mactweets | hopes.dreams.aspirations

Now what should I do with the left over red bean paste from my earlier black sesame macarons? Surely it will work with another Macaron flavour – Matcha green tea! I know I know I’ve done green tea many times already, but truth be told, I can never get enough of green tea. The earthiness of the green tea paired with ganache, or in this instance, red bean mascarpone, is simply divine. I also have yet to make a batch that isn’t too soft, so this counts as just another practice =)
This flavour combo reminds me of our most frequent travel destination – Hong Kong. People there can do almost anything with green tea and red bean paste, from drinks to waffles to chocolate treats! Over at Mactweets their Mac Attack challenge this month is all about vacations and I was immediately reminded of our trip where J enjoyed her first green tea ice cream when we were over there. Perfect timing!

Macarons shell ingredients
150 g icing sugar
144 g almond meal
6 g green tea powder
110 g egg whites
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water
A tiny glop of green colouring paste, if you wish to add depth of colour to the shell

Making macarons shells

Blitz the almond meal, icing sugar and green tea powder into a fine powder.

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.
To deepen the colour of the shells, I added the colouring paste to my Italian meringue. The amount depends on the strength of your gel, what depth of colour you desire and how it mixes with other ingredients. Practice is the only way to test it out. I scrapped tiny balls out using a tooth pick.

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 6- 8 minutes, weather dependent.

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 24 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 18 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 mascarpone cheese and red bean filling.

Red bean filling ingredients:

5 tbsp mascarpone Cheese
3 tbsp azuki red bean paste

Instructions:

Mix the mascarpone cheese and azuki bean paste together. Chill while your shells are baking. When the shells have cooled, spread the filling onto half of the macaron shells. Top with the other half of shells by carefully placing the shells on with a twisting motion. This helps to keep the filling from spreading unevenly out.

These need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! It freezes well too. Just eat it within 2 hours of removing from the fridge or the filling will make the shells soften too much.