From My Kitchen

It’s the return of one of my favourite flavour combinations here, rose + pistachio, this time in macaron form as a present for my wonderful Mother on Mother’s Day, because she’s really lovely (and also reading this. Hi! 💕). If you look at the photo you’ll see that a) I can’t get the tops of the macarons to be shiny, even though I let them sit for 20 minutes before baking, and b) indeed I have used an Apple Airpods box to be a macaron container. Plus, c) shiny tops make no difference to the yumminess of macarons, so who cares? Makes 15.

Ingredients

Macarons:

120g ground almonds

75g icing sugar

2 egg whites

60g caster sugar

Food colouring of choice

A few drops of rosewater

Pistachio butter cream:

80g unsalted butter

150g icing sugar

65g pistachios

Method

Macarons:

1. Line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper, and find something round that is about 4cm in diameter. Draw 30 rounds on the paper, then turn them over. With luck you can still see the circles, but you now won’t get any kind of ink on your macarons, which would be a bonus.
2. Sieve the ground almonds and icing sugar into a bowl, discarding any lumps, and mix them together. Set to one side.
3. Use an electric handheld whisk and a grease-free bowl to whisk the egg whites until they are stiff (you should be able to hold the bowl upside down over your head, I kid you not).
4. Add the caster sugar a little at a time, while still whisking, then the food colouring and flavouring.
5. Switch to a metal spoon or a spatular and gently stir in the almonds + icing sugar until just combined – don’t over mix or you’ll knock out all of the air you’ve worked hard to get into the egg whites.
6. Scoop the mix into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm round piping nozzle.
7. Using the circles on the baking paper as a guide, pipe out the mix.
8. Leave both trays on your worktop for 20 minutes. In theory this should create the customary shiny surface of a macaron. Never works for me though!
9. Heat oven to 140C fan.
10. Bake the macarons for 7 minutes, open the door to release any steam, then close the door and bake for another 7-8 minutes. They should feel firm and slightly risen.
11. Remove from the oven, but DO NOT take them off the baking paper until completely cool or they’ll fall apart.

Pistachio buttercream:

1. Put the pistachio kernels in a small processor or blender and whizz them up until almost powder like.
2. Beat the butter in a bowl until soft, then beat in the icing sugar very gently at first, then give it some welly until it’s light and fluffy.
3. Finally, beat in the pistachios and a little pinch of salt if you’ve used unsalted butter.
4. Use this delicious buttercream to sandwich the macarons together. You’ll probably have some left over, either save it for something else, or freeze it for another time.
5. Give some of the macarons away before you eat them all.