L is for...Limoncello macarons

I wanted to try making macarons again after recently taking a class at Caroline's Tea and Scones and came across a recipe for some using a lemon liqueur, so decided they would fit the Alphabakes theme for February as well. I had a feeling they wouldn't turn out as well as the macarons I made in the class, but I was hopeful!

The recipe was from a book called "Biscuits and macaroons" from Marks & Spencer. It was a different recipe to the one Caroline gave us in her class, but as I wanted to add the limoncello I decided to follow this one from the book.

Ingredients:

3 egg whites

55g caster sugar

yellow food colouring

200g icing sugar

120g ground almonds

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind

60ml single cream

150g white chocolate

4 tsp limoncello lemon liqueur

The recipe didn't say to age the egg whites, but following Caroline's advice in the class I took, I cracked them the day before. So to begin, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Add the sugar

Add a few drops of yellow food colouring and beat

Add the ground almonds and icing sugar

This is my silicon macaron mat that I bought over the internet. It is flat and the circle shapes are only slightly raised, so it is as if you are piping onto a baking sheet but with a guide and a slight edge that will help keep the macarons the same size and shape. It's also easy to remove the macarons afterwards as the mat is flexible so you simply peel it off.

I'm not sure why this picture came out sideways as I did try to rotate it. Here's a trick I learnt from Caroline, and I can't believe I never knew about it before! When you're filling a piping bag - I always use disposable ones these days - stand it in a glass (this is a pint glass) and fold the excess bag down over the top. You can fill the bag without needing to hold it or get messy, and when you're done, simply fold the rest of the bag up and remove from the glass.

Piping onto my macaron mat - it really does work! It's important to leave the macarons to stand for at least half an hour, so they form a slight skin on the top. Meanwhile preheat oven to 150 C. Bake for 20 mins.

Unfortunately the macarons spread a little and became attached to each other, though they were fairly easy to separate from each other....

... unfortunately, they weren't so easy to get off the macaron mat in one piece! Some of them were a bit stuck on and left half of the macaron behind when I took them off. I don't know if they weren't quite cooked enough, or if I should have greased the macaron mat, or if I was just too heavy-handed when I took the first few off, as they came off fine after that. So I only had about half as many macarons as I'd expected - at least the ones I did have looked OK if not perfect!

For the filling, I used a bottle of Limoncello I had bought back from Italy and not opened yet. I'd never tried this lemon liqueur before - it's really sweet but has quite a kick!

Bring the cream to the boil, take off the heat and stir in the white chocolate. Add the liqueur and allow to cool until it is thick enough to spread on the macarons.

The finished product

#

When I made the macarons in Caroline's class, they had shiny, glossy tops. Mine were a lot more matt, and also they tasted more grainy as if you could taste the ground almonds inside. I don't know whether to put that down to the fact that I used a different recipe or not - next time I will try Caroline's own recipe and see how they turn out.

The macarons tasted more of white chocolate than of lemon in my opinion - next time I would try to adjust the recipe so the lemon flavour comes through more. The filling  was also runnier than I would have liked - it set when it was in the fridge and it was easy enough to fill the macarons, but when they had been out at room temperature for just a couple of hours, the filling went quite runny and started to seep out the sides of the macaron. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't think I could give these away as gifts like I did with the chocolate macarons I made in class.

Overall I wasn't too disappointed with my attempt at macarons, even though they were quite different to the ones I made in Caroline's class. I think next time I will have to try to recreate her recipe and see if I have any more success!

I am entering these into February's Alphabakes challenge - the letter L - hosted by me and Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker.

I'm also updating this to send to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as her ingredient this month is Limoncello.

It also happens this month that the Classic French challenge is macarons so this recipe fits the bill for that too (and I'm not going to attempt to make macarons again in a hurry!).  The challenge is hosted by A Kick At The Pantry Door this month on behalf of Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.