I’ve been working on a new macaron flavour and I think I have invented one – well at least in the cyber world of Google.
The inspirations came from my daughter J, who loves the sprinkles on cupcakes. She asked if she could sprinkle the 100s and 1000s onto my last batch of macarons, and while I immediately replied ‘no…’ the seed was planted.
thank you J for this idea!

Macarons shell ingredients
130 g icing sugar
150 g almond meal
20 g ground 100s and 1000s sprinkles
110 g egg whites
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water

Making macarons shells

Grind 100s and 1000s in a powerful nut processor until they are finely grounded. I dug out my magic bullet and gave it 15 seconds of blitzing and there I have finely grounded, colourful sprinkles.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your stand mixer.
Clip the sugar thermometer according to manufacturer’s instructions to a milk saucepan, put the water and caster sugar in and dissolve the sugar over a low heat. Some recipes say you should stir this gently – I’ve found that so long as I didn’t splash the sugar around, I won’t even have to stir. Use a clean pastry brush to brush down the side of the saucepan to avoid any crystallization if the liquid splashes up. Increase the heat.

Cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 70°C. You should monitor your sugar thermometer, and as it reaches this temperature, add the meringue powder to the egg whites and whisk in medium until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, decrease the mixer speed to medium and slowly trickle the sugar syrup in, down the side of the bowl. (Be warned not to get the syrup onto the whisk as you will then have spun sugar.) Increase speed to high and whisk until the bowl is warm to touch, about 8 minutes.

Add the extra egg white to the almond meal mix, then add the meringue and use a large spatula to thoroughly combine it. Continue mixing the mixture to soften the meringue. Don’t be afraid to slap the mixture down.To achieve “macaronnage”, I mixed the batter about 25 times. Don’t over do this.

Scoop half into a piping bag fitted with a #12 Wilton tip, and pipe.

Today I waited for 30 minutes for a skin to be formed.

I fan-baked them at 125°C, for 20 minutes. After a few minutes in the oven, I could see them rising nicely.

Once out of the oven, the macarons were left for 2 minutes on its trays before I checked them. They peeled off the baking paper quite easily. I then slid the whole sheet off the baking sheet onto my cool marble counter top. This causes a thermal shock and will make it even easier to peel off.

I paired these with a salted caramel filling

Filling Ingredients:
200g castor sugar
310ml fresh cream
7g good quality salt flakes
A few drops of vanilla

Instructions:
Make a toffee with the sugar (heat until melted and golden)
Carefully add the cream in slowly (continue to whisk but bewarned of vigourous bubbling!)
Add the butter in gradually until melted and combined. Add in salt flakes.
Cool in fridge over night (or for a few hours).

These need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! These freeze well (up to 3 months).

Then I thought why not dunk it?

Which one do you prefer? Lightly sprinkled or dunked?