Mango 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.

Same recipe that I use for all my macarons. Recipes were modified and adapted from Macarons by Natalie and Macaronguy for the curd.

1. Macaron Shells: For about 10 1.5 inch macarons:

• 46 g almond flour (sift, no big almond pieces)
• 41.5 g powdered sugar (give or take, since kitchen scales don’t have this precision)
• 35 g egg whites (room temp)
• 35 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.
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. I added some orange and yellow food coloring shortly before it reached stiff peaks.
3. Okay. You should look up macaronage (folding of ingredients) on Youtube if you don’t know how already.
   • In summary: add in dry ingredients to the meringue, a third at a time until mixed. And folding 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. Put into a piping bag.
4. Pipe out your macarons. I use a silpat (would highly recommend). 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.
5. 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.).
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

2. Mango Curd:

• 1/2 ripe mango
• 16 g corn starch
• 50 g granulated sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 10ish g lemon juice
• 28.5 g butter (you can add less depending on how far you take your puree/ cornstarch/ yolk mixture)

1. Puree mango and strain. Heat up until simmering.
2. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add sugar, sifted corn starch, and lemon juice. Mix/ whisk well.
3. While whisking, slowly add the heated up mango puree onto the egg/sugar/cornstarch/lemon. 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 stir in the butter, a little a time. (Or blend it in with your awesome hand blender!)
5. 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.
6. Add gel food coloring to small containers with a few drops of vodka (will dilute out the stickiness of the food coloring and will evaporate quickly.)
7. I initially tried painting on the red/ green gradient with little success. Then I just tried smudging it on and it worked much better! haha.
8. Let the shells dry for about 5 minutes before piping in the filling.
9. Let the macarons rest in an airtight container in the fridge overnight for optimal chewiness!

Gluck!
-Mario