The recipe for these raspberry macarons came from the blog Brave Tart (I used her strawberry variation and substituted raspberry powder for the strawberry powder). She actually goes into a great deal of detail in her post on macaron tips, myths and recipe variations. If you are interested in making your own macarons, I highly recommend reading her very informative post.
The ingredients are very similar to those in the vanilla macarons from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook... almond flour, powdered sugar, egg whites, granulated sugar and vanilla beans. However, this recipe adds a touch of salt and dehydrated raspberry powder which I made by grinding up freeze dried raspberries.
Like the vanilla macaron recipe, the almond flour is finely ground and sifted with the granulated sugar and raspberry powder. Unlike the vanilla macaron recipe, none of the granulated sugar gets cooked but it is whipped with all of the egg whites and then folded into the dry ingredients which made this recipe a whole lot easier and faster to make.
The baking method for these macarons is also a bit different than the vanilla version we discussed yesterday. For the vanilla version, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and then reduced the temperature to 325 degrees immediately upon putting the cookies in the oven. The raspberry version is baked at 300 degrees. Also, before baking this recipe tells you to bang the sheet pan on the counter to dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause the macarons to crack.
I can't say that any of the differences in baking methods had an impact on the final product. Just like with the vanilla version, I got two good batches of macarons with beautifully smooth tops and puffy little feet and, just like with the vanilla version, all subsequent batches cracked. Grrr. I was extra careful with the oven temperature this time and made sure it didn't get over 300 degrees so I'm not sure what happened.
I filled the macarons that survived with a white chocolate buttercream which turned out to be a great combination. My original intention was to fill them with the white chocolate ganache recipe in the blog post, but the ganache never quite set up and I was worried it would run right out from in between the cookies so I whipped together some butter and powdered sugar and added the ganache to it. It worked out pretty darn well for something I made on the fly!
One more set of macarons to go and they're chocolate... yummy! How do you think they turned out?
Julie
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