With Christmas coming up, these Gingerbread Macarons are a perfect thing to bake! The macaron shells are flavored with ground ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The macarons are they filled with a rich spiced salted caramel!
Ingredients:
Gingerbread Macarons:
120g Icing Sugar
100g Ground Almonds
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 Tsp Ground Nutmeg
40g Caster Sugar
2 x Egg Whites
Spiced Salted Caramel:
150g Caster Sugar
125ml Double Cream
25g Butter
Pinch of Sea Salt
2 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 Tsp Ground Cardamon
Buttercream:
65g Soften Butter
200g Icing Sugar
1. Add the icing sugar and ground almond into a food processor and blitz the ingredients together. This will help to get smooth macaron shells. Then set aside the dry ingredients.
2. Place the egg whites in a large clean mixing bowl (if there is fat residue on the bowl it can prevent the egg whites from whipping up). Whisk the egg whites until you get a soft peak.
3. While whisking the egg whites, slowly add the caster sugar until you reach the stiff peak stage. Make sure you do not put too much in otherwise the meringue will collapse.
4. Sieve 1/3 the dry ingredients into the egg whites and fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites using a figure of 8 motion. Once combined sieve in the rest of the dry ingredients. To see if the macaron mixture is ready to be piped, the mixture should be at the ribbon stage or the mixture will fall off a spatula quickly.
5. Transfer the mixture into a disposable piping bag with a Wilton 2A tip, this will make it easier to pipe the macarons. Line a tray with parchment paper. Snip the end of the piping bag off and pipe the mixture into circles.
6. Sprinkle some Gingerbread Sprinkles on top of the macarons.
7. Tap the tray on the worktop to burst any large air bubbles in the macarons. Leave the macarons to dry for 30-60 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 150C/Gas Mark 3.
8. Add the caster sugar to a pan. Heat the sugar on high heat. Swirl the pan but do not stir the sugar otherwise it will crystallize. Whilst the sugar is heating up, in a separate pan add the double cream and a pinch of sea salt, heat until it starts to simmer. The remove the double cream from the heat. Using a Sugar Thermometer helps when making the caramel, the temperature for caramel should read 170C/340F and should be a deep copper colour.
10. Once the caramel has become a deep copper brown colour, remove the pan from the heat and slowly add a little bit of the double cream and mix. The caramel will start to rapidly boil keep on carefully mixing and continuing to add the double cream until it has all been used.
11. Then add the butter and mix again until the butter is melted and the caramel becomes glossy.
12. Transfer the caramel into a bowl and sieve in the ground cinnamon, ginger and cardamom until they are gently mixed into the caramel. Leave in the fridge to cool.
13. Bake the macarons for 15-17 minutes.
14. While the macarons are cooling make the buttercream by adding the softened butter and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and mix until the mixture becomes paler in colour.
15. Add the spiced salted caramel and mix until the spices salted caramel has been evenly incorporated.
16. Transfer the spiced salted caramel buttercream into a disposable piping bag with a Wilton 2A tip and pipe onto the macarons shells.
17. Finally, put another macaron on top of the buttercream.
