Gingerbread Macarons by Pastreez

This holiday season we teamed up with our friends at Pastreez Macarons to create this festive and delicious Gingerbread Macaron recipe using Amoretti® Premium Blanched Almond Flour and Gingerbread Compound. Pastreez was founded by two French chefs and is based in California, they are an authentic online macaron store. If you were asking yourself where to find macarons near me, don’t look further. The following recipe will yield around 50 macarons!

Ingredients

Macaron Shell

• 300g Amoretti® Premium Blanched Almond Flour
• 300g extra fine powdered sugar (12x powdered sugar is recommended)
• 110g egg white (room temperature)
• 1/8 tsp. Amoretti® Natural Brown Food Color
• 300g sugar
• 75g water
• Another 110g egg white (room temperature)

Filling

• 1 tsp. Amoretti® Gingerbread Compound
• 200g white chocolate chips
• 80g heavy whipping cream

Special Equipment

• Large bowl
• 3/8" piping tip
• 3 x18" piping bag
• Rubber spatula
• Stand mixer
• Kitchen scale
• Plastic cups (for weighing ingredients)
• Sauce pan
• Thermometer

Directions

Macaron Shells

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. In a large bowl sift your almond flour and powdered sugar into a bowl.
3. Mix together powdered sugar and almond flour until you get a homogeneous mix like the below picture 
4. Slowly add 110g of egg white to your flour and sugar mixture.
5. Also add in your red food coloring at this point
6. Mix your batter with your spatula until you have a uniform color. You can test to make sure your batter is thick enough by placing a plastic scraper in the middle of the batter, if it stays still your batter is ready (see images below) Set aside for later.
7. Make a simple syrup by placing water and granulated sugar into your sauce pan.
8. Bring to a boil over medium heat and make sure all sugar granules are dissolved. Remove from heat once all sugar has dissolved
9. Place the remaining 110g of egg whites into your stand mixer bowl fitted with the whisk attachment.
10. Begin to whisk your egg whites to create the meringue. When your meringue is cloudy and white add 1/2 of the simple syrup and continue mixing. 
11. Once the first half of the simple syrup is mixed in add the remainder.
12. Stop mixing when your meringue is white and creamy and does not drop when whisk attachment is removed and flipped upside down. (see below)
13. Now it is time to start the macaronage process. This means mixing the batter vigorously to combine the meringue and the almond flour mix. Add the flour mix into the meringue and start mixing in a figure of eight motion. 
14. Just when the batter comes together and no streaks of flour is seen on the meringue, divide the batter into two bowls. 
15. Add a few drops of  Amoretti® Natural Brown Food Color to the batter in one bowl and keep the other plain. Continue the macaronage and keep mixing until you have the batter flowing like lava, ribboning in, when you scoop and drop. 
16. Do not overmix or undermix. When the batters reach the perfect consistency, fill separate piping bags with the brown and white batters. 
17. Take a bigger piping bag, fit it with a round tip and drop in the two smaller piping bags into the bigger bag, after snipping the ends of both. 
18. Snip the end of the bigger piping bag and now it's time to pipe! Pipe on to a parchment paper or silicone mat lined tray and you will get dual toned macarons. Keep piping 1" or 1.5" discs until all the batter is used up.
19. Follow along for Pastreez® fool proof piping method.
20. • Use two hands: your main hand on top. Other hand at the bottom.
    • Top hand = Squeezing hand. Block the piping bag between your index finger and your thumb, and squeeze to release the batter.
    • Bottom hand = Control hand. This hand controls the direction and where to pipe.
21. Once all macarons are piped smack your tray onto the table at least 10 times to release any trapped air.
22. Let shells sit for 20 min before baking.
23. Bake for 15 minutes, check regularly. 
24.  Let shells cool before filling.

White Chocolate Gingerbread Filling

1. Place white chocolate into a bowl.
2. Heat cream in a sauce pan until it begins to boil then immediately remove from heat.
3. Pour hot cream over white chocolate and whisk until white chocolate is melted.
4. Add 1 tbsp. of Strawberry Artisan and mix to incorporate.

Filling Your Macarons

1. On your sheet pan of shells flip half of them over. One row flipped the other not.
2. Starting in the middle of your shell pipe your ganache onto each flipped shell. 
3. Place bottom of unfilled shell on top of filled shell to close.
4. You're done. Enjoy! 

Looking for authentic macarons in the United States? Checkout out Pastreez macaron delivery HERE.