the decoration) in the preheated oven at 170°C for 10 minutes and let them cool down.
Place the walnuts and powdered sugar in a blender and blend in impulses until you get a smooth paste.
Then add cocoa powder, salt and vanilla paste and blend again until evenly combined.
Lastly add the glucose and shortly blend again. After this step you will get a thicker paste consistency. Set aside.
In a bowl, heat up the chocolate and heavy cream in the microwave until fully melted. Try not to overheat.
Add the butter and whisk until fully dissolved in the ganache.
Add one third at a time of the walnut paste to the ganache and whisk until evenly spread each time before adding more paste. Do this until all of the paste is fully incorporated in the ganache. Do not hand blend since it will split the fats. This ganache will not be silky smooth but I think it's perfectly fine and suits the brownie theme.
Transfer the ganache into a piping bag with the nozzle Wilton 1A and place in the fridge for 1 - 1.5 hours. Do not let it get too hard, otherwise it will be more difficult to pipe.
Decoration
Pair same sized macaron shells together and lay out on a flat surface.
Blend your roasted walnuts until you get small even crumbs.
Melt the chocolate and preferably temper it. However, you can also melt the chocolate without tempering, it will work just as fine.
Dip the top of one macaron cookie of each pair into the melted chocolate and gently tap the hand that is holding the macaron to let excess chocolate drip down.
Place the cookie on parchment paper (best beside the other paired half so you still know where it belongs) and sprinkle some walnut crumbs on top.
Let the chocolate set either at room temperature or in the fridge if you want to speed up the process.
Assembly
Check the ganache, the piping bag should be soft, but not runny. It should hold its shape when you pipe it. If its too runny, let it rest more.
Generously pipe some brownie filling onto one half of the paired macaron shells.
Place the other half of the shells on top and gently push the shells a little bit together.
Notes
Italian meringue: I like to add some egg white powder which helps stabilise the Italian meringue.
Food colouring: you can leave out the food colouring if you want to keep it natural. The macaron shells will then have a pale light brown colour from the cocoa powder.
Silicone mat: I use a silicone mat that has circles printed on it as guidelines for piping the macaron shells. If you do not have a silicone mat, you can use baking paper. If you also prefer guidelines, you can print macaron guidelines on a paper an place it underneath the baking paper. Don't forget to remove the paper before you place the macarons into the oven.
Egg whites: 31g of egg whites is approximately the amount of one medium egg. However, this may vary. For the macarons it is important to have the exact amount for all ingredients. The easiest way is to weigh your egg whites and adjust the other ingredients to your egg white amount.