Strawberry Macarons

Makes: 24 halves - 12 macarons

Preparation time: 15 minutes, plus 30 minutes drying time

Cooking time: 17 minutes

INGREDIENTS

- 125g ground almonds
- 15g freeze dried strawberry powder
- 90g icing sugar
- 105g egg whites (from around 3 large eggs)
- 140g caster sugar
- 200g strawberry jam
- 1 tsp cornflour

METHOD

1. Begin by processing together the ground almonds, strawberry powder and icing sugar in your food processor attachment, until they are thoroughly combined and the mixture is a fine powder. Sift into a bowl and set aside.

2. Add the egg whites and caster sugar to the bowl of your cooking chef machine, fitted with the Power whisk. Set the temperature to 45C and whisk at speed 2 for 6 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved. Switch the temperature control to off and increase the whisking speed to 6. Whisk the egg whites and sugar until they hold firm peaks.

3. Remove the Power whisk and fit the Fold tool.

4. Sift in half the contents of the almond bowl, set the machine to speed 1. Once the almond mixture has been incorporated, sift in the remaining half. If preferred, adding approximately 2tsp of pink food colouring will increase the colour density of the final Macarons. Allow the machine to combine the ingredients on speed 1 until you reach a ‘lava’ consistency.

5. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm round nozzle and pipe circles of mixture onto parchment lined baking trays, of around 4cm in diameter, leaving space for spreading. Tap the trays on your kitchen surface a couple of times, to get the mixture to properly ‘grip’ the parchment, then leave the trays out, uncovered, for around 30 minutes.

6. Whilst the macarons are drying on their trays, preheat your oven to 180C.
7. Once the macarons have dried for 30 minutes, place the trays into the preheated oven for 10 minutes, before reducing the temperature to 150C & baking for a further 7 minutes. Remove from the oven before cooling on racks.

8. Whilst the macarons are cooling, prepare the filling.
9. Into the clean bowl of your Cooking Chef machine, fitted with the Creaming beater, add the jam and cornflour. Set the temperature to 110C and mix on minimum speed for 4 minutes. During this time the jam should melt, begin to simmer and then thicken a little. Be careful as this mixture will be extremely hot. Allow to cool, then spoon into a piping bag.

10. Once the macarons and the jam filling are fully cooled, pipe a blob of jam onto the bottom of a macaron shell, then sandwich with another shell. Continue until all of the shells are sandwiched.

And enjoy!