I made some Christmasy small macarons for our church's creche helpers this year! It may look like ordinary macarons but I am so excited to share it because these were made using meringue powder instead of fresh egg whites!
Look at how full the insides are!
The split open shell was piped 8 hours after I made the batter! What's more, with the use of meringue powder, having to deal with extra egg yolks will be a thing of the past for bakers who choose this method!
Here's a closer look at some of the macarons.
Why make the macarons small when I can make them bigger? Because I wanted them to fit into jars like these as gifts.
Pardon the poor photo quality because I was taking the photo late at night under low lighting. The macarons had to be 3.5cm in diameter in order to fit into the jars in this arrangement.
This meringue powder experiment and mass bake came about because of the superb performance of meringue powder for my character marshmallows. Although I am a convert to using meringue powder for marshmallows, I can't say I will do this for macarons. I will explain in this blog post. Although meringue powder as fresh or carton egg white substitution works, it's not without some differences/challenges. Just as sugar-free marshmallows are possible, it's impossible for macarons due to the presence of almond flour which contains oils, and the necessary condition that nice feet formation should be present on the cookie before it can be called a macaron.
I used this mass bake to conduct an experiment for small and large batch. Both pass with flying colours. The recipe I come up with has easy to remember ratios. The ratio for rehydration of meringue powder I use is 1:3 for meringue powder : water. The ratios of all the ingredients are 1:1:1:1 for "egg whites" : caster sugar : icing sugar : almond flour. Feel free to tweak it a little in terms of proportion but not by too much.
Ingredients:
15g meringue powder (I use Wilton brand)
45g water (room temperature or lukewarm)
60g caster sugar
60g icing sugar
60g almond flour
1. Sift together almond flour* & powdered sugar. Set aside
2. Whisk together caster sugar & meringue powder. Add water & whisk until well combined
3. Continue whisking over double boiler until sugar is dissolved (use fingers to test) & temperature is about 45C
4. Whip meringue until very stiff peak*
5. Fold sifted dry ingredients into meringue gently* as shown in reel until batter is able to flow off spatula slowly in a continuous ribbon
6. Pipe as per usual. Rest piped batter until very dry to touch*. Bake* in preheated oven that's about 10C lower than your usual & longer by about 5-10min.
Meringue powder based meringues for macaron making tend to be less robust than fresh egg white based meringues. Although it tends to deflate more easily due slightly under whipping, oils, certain food colouring & rough handling during folding, it's able to produce a stable batter that stays stable for many hours provided you take note of the baker's notes below.
*Baker's notes:
🔸Make sure your almond flour is not oily or your batter will not remain stable for long. I have YouTube videos for proper drying of almond flour & sifting dry ingredients so as not to cause more oil in your batter
🔸Whip your meringue to as stiff as you can. It should ball up in the whisk & offers a lot of resistance when you run the whisk through. Just like vegan meringues, meringue powder based meringues may tend towards being less robust in the presence of oils (from almond) although stabilizers like cream of tartar has already been added in the ingredients.
🔸Drying time for meringue powder macarons is longer than you think. The skin/membrane of piped batter may feel dry to touch already but it's not ready to bake yet if it's still soft, much like vegan macarons, as the meringue produced is less robust than using fresh egg whites. Insufficient drying time may produce feet that are large & protruding/exploding outwards more than usual. Feet may also be lopsided.
🔸Fold the batter with gentleness & care. It takes less number of folds to go from under to overfolded due to the less robust nature of the meringue
🔸Baking time & temperature needs to be slightly longer & lower respectively, much like vegan macarons due to the meringue properties. Baking temperature that is too high will also tend to result in protruding/exploding feet more than egg white-based macarons. Longer baking time is also needed due to the lower baking temperature. I reduce by about 10C from my usual baking temperature & bake longer by 5-10min. Note that temperature & time adjustments are just suggestions as each oven works differently. Use the guiding principle I shared to tweak accordingly
🔸The appearance of wrinkled & patchy tops on baked shells is evidence of meringue that's not stiff enough, use of certain colouring, or oily almond. The crust tends to be thinner & more fragile than fresh egg white based macarons but with proper technique, this can be minimized
Here's the video tutorial for using meringue powder to make macaron batter:
Here's the video for piping tutorial of the wreath, candy cane and snowflake designs using the wet-on-wet batter technique borrowed from royal icing cookie decoration. You may apply this same piping technique on macarons made using fresh egg whites as well.
I filled the macarons with passionfruit spice ganache, matcha ganache with dried cranberries and dark chocolate orange ganache.
with love,
Phay Shing
