Blood Orange Macarons

UPDATE 2019 I now use 55 g almond flour, 50 g powdered sugar, 45 g egg whites, 45 g granulated sugar and bake for 25 min at 285F.

Update Jan 2020, lately I’ve been doing 305F for 20min. once again you just nead to learn your oven (going to leave this recipe at 285 though). See my notes in my General Macarons Recipe for the most up to date.

More macarons yay! NOTE: I changed the amount of powdered sugar and granulated sugar from my normal protocol, but it still worked out. I also scaled up slightly so that I could have enough batter for different colors (I normally only use 35 g egg white = 1 egg white).

1. Macaron Shells: For about 10 2 inch macarons:

• 68 g almond flour (sift, no big almond pieces)
• 62 g powdered sugar
• 50 g egg whites (room temp)
• 40 g granulated sugar

1. Oven to 300F (or 325F, see below). Measure out and sift your powdered sugar and almond flour. Whisk together and set aside. Note: For these, I decided to throw the almond flour and powdered sugar into a food processor to make it extra fine before sifting in hopes it would be easy to manipulate when I piped out different colors.
2. Make your meringue. Beat/ whisk your egg whites until frothy and start to incorporate the granulated sugar a bit a time. Beat until stiff peaks. Don’t add any food coloring yet.
3. Prepare the batters.
   • a. To use different colors and not make more batter, first incorporate the dry ingredients into the meringue so that it is just barely mixed together.
   • b. Split the batter into roughly 1/3 for orange, 1/3 for white (no food coloring or maybe a smidge of yellow), 2/9 for dark red, and 1/9 for slightly lighter red.
   • c. Once batter is separated, add food coloring and folded until the right consistency. You should look up macaronage (folding of ingredients) on Youtube if you don’t know how already.
     • In summary: Fold by basically scraping along the edge of the bowl and then pressing down along the center in sort of a J shape. Do this until you have a lava like consistency, where you can pick up your spatula and the batter will drop down in a ribbon. My test is to bang the bowl on the table and see if the ribbon that just fell incorporates back into the main blob—if it does, it’s ready. Otherwise, I do a few more folds.
   • d. Put into piping bags. Normal macaron tips for the white and orange but use tiny tips for the dark red and red. You’ll need to draw out the section shape.
4. Pipe out your macarons. I use a silpat (would highly recommend).
   • a. First with the orange batter, hold the tip perpendicularly at about a half inch above the silpat and pipe out an amount slightly bigger than the tip (it should spread horizontally if you don’t move your tip).
   • b. Then using the white batter, place the tip on the center and pipe out an amount to make a size of a normal macaron.
   • c. Using the dark red batter, pipe out section shapes, but leaving a white center (8 sections ended up being the optimal amount for me).
   • d. Use the lighter red to add drops along those darker red sections.
   • e. With a toothpick, adjust the shapes of the sections so that the white batter isn’t too thick at any point.
   • f. Add a drop of white in the center and use a toothpick to move along the white that separates sections.
5. Rap the baking sheet against the table a few times. Pop any air bubbles with a toothpick and swirl the toothpick around a bit to have that hole close up.
6. I hate waiting for the shells to dry, so I cheat and actually put the oven temp at 325. Then I open the oven and hold the tray in the oven, rotating it every 10 seconds or so for about a minute. Then again for another 30 seconds. This quickly dries out the shells and makes a skin :p.
   You want to be able to touch the shell and have it not be sticky. Then I drop down the oven temp back to 300 (it’s about this low anyways since the door has been open.).
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes. I do 9 minutes at 315 then rotate the pan and bake for 9 more minutes at 300.

2. Blood Orange Curd/ Ganache Hybrid:

• 1 blood orange, juiced
• 5 g corn starch
• 50 g granulated sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 50 g white chocolate
• 40 g heavy cream

1. Juice blood orange and strain. Heat up and reduce so it’s not as liquidy.
2. Beat the egg yolk and add sugar and sifted corn starch. Whisk well.
3. While whisking, slowly add the heated up blood orange juice onto the egg/sugar/cornstarch. You’re tempering the egg to prevent it from scrambling. Once it’s fully incorporated, add the mixture back into the saucepan and stir constantly on medium. Eventually, it’ll start to thicken. I usually thicken until it’s a nice paste. [I just got a hand blender, so I now turn that on and blend the mixture while it’s heating up to make it super smooth. Not required though.]
4. Take off the heat and transfer to a bowl (I sieved it to get rid of corn starch clumps.)
5. Add cream to the pot used for the curd and reduce significantly.
6. Add white chocolate over a double boiler and melt the chocolate until there are only a few chips that are unmelted. Add the cream to make a ganache.
7. Stir in the ganache into the curd and chill. I transfer to a piping bag and chill it in the fridge or freezer for a short while to firm up before piping onto my macaron shells.
8. Pipe the filling onto the shells and assemble macarons.
9. Let the macarons rest in an airtight container in the fridge overnight for optimal chewiness!

Additional thoughts:
If this is confusing, let me know and I can try to clarify.

Gluck!
-Mario