Saturday, March 12, 2011

Dilemma: Almond cakes or almond macaroons?

Almond cakes and almond macaroons are pretty similar as you use same ingredients but a different way of cooking. So we need:
4 eggwhites
200 gr sugar - make the icing sugar from this sugar
150 gr ground almonds


Almond macaroons

 Preheat the oven to 160°C/fan140°C/gas 3.
 Whizz the icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor to a very fine mixture
  Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt to soft peaks, then gradually whisk in the caster sugar until thick and glossy.
 Fold half the almond and icing sugar mixture into the meringue and mix well. Add the remaining half, making sure you use a spatula to cut and fold the mixture until it is shiny and has a thick, ribbon-like consistency as it falls from the spatula. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle.
Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. Pipe small rounds of the macaroon mixture, about 3cm across, onto the baking sheets. Give the baking sheets a sharp tap on the work surface to ensure a good ‘foot’. Leave to stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes to form a slight skin. This is important – you should be able to touch them lightly without any mixture sticking to your finger. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.
Then you need chocolate cream to combine macaroons together. For cream you need:
150 gr dark chocolate
30 gr butter
200 ml 20% cream
You need to warm up the cream, add chocolate and butter and mix it. After the chocolate cream became cool you can use it to sandwich pairs of macaroons together.

 
Almond cakes

This recipe is a bit easier )))
 Preheat the oven to 160°C/fan140°C/gas 3.
Mix ground almonds and the icing sugar together, add 1 table spoon of eggwhie and start to mash. Add more eggwhites gradually. The general idea is don't use an electric mixer! You don't have to make foam from eggwhites. After you mash all ingredients pretty well line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. It's up to you which size of almond cakes you wanna have )) Bake for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool. To remove cakes from the baking paper you have to wet the back surface and you remove your cakes easily!

I don't like only one thing about this cakes and macaroons - they melt away toooo quick!




6 comments:

  1. I'll be trying this as soon as I can! Thank you very much for posting :-)

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  2. yummy-yummy! Will try to cook soon!

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  3. Small advice - cook curd pie (you can find the recipe in my blog) thus you'll get 4 eggwhites for these cakes and two delicious deserts :)))

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yum! I do want to try cooking macaroons. I did a feature about Laduree macarons over on my food blog and recently one about Portuguese custard tarts which would also be a use for the egg yolks.

    ReplyDelete

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