I recently splashed out the whole £7 on a book “Secrets of macaroons”. Some useful tips, do’s and don’t’s, but most importantly ideas for beautiful macaroons with lovely fillings.

As I’ve cleaned the freezer the other day, I came across some frozen raspberries, which I topped up with blackcurrants, roughly 60-40 and made some lovely macaroons today, perfect for The Bake Off this evening. The guy’s recipe for the shells does not differ much from what I normally do, so I stuck with the usual method and quantities, but the filling was made yesterday, only this morning reheated and topped up with more gelatine, it was too runny. So I cooked down the fruit, then pushed it through a fine sieve. Made a sugar syrup out of 170 g of caster sugar ( could have used less, I decided when tasting the finished jam) and 100 ml of water. Once the syrup reached 110 degrees I added the fruit and a juice of half a lemon. Brought the temperature back to 105 degrees, cooked it for a further few minutes and took it off the heat. Added 1,5 gelatine leaf and left to cool.

This morning it was still far too runny, so another 2 leaves went in and that made it perfect.

Next macaroons will be hazelnut ones, but the filling will be chocolate, a dark chocolate, methinks. 🙂