Pecan Macarons with Maple French Buttercream

You'll see me baking a lot of these...Green Tea and Pecan Macarons! They are my favorites...and hubby loves Pecan ones especially..I first came across the recipe at here :What The Fruitcake .

When I first attempted to bake them, the dauting part was having to toast the pecans and later grind them, and the method calls for the French Meringue method...which I must say I'm not afraid to attempt anymore! Think I have gotten the hang of it....errr a bit! My first attempt was to feast hubby's cousins and my nieces and nephews who were back from New Zealand and been salivating over my macarons seen on FB.

And yes, lately baking macarons have been casualty free, except that I had to wait for 2.5 hours on Friday night (and there goes my sleep!) to let the batter to dry as it was all wet and humid since Thursday due to rain!

Anyway, here goes the recipe....

Ingredients

90g egg whites, aged in the fridge for 48 hours and at room temperature

144g icing sugar

72g granulated sugar

59g almond powder

58g pecan nut powder

Method

1.Prepare the egg whites at least 24 hours before, and I am a strong believer of this thing about aged egg whites....it will give a sturdy and more stable meringue.

2.For this one, you need to prepare the pecan meal by first roasting them, I did mine by chopping the pecans and toasting them on a frying pan, let cool and combine with almond powder and icing sugar and grind in a food processor. You can use a dry mill blender, but make sure you add icing sugar when grinding, that will prevent the nuts to get oily!

3.Whip the egg white until foamy (think shaving foam), then slowly sprinkle sugar (which I added a pinch of cocoa powder to bump the colour). Whip on high until you achieve glossy and stiff meringue, but not dry.

4.Add the dry mixture into the meringue mixture in 3 or 4 additions, when all are incoporated, do the macaronnage by pressing the batter on the wall of your bowl until you achieve a consistency like a flowing ribbon.

5.Pour the batter into a piping bag, errr I never use a nozzle, instead I snipped off the tip to the size of 1 cm diameter nozzle.

6. Once piped, rap the baking tray on your work top a couple of times to let the air from the meringue to lose and allow the batter to dry.....the batches that I baked yesterday took 20 minutes to dry....the sun was out and it was quite dry!

7. I baked at a preheated oven at 170Celcius, but turned down to 140Celcius when I popped the batter in!

8.Bake for about 20 minutes when the batter is a bit jiggly when touched it should be done.

9.Once cooled fill with Maple Buttercream....and I made French Buttercream.....divinely delicious!

Maple French Buttercream

Ingredients

2 egg yolks

40g caster sugar, I used 2 tbsp

50ml water

120g butter, softened like mayonaisse

maple syrup

Method

1.Whip the yolks with sugar until pale.

2.Heat water until boiling point, remove from fire, mix with yolks until well incoporated. Put back in saucepan and on medium fire heat until it thickens, like runny custard.

3.Whisk until the mixture is cool and add softened butter bit by bit, it would look like a velvety mousse.

4.Add maple syrup to your liking...I added 5 tbsp of maple syrup.

And the taste of these macarons....mmmmm voila!