Pierre Herme’s Salted Caramel Macarons

After my last successful macaron-making endeavour I decided to give it another go. This time I set out to make another one of my favourite macaron flavours — salted caramel.  I decided to consult with the current king of the Paris macaron scene, Pierre Herme. I sampled some of Pierre Herme’s wares while on my last vacation to Paris and fell in love. They were my favourite macarons of the trip and trust me, I ate A LOT of macarons while I was there.

Pierre Herme currently has a book out entitled , duh, but a.) it’s unavailable and b.) it’s in French. There’s a rumour that an English version is coming out this year… we’ll see.  Luckily you can find a few of Herme’s recipes on the interwebs.  I stumbled up the site He-Eats and a fantastic entry about making Pierre Herme macarons and of course saw the recipe for salted caramel recipes and settled on that recipe.

At first I was nervous about making the Herme recipe as he uses an Italian meringue instead of a French meringue.  The difference between the two is that the Italian one involves some cooking and a candy thermometer.  I’m not sure what it is but something about candy-making freaks me out a tad.  But I was down for the challenge.  The Italian meringue making was not that traumatic.  I wish my setup was better as I think I used a pot that was a bit too big and my thermometer wasn’t hanging on the way it should.  The recipe is a little unclear about how much the egg whites need to be whipped.  Are we going for stiff peaks?  I didn’t have time to pause midway and do some quick googling.  I ended up going for medium whipped egg whites and my results were okay.

The overall consistency was a lot runnier than my last batch which made me nervous.   Luckily once I let them sit out to form their skin they didn’t expand too much and actually retained their circular shape.  Once baked I tried a few unfilled shells and was kind of disappointed because the texture was pretty crunchy.  I had read that the Italian version turns out crisper than the French version but I was clearly not prepared.  I got nervous that I would be eating a batch of crisp macarons… but after filling and refrigerating them that was not the case.

When it came time to make the filling I realized that I had pretty much no granulated sugar.  It was also about midnight and while there is a 24 hour supermarket about 10 minutes away I was not down with a field trip.  I found some cane sugar and used that instead.  The result was a filling that had a strong caramelized flavour than I would have liked but was still pretty good.

Okay so I’m not making these macarons sound that great at all!  But trust me, once I filled the little buggers and let them sit in the fridge over night they turned out AMAZING.  It was one of those moments where I couldn’t quite believe that I had made this deliciousness.  I mean the crazy air pocket from my last batch was gone (thanks to banging the tray after piping) and the feet turned out pretty darned well.

I’m definitely going to keep up on my macaron-making because frankly macarons are expensive to buy at the bakery (well at least to keep up with my desired consumption).  Not sure what flavour I’m going to make next though…

Salted Caramel Macarons
Macarons
300g Ground Almonds
300g Icing Sugar
110g “Liquefied” Egg Whites
15g Egg Yellow Food Colouring
330g Granualted Sugar
75g Mineral Water
110g “Liquefied” Egg Whites

Sift the icing sugar with the almond powder. Mix the colouring in the first amount of “liquefied” egg whites. Put them on the icing sugar-free almond mix but don’t mix together.

Heat the water and sugar over medium and boil until it reaches 118C. Once the syrup reaches 115C, simultaneously begin to whisk the whites. Once at 118 pour the syrup down the sides of the bowl avoiding the whisk. Continue to whisk the whites for about 2 minutes on high speed. Let cool for a couple of minutes.

Using a rubber spatula scrape all the whites into the bowl with the sugar/almond mixture and fold together until the batter just begins to shine an resembles a cake batter, slightly runny.

Pour it into a pastry bag fitted with a No. 11 plain tip. Pipe the mixture into circles about 3.5cm in diameter, spacing them every 2cm on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Tap the baking sheets on a work surface covered with a kitchen towel to let any air bubbles rise out. Let the shells crust for at least 30 min – they should go from shiny to a slightly duller look that wont stick to your finger if you lightly touch one.

Preheat the oven to 180C fan. The temperature of cooking in your oven may vary between 165C and 190C. Adjust the temperature according to your type of oven. Depending on the size of your oven, you can bake 3 or 4 baking sheets at a time, if it is not, cook 2 at a time. Bake for 12 minutes partially opening the door after 8minutes of baking (at this stage the feet at the base of the shell are cooked) and then a second time after 10min cooking. This is to release any steam that builds up.

Out of the oven, immediately slide the parchment paper onto the work surface. This is important: if you leave the shells on the baking sheet out of the oven, they will continue to cook. Cool the shells on the parchment paper. Peel off the cooled shells, one by one, by hand. These are now ready for filling or you can also store for 48 hours in refrigerator or freeze.

Filling
200g Sugar
330g Whipping Cream (this is my translation the original recipe calls for Creme Fraiche Liquide)
30g Salted Butter + 140g Softened Salted Butter

Add about 50g of sugar to a saucepan, let this melt then add another 50g sugar and let this melt. Continue three times until all 200g of sugar has been incorporated and melted (can anyone tell me why its done in this way I have never heard of making caramel this way).

Let the syrup caramelise until it has turned a very dark amber. Remove from the heat and add the 30g butter. Add the cream which will spatter and bubble and may seize up and harden but will melt in the next stage.

Put the pan back on the heat and cook until it reaches 108C on a candy thermometer. Pour into a dish and cover with plastic wrap to avoid it developing a skin. Let this cool, I left it about 10 minutes which was not enough as it melted the butter in the next stage so let it cool until it wouldn’t melt butter.

Beat the remaining butter for 8 to 10 minutes and then incorporate the caramel in 2 additions. Add this to a piping bag fitted with a plain tip and pipe into half of the shells and then sandwich another shell on top. Store the Macarons in the refrigerator for 24hrs and then remove 2hrs before serving.

(Recipe from Pierre Herme via He-Eats)