Violet Hill

For those of you who follow my Twitter, my new nemesis is not a mystery: violet macarons. I’ve been trying to master (or at least achieve) these beautiful pastries using the colors my friend Angela from ai Love baking sent to me a few months back (she’s marvelous!!).

Well, each attempt was a disaster, and I couldn’t pinpoint the problem. I tried changing the temperature, the baking time, the moment when I incorporated the color… and nothing seemed to work.

In between I took a break and made a batch of chocolate macarons and they were perfect, not a single one was cracked or didn’t rise or was burned… And I noticed that for this recipe, the cocoa was added to the dry ingredients and not to the whites.

I decided to do the same with my violet macarons, add the color to the icing sugar and almond and not to the whites as the recipe said. And it worked!

The only problem was the amount of color; they became purple rain macarons, instead of violet creams. But, hey! After so many attempts I was ready to settle, so here they are.

Last week was actually a macaron week here at home. I was offer the possibility to teach a class on macarons, so I’ve spent the whole week practicing at home. I needed some reassurance, especially after my huge struggle with the violet ones…

Thank God, everything went great, the class was fantastic and all the macarons were perfect. Uff! That was a relief… Of course, now and for the next weeks, I’m in a macaron phobia state of mind…

Here are a few more photos from my class at the Kitchen Community…They were made by a wonderful and talented photographer named Martín Mendez.

Crème de Violet Macarons

Ingredients

• 200g icing sugar
• 125g ground almonds
• 120-125 g egg whites (about 3 eggs)
• Pinch of salt
• 30g caster sugar
• ½ teaspoon of violet essence
• A pinch of purple powdered food coloring
• A pinch of  pink powdered food coloring

Directions

Put the icing sugar, almonds and a pinch of each dye in the bowl of a food processor (or electric mixer) and mix one minute until everything is well combined. Reserve.

Pour the egg whites in a clean and dry bowl. Add salt and beat until stiff, not too fast, we don’t want to add too much air at the beginning. Continue beating at medium speed; add the caster sugar one tablespoon at a time and the flavoring. The mixture should be compact, white and bright.

With a large spoon, incorporate the almonds and sugar mixture to the egg whites.

Mix well with a spatula, using enveloping movements in order to not to break the whites.

Fill a pastry bag and form circles of the same size (about 5 cm in diameter) on the baking sheets covered with parchment. Eliminate air bubbles tapping the trays against the counter and let rest the macarons from 15 minutes to an hour (until when touched, they will not stick to your fingers).

Preheat oven to 160 º C (320 º F) heat up and down with hot air (Although you must remember that every oven is different and that this is the temperature that has worked for me, it should be tested first with a few macarons , to make sure the temperature is right for you too).

Bake the macarons on the middle shelf of the oven for 10 minutes. Allow them to cool a bit before removing from the tray.

For the filling I used a white chocolate ganache, the same as for my macarons with raspberries. Here’s the recipe.

Enjoy!