Pandan Peanut Butter Macarons

Oh My! Oh My! Oh My! (Skipping like a little girl in a candy shop)... I attempted THE Macarons (Mah-Kar-RONs with a silent N) and it turned out OK. Hehehe!

I will come back with more updates... too excited and can't wait to share here...

OK, I'm back and this is the recipe that I used:

Adapted from here. I was attracted to use his recipe because he used small amounts and in his videos, he whisked everything manually and it does "look" effortless. 

Ingredients:

Macaron shells

65g (2/3 cup) Icing Sugar

50g (1/2 cup) Almond Flour (Grounded almonds)

1 egg white

20g (2 tbsp) Granulated Sugar

1 small dollop of Pandan emulco (Optional, but if you are using food coloring, get those Gel type to avoid adding too much moisture)

Filling

Peanut butter (I used the Yogood Peanut Butter, No Added Sugar, Smooth)

Instructions:

1. Sift the dried almond flour (Refer to Notes) and icing sugar in a bowl and discard any big pieces of almond. I used a spoon to press the big lumps of sugar and almond through the sieve. 
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg white until foamy. Add the granulated sugar and continue whisking until the meringue has semi-soft peaks (Speed 8 on Kitchenaid) and add Pandan Emulco and scrapes the sides of the bowl. Continue to whisk until stiff peaks. Be careful not to over mix or you will have to start over. 
3. Pour all the almond + icing sugar into the meringue bowl all at once. 
4. Begin to fold  the dry ingredients into the meringue in gentle circular strokes. (See the video. NO need to count 50 or whatever folds :P). Once the batter is finished it should look like a thick cake batter and shouldn't be runny. 
5. Line the baking tray with parchment paper and ensure the size fits within the tray. You need a flat surface. I pre-draw circles onto an A4 paper and put that under the parchment paper as a guide to get uniform sized macarons. My circles were 1.25 inches in diameter.
6. Scoop the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small round metal tip and pipe out the macarons.  
7.  Tap the tray to make sure there isn’t any air trapped inside the batter and allow to dry for 30-60 minutes (The duration depends on the weather). If you can see a dull film on the surface and you can touch the macarons with no batter sticking to your finger, then it's done. 
8. Remove the A4 paper by pulling it out, beneath the parchment paper. Be careful and gentle.
9. Bake in a preheated oven at 150°C oven for 15-17 minutes. (Each oven is different, so, do monitor and adjust).
10. Take the macarons out of the oven and allow to cool completely for 30 minutes before removing them from the tray.
11. Flip half of them over, put the similar sized shells next to each other and pipe/scoop a small amount of the peanut butter onto the macarons. Sandwich everything together with another macaron shell and ENJOY!!

Notes

• To dry the almond flour (especially if you have kept them in the freezer like I did), "bake" the almond flour on a baking tray lined with parchment paper for 30 minutes at 95°C. This will help with the texture of the batter or it may be too runny.
• Some recipes will ask to fold the dry ingredients in 2-3 batches. I tried that and it didn't make much difference and I think by adding it all at once, you won't overmix the batter.
• There is a million articles and videos and tutorials online. But I think the best advice I got was, just go ahead and make these. Sometimes we suffer from "Paralysis of too much Analysis". The is only 4/FOUR ingredients. If it did not look perfect, DON'T throw them, they will taste just as nice and sweet and melt in your mouth. REALLY...! :)
• To troubleshoot all the issues with this delicate babies, you can go over to this page and download a FREE-37 pager PDF on Master the Macaron. It has very detailed explanation and lots of pictures. :)