This creation is part of my macaron marathon this week and I ended up letting my piping hand loose on the baking sheet. I piped hollow circles and crossed my fingers that they won’t collapse – they didn’t and I got donut macarons!

These were made with the fruit loops macaron base, as I thought they had a hint of cinnamon in them, making it quite an authentic donut flavour. (The fruit loops I used did not have the usual artificial flavourings, and instead were all natural ingredients such as beets and even turmeric.)

Macarons shell ingredients
150 g icing sugar
130 g almond meal
20 g ground fruit loops
110 g egg whites, split into 2 bowls of 55g each
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water
1 g meringue powder

Making macarons shells

Grind fruit loops in a powerful food processor or magic bullet and gave it 15 seconds of blitzing and there you’ll have finely grounded, cereal crumbs.

Sift the almond meal, icing sugar, cocoa powder and fruit loops crumbs, set aside in a large wide bowl.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your hand or 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. Leave it to heat up and don’t stir it.

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 speed until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, keep the mixer speed on 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 second lot of egg whites 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.
Test it by pulling the spatula up and letting the mixture drip back into the bowl. Watch it, if it quickly homogenises with the rest of the mixture, it is ready.

Scoop half into a piping bag fitted with a #12 Wilton tip, and pipe. To get even rounds, I hold the piping bag above the baking sheet, with the tip at a 45 degree angle. I squeeze the mixture in the centre of my rounds and as it is close to filling my circle, I stop squeezing and flick the tip from three o’clock to 6 o’clock. This ensures a smooth top.

You can decorate the shells now – I placed some sprinkles onto half of the shells.

Allow 30 minutes for a skin to be formed.

Fan-bake them at 125°C, for 16 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 half of these with a fruit loops butter cream filling and half with a salted caramel filling (see earlier post).

Filling Ingredients:
1.5 cup fruit loops, blitzed (becomes 0.5 cup of fine crumbs)
150g butter
150g icing sugar

Instructions:
Cream butter and sugar together.
Blitz the cereal and mix in with the creamed sugar.

Fill half of your shells and top them with the remaining half of your shells.

The filled macarons 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).