The macaron madness continues! And shows no signs of abating. Since moving to using silicone mats I’ve started to run into macaron errors. I guess it’s better experiencing it now then during my first try of them, but it can be frustrating. It happens most when I tweak the base recipe, so that’s gonna be a given.
But making mistakes is an important part of the learning curve. Through making errors and working to correct them, I’m learning. And hey, an ugly macaron doesn’t mean a bad-tasting macaron. Just an unbloggable macaron. I can deal with more excuses to bake.
Perfectly formed or not, these babies seem to disappear just as quickly as I can make them. So while they’re still desired, I’ll keep on baking!
What makes these macarons different is that this time I didn’t fill them with a tea-infused ganache. I have absolutely no desire to go near a buttercream filling, but I’d wondered how a sweeter cream-based filling might taste.
This caramel filling is super easy. When making the caramel you don’t have to worry about not stirring or avoiding crystallisation like you would if we were doing sugar work. Just keep heating and stirring until it all melts.
Then you add the cream. It’s going to fizz up, this is completely normal, so don’t worry. Just be careful because it generates a lot of heat as it does this, so handies hovering over the top of the pot will get scalded if you don’t watch yourself. I was using a short, stumpy spoon and learned the hard way. “Stir, stir, ow, stir, ow, ow…”
Once your caramel cream stops throwing a hissy fit, you can add in the butter.
I thought I’d experiment with some praline on these ones. I blended some in my food processor and sprinkled on top. I had no idea how it was going to behave. If it would just melt all over the place or not.
Well, the caramel did melt all over the place. But I think I liked the effect anyway.
For some of them, I only sprinkled the praline on the right side of the shell.
The caramel filling makes it a lot sweeter and richer than the tea. You’re going to want to have a little bit of a sweet tooth for this. That said, the salt in the caramel does help cut through the sweetness.
I baked half a batch of heart-shaped macarons and took them to my partner’s place for Mother’s Day.
For the round ones, I packaged them up and sent them with the domo cookies to my friend for her birthday.
I looked into buying macaron boxes, but in the end decided it would be cheaper to make them myself. And loads more fun. And then I could give them a peepy window. Peepy windows are fun.
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Salted Caramel Macarons
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Ingredients
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Macarons
125g almond meal
150g pure icing sugar
3 large egg whites (aged 1-3 days) at room temperature
65g caster sugar
almond praline, blended into crumbs (optional)
Salted Caramel Cream
100g caster sugar
1/2 cup (120 ml) cream
3g ground sea salt
100g butter, cut into chunks
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Method
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- Prepare baking trays with double sheets of baking paper. Trace 2.5-3cm circles onto one of the sheets of baking paper as a guide for piping your macarons, leaving a few cm between each; make sure the side with the ink/lead is facing down so it does not come into contact with your food. Alternatively, use a macaron mat.
- Sift almond meal and icing sugar together; sift mixture thrice more, then set aside.
- Beat the egg whites until foamy; add gel paste or powdered food colouring here if colouring your shells. Continue beating on low speed, adding caster sugar a tablespoon at a time. Increase to high speed and beat until mixture forms stiff peaks and is glossy. You should be able to hold the mixture above your head without it falling.
- Fold in half of the almond meal mixture until combined, add the second half and repeat.
- Using your spoon or spatula, swipe the mixture against the side of the bowl, scoop the batter from the bottom and plop it upside down. This movement deflates the meringue. You need to repeat this process until your batter is sufficiently runny. To test, look for the following signs: Your batter will slowly slide back down the sides. If you scoop up a bit of batter with your spatula or spoon and let it drop back into the bowl, it will fall slowly, form a small mound on top of the rest of the batter slowly sink back into it. Another good way to test is by getting a tea spoon of batter and plopping it into a small plate. If the peak formed when it falls from the spoon sinks back into the batter within 15 seconds, it is done.
- Fill a piping bag with a 1cm round nozzle, and pipe rounds of macaron batter onto your baking trays. Once done, bang your trays against the counter to knock any air out of the batter. Set aside your macarons aside to dry at room temperature. This will take 45mins-1 hour. Macarons are sufficiently dried when the batter does not stick to your finger when touched. Once dried, sprinkle with a little almond praline if desired.
- Preheat oven to 200°C or 230°C fan-forced.
- Place tray in the oven, reduce temperature to 140°C or 130°C fan-forced. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Here is where you need to experiment, as every oven is different and it will make a difference for macarons. Keep an eye on them and make sure your shells don’t char. Shells will be ready when they can be lifted from the baking paper without sticking. 25 minutes did it for me. Note, if using a macaron mat, the biscuits bake batter at a slightly lower temperature. Try decreasing the temperature by about 10°C and baking for 5-10 minutes longer.
- Set aside to cool.
Salted Caramel Cream
- Place sugar in a medium, heavy-based saucepan. Heat over medium heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves and turns caramel in colour. Meanwhile, heat cream in the microwave for 30 seconds.
- When sugar has melted, pour cream into the pot and stir until well combined.
- Remove from heat, stir in the salt, then leave to cool to about 45°C.
- Add the butter, little by little, stirring continuously to combine completely. Once combined, allow to cool completely.
- Beat the mixture until it becomes light and pale.
- Pipe or spoon the mixture onto one half the the macaron shells, then sandwich with the other half. Allow macarons a day in the fridge to mature before serving.
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You’ll find the printable version of this recipe here.
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Very classy looking macarons. And the packaging you did also looks impressive. Very high class. 🙂
They look amazing
I LOVE salted caramel anything and I must admit that there is nothing better than to have it in a macaron.
how many does it make?
