Years ago, I was on a quest to determine how much sugar can you reduce before macaron shells cease to look like macarons. You can see my successful attempts here and here. That was before egg white powder became a common meringue stabilizer in macarons. I was curious if I could replicate the same sugar percentages with the addition of egg white powder and drying the piped batter in the open instead of using the oven to dry. Here's my results!
A closer peek at the cross section! I filled the ultra low sugar macaron shells with low sugar fillings: Biscoff cream cheese and strawberry edible cookie dough. I made a hidden heart surprise in the filling as Easter is about God's love for us.
Ultra low sugar macaron shell:
Swiss meringue:
40g egg whites
2g EWP
1g cream of tartar
30g icing sugar*
1 drop yellow gel colouring*
1 drop orange gel colouring*
Dry ingredients:
55g almond flour
27g icing sugar*
9g rice flour*
1g cornstarch*
1/4 tsp (0.5g) cocoa powder*
* Notes for ingredients:
- Cocoa powder & gel colouring were added for colour & not counted in the calculation of total weight of ingredients
- The icing sugar I used contains 5% cornstarch that's why the total sugar I calculated is 32.8% instead of 34.5%. This percentage will be different depending on your icing sugar source. I used icing sugar instead of caster sugar for meringue as it's easier to dissolve in egg whites (finer sugar particles) & the presence of a little cornstarch helps with a sturdier meringue
- There's a limit to how much almond flour you can increase without the whole mix turning extremely thick so I added more bulk by using rice flour. Corn starch is added to help speed up drying & for a sturdier membrane formed during the drying process. You may replace both ingredients with icing sugar if you prefer to stick with original macaron ingredients. The resulting sugar percentage is about 40%.
Here's the reel with the tutorial for making the macaron shells:
Here's a comparison of shells from different batches with different resting time of piped batter. When insufficiently dried, the shells tend to have very tiny or almost no feet. Do see the pinned comments in the reel for detailed technical explanation of low sugar macaron shells.
It's full on the inside too! Pardon the low resolution photo as it's a screenshot of a video. I forgot to take still photo 😅.
Biscoff cream cheese:
100g cream cheese, softened
40g smooth Biscoff spread
25g heavy cream
Method:
Combine cream cheese & Biscoff spread together with a spatula. Add heavy cream & beat briefly with an electric mixer until lightened in texture
This filling only contains about 9% sugar by weight, stays relatively soft when cold but holds the shape well at cool room temperature! Feel free to increase the amount of heavy cream for an even softer filling but not recommended if you are serving in the tropics like me. More heavy cream also results in the shells softening & maturing faster.
Strawberry edible cookie dough:
24g cream cheese, melted with honey
20g honey
1/16 tsp salt
2g (1/4 tsp) strawberry emulsion
36g heat treated cake flour (Bake at 180°C for 5 min or until flour is 71-74°C. Cool before using)
4g freeze dried strawberry powder
2g icing sugar
Method:
Sift all dry ingredients together. Mix all wet ingredients together in a separate bowl before combining with dry ingredients to form the dough.
This part of the filling is optional if you only want the cream cheese filling. I included it for the hidden surprise & for an added dimension to the flavor. This edible cookie dough contains about 20% sugar, which is still moderately low compared to many other types of regular macaron fillings. It also stays relatively soft when cold & holds its shape at room temperature.
Others:
Royal icing (for the cross)
