Strawberry French Macarons is a French Style pastry made with almond flour and egg whites filled with cream cheese and strawberry jam.
It was a proud parent moment when I saw my daughter patiently makes her first macaron and she nailed it. It was a very laborious process as I had my go with it several times before and now after I got tired making it she took over and gave it a go. Starting at 1:00 PM in the afternoon, I already had a siesta of an hour and she was still going, what’s even more impressive is that she did not bother me to look for the piping bags that I used and improvised on her own by the use of plastic bags to make her own piping bag. I think it took her roughly 4 hours in two batches as she cannot also find our extra baking tray she did baked it a couple of times. When I visited the kitchen nearly after four hours she was just filling in the middle with cream cheese and strawberry filling. The result was a perfect macaron, right texture a tad sweet but it was perfect for the first timers.
I remember when she was younger one of her dreams was to become a chocolatier, tried a lot of things when she did it, similar to the boxed ones you can buy, while it tasted really good it was not as polished as the commercial ones now that she is older she also perfected the art of polishing it and perfecting the looks of what she was baking. Every week she tries to bake and some of it was already featured here in Ang Sarap, one of her favourite ones was her peanut butter cookies which I can proudly say it was one of the best peanut butter cookies I had. Now I think she is venturing into macarons so watch this space as her next one is Matcha but for now give her perfect strawberry macaron a try, trust me this is really good.
In medium bowl using a hand mixed beat egg whites until frothy, slowly add the sugar until stiff peaks form. Set it aside.
In a separate bowl sift together powdered sugar and almond flour then fold it with the egg mixture, add the food colouring. Do not over mix it should be even but thick but viscous consistency.
Place the mixture in your piping bag with a large circle hole top then pipe the batter in 4cm diameter circles on to a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Make sure you secure the baking paper edges with a bit of the batter to prevent it from lifting the baking sheet as you pull your piping bag (yes, she had thought of this one).
Gently tap the on the counter to let the batter settle then let it rest for an hour or until the top partly dehydrates and form a thin layer of skin.
Bake in a 140C preheated oven for 15 minutes or until they have risen. Let it cool for 15 minutes before putting the filling.
While macarons are cooling down prepare your filling by mixing all of the cream cheese filling apart from the jam, mix well until smooth then place them in a piping bag.
Pipe the mixture into one of the macaron, only on the edges then place a 1/2 tsp of jam in the middle. Place another macaron on top.
These macarons look completely delicious. I don’t think I’ve ever had one with cream cheese.
★★★★★