It really depends on how wide and high you pipe them. I usually get at least a dozen out of it.
Hi, how do you melt the sugar? In the picture it looks like it is melted in water, if so how much? I’ve tried making the caramel twice now and failed both times 😦
As it says in the recipe, the sugar is placed in a pot over medium heat and melted.
There’s two ways of making caramel. One is by dissolving it in water first then boiling it, the second is waterless and only involves melting it in a pot. The waterless method is quicker, but the speed also makes it easy to burn.
Unfortunatly when i tried that, the sugar never melted. Perhaps a different pot is needed? This is a non stick saucepan.
I’ve made the caramel this way in all manner of dodgy pots so the pot shouldn’t matter. Heavy based pots are always better as they allow the heat to be distributed more evenly. But the sugar should definitely melt in any pot over heat if left long enough. It needs to be heated to at least around 150°C before it will begin to ‘melt’.
Thank you so much for this! I made these last night–my first time making macarons–and they were absolutely delicious! Your tip with the spoon to tell if they’re ready was especially helpful.
That’s fantastic! It’s always wonderful to have a first time success story.
Hi, these look amazing! I want to try these but had a couple of questions. Did you use any food colouring in the macaron mix to give a caramelly colour? And is single or double cream best for the filling?
There’s no food colouring in these, but you can definitely add some if you like. Use either gel paste or powdered food colouring. Liquid food colouring will throw off the recipe so avoid that.
As for cream, you can use whichever you like. I use thickened cream, which is similar to what is called heavy cream elsewhere. Using double cream will work, it will just be richer.
Unfortunately these were the worst macaroons I have made. I make them quite often and have various degrees of success and failure and am always looking for that foolproof recipe. I think the suggestion to gently beat the egg whites meant that my batter wasn’t stiff enough. The macaroons rose with feet, then the tops went ultra shiny and then sunk leaving a gooey mess of uncooked almond paste. I measured everything out to the gram, so I can only put this down to gentle beating. Any thoughts? I’d love to master these delightful treats but they elude me!
Jude
Hi Jude. I’m not sure entirely what you mean by gentle beating, as I can’t see that term used anywhere in the recipe. The speed of beating the egg whites is reduced when incorporating the sugar to avoid hitting stiff peak stage before all the sugar as been incorporated, but once the sugar is in it’s increased to high speed until you reach stiff peak stage. Did you beat your whites to stiff peak?
Hi can you elaborate more on the caramel cream recipe when it says cream? Like what kind of cream?
You can use most any cream that doesn’t have any weird additives. I usually use what we call thickened cream, but pure, single or double cream is fine.
Hi,
For the cream. Can I use a heavy whipping cream? Or it just has to be regular cream, not whipped
You can use any cream as long as there’s no weird additives and it’s not pre-whipped. Thickened/heavy.single/double cream, it’s all fine. Just depends how rich you’d like it to be.
Is there anyway you can provide the process to making the macarone box. I cannot find them anywhere and wouldn’t mind making my own. Beautifully photographed macarones and box.
Thank you. I didn’t take any photos and I don’t have a template or anything — I just did it by hand and by eye. Next time I make one though I’ll be sure to take photos.
how long can you store macarons filled and unfilled
For this recipe the storage time is the same unfilled and filled as the filling also has a really long life. They’d last a few weeks in the fridge, several months in the freezer. You’d be more concerned about them tasting stale before they become unsafe to eat.
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What kind of cream is it? 😡
As answered above: You can use any cream as long as there’s no weird additives and it’s not pre-whipped. Thickened/heavy/single/double cream, it’s all fine. Just depends how rich you’d like it to be.
I made these macarons and they are INCREDIBLE. Only recipe that has turned out well for me, although the feet didn’t rise as much as I had hoped.
I sprinkled some salt on top rather than almond praline and left the macarons in the fridge overnight. They were delicious the next day, and are extremely addicting (I ended up eating 10 in one day haha). The caramel cream is actually the best part, and I used heavy whipping cream (35%) to make it.
I’m so thrilled to hear you’ve achieved macaron success! :la: That’s wonderful.
As for the feet rising, the surface you bake them on seems to have a huge impact on that for me. Double baking paper (or double tray if you have enough) always gives me higher feet. But if I bake it on a plain silicone mat I get very small feet.
May I know why my caramel fillings is watery even after it is cooled
Did you whip it?
I did. But it just didn’t seem to thicken. But it worked when I put it into the freezer:). But for learning purpose, can I know what went wrong?
I have searched high and low for macaron boxes and find them expensive and rather plain. Can you tell me how you make your own?
Jill
I basically made it up as I went along. I don’t know if you ever did the whole building 3D shapes from cut outs in primary school? But that’s the method I followed. I just drew by hand and cut out a rectangle box shape with tabs for taping it together. Next time I have to make one I will document it so I can write up a tutorial on it.
I made them today and i’m only thirteen they tasted so good i sprinkled a little bit of salt on top and it tasted really good. Although my macarons werent as flat on top as yours are!
Is it possible to tweak the recipe to make caramel macarons?
You’re quite welcome to omit the salt.
I tried this recipe and the caramel actually hardened. It became like a toffee, and when I added butter the caramel just melted it and it was like swimming in the butter..
It was so hard I couldn’t pipe it nor whip it.
So do I heat it with the cream until it stops bubbling, stir in salt, let it cool then add the butter?
Also, the macarons browned but sticked to the baking paper and I ended up throwing the entire batch away. 😦
I had been trying to improvise salted caramel macarons for ages, yet never thought to basically try simple macarons and spreading the caramel on top after baking. Might give this one a go!