Valentine Macaroons

With valentines day coming up,  I came up with another brilliant money making scheme, to make beautiful macaroons like the ones in the magazines with hearts embossed onto their almondy crusts.

Unfortunately  the first batch was a complete flop as adding the food colouring made all the egg white bubbles disappear and I was left with a big sticky pink sheet of goo.

Not to worry, it wasn't wasted though - I bought some frozen fruits and a pot of double cream and some chocolate and made an Comprehensive Mess (sometimes known as Eton Mess).

I discovered later that I should have used gel food colourings - which don't appear to contain gelatin, so are vegetarian.

Anyway these are the ones I made which look nothing like the ones in the French patisseries and I will be giving them away rather than trying to sell them.

For the ganache filling:

(this makes quite a lot, so you could half the quantities - of just eat the rest)

275g white chocolate
250ml double cream
50g butter
1-2 tsp  food colouring

Melt the chocolate in a bowl in a pan of water on a low heat. in another pan heat the cream - gently stir and do not boil. Add the cream to the melted choc. Turn off the heat. Add the butter in chunks stirring until melted. Add the food colouring, mix well then leave to cool.

For the macaroons: (coming soon!)

125g ground almonds
25g cocoa powder
250g icing sugar
3 - 4 large eggs - separated
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

For the hearts:
1 egg white
3 desertpoons icing sugar

Pre heat oven to gas 9 / 240c / 475f

Line your baking trays with grease proof paper, and get your piping bags ready.

I haven't used a piping bag since I was a kid so I bought myself a selection. I used a big nozzle for the macaroons and a little one to pipe on the hearts.

Mix the ground almonds and the cocoa and most of the icing sugar, leaving a couple of spoonfulls for the egg whites.

You need to then weigh out 100g of the egg white, you can use a broken eggshell to scoop out the excess.

Whisk the egg whites until fluffy then add the rest of the icing sugar, and whisk some more. Then fold in the dry ingredients and leave to stand for 10 mins.

Stir in the vanilla (er... which I forgot to do!) this will deflate the mixture a little, stopping too much cracking on the tops when cooking.

Put the mixture in the piping bag and pipe little blobs about 4cm diameter, not too close together.
When I made these the first time I just used spoons - too be honest I find the whole piping bag thing a complicated mess - and spoons seem to work just as well.

Bake in the top of the oven for 1 minute then reduce the temperature to 180c / 350f / gas 4,  and cook for a further 10 - 12 mins.

A few minutes after the macaroons are out of the oven drop a small amount of water from the kettle underneath the baking paper, this causes steam and helps remove the macaroons easily. cool them on a wire rack.

To finish, sandwich two together with the Ganache and serve / scoff .