Orange Macarons With Blood Orange Caramel

Mmmm Macarons! These are not macaroons which are a chewy coconut cookie, but rather macarons (see the difference of spelling?) which are two meringue cookies that have a flavourful filling squished between them. I've eaten them on a few different occasions, once at a craft show, and another time at a patisserie in the Distillery District of Toronto, and am always struck first by their texture rather than their flavour. The Macarons I've eaten before are usually raspberry meringue shells with a raspberry cream in the center or lemon ones with a lemon cream center, but none of them ever imparted natural fruit flavour. The meringue texture is very good though, because you bite into it getting a slight crunch and then it melts in your mouth like candy.

For my first-ever attempt at making macarons (a difficult feat) I decided to make orange shells with a blood orange caramel from the book "Les Petits Macarons". I started with the blood orange caramel because I figured that was something I could not screw up. Indeed, it turned out really thick, tasty, a beautiful red-brown colour, and easy to pipe onto the finished meringue cookie. The only thing I might do differently next time is to omit the orange zest, because I thought once it hit the heat it left a bitter finish to the caramel.

I chose to work with the Italian method of making meringues, because it looked the most straightforward to do. Part of the big issue of making the meringue, according to the book, is whipping the meringue too long or for not long enough. Apparently if you whip too long, your cookies won't form feet at the bottom.

My macarons did not form feet, but there are numerous reasons why this could be. When whipping the meringue, it got to the consistency where it would not move in the bowl (which is described in the book), but after getting incorporated with the almond mixture, the batter loosened up a lot. When adding the meringue to the almond mixture, the book says to use a pasta method to incorporate the ingredients. I would have thought that folding the ingredients would be better so as to incorporate air into the mixture.

Whatever the issue, I think that I made an admirable first attempt at making macarons. Next time, I will try pistachio shells with a chocolate ganache filling.