Rambutan 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.

Saw some awesome friuts in the supermarket and did a quick Google search. Figured I could make some cool macarons with them :D! This macaron recipe was a work in progress, so see my latest macaron post for my new base recipe.

1. Macaron Shells: For about 10 1.5 inch macarons

• 46 g almond flour (sift, no big almond pieces)
• 41.66 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.
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 just incorporated.
   • If you want a swirl, seperate a small amount of just mixed batter. Add food coloring to this small portion.
   • For both batters, mix 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 each into a piping bag.
4. Pipe out your macarons. For the swirl, add a drop of red or whatever color, and use a toothpick to make a circle motion. Pipe onto a silpat (would highly vs parchment paper). Rap the baking sheet against the table a few times.
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 :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. Rambutan Curd:

• 1 cup fruit of choice pureed (this doesn’t have to be super precise, since you can always just reduce down your mixture for a longer or shorter time) [for these rambutan ones, I pureed 5]
• 50 g granulated sugar
• 16 g cornstarch
• 1 egg yolk
• 10ish g lemon juice
• 28.5 g butter (sometimes less)

1. Puree and strain. Heat up until simmering.
2. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add sugar and sifted corn starch. I also just add the lemon juice, so that I can make a nice non-lumpy mixture.
3. While whisking, slowly add the heated up juice 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 pot and stir constantly on medium. Eventually, it’ll start to thicken. I usually thicken until it’s a nice paste.
4. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, a little a time.
5. I transfer to a piping bag and chill it in the fridge for a short while to firm up before piping onto my macaron shells.
6. See my post above on how to do the swirl thing.
7. Let the macarons rest in an airtight container in the fridge overnight for optimal chewiness! The flavor tasted much better after resting as well.
   Gluck!
   -Mario