Third Time Lucky: Matcharons

Last night I made matcha macarons matcharons in their version 3.0. which I am pretty pleased with. Admittedly, they are nowhere nearly as "French looking" as the incredibly perfect macarons that Anne makes and which recipe they were modelled on, but they tasted just as macarons should taste. For some reason the surfafce always comes out porous, but I was relieved when I found out thatAnne's toasted coconut macarons look pretty similar in texture. They are based on a different recipe, though. In any case, I left the unbaked macarons to harden on the baking sheet for an hour this time, a step in the procedure which I had - accidentally - completely ignored in my previous attempts.

The only change I made to Anne's basic recipe was that I used 120g of blanched almonds and 120g of powdered sugar (I might reduce the sugar to 100g, the were still very sweet) only and matcha powder obviously, a teaspoon of it. As I don't own a food processor, I blended the almonds in my jug blender on the "pulse" setting which I normally use to crush ice. Might this be the reason for the porous surface, I wonder, even though the (sieved) almond powder is really fine in my opinion?

To blend in the matcha powder, one has to tread carefully and not just toss the whole amount in as this would inevitably clump. Instead, you take about 2 tablespoons of the whipped egg white and blend it with the matcha powder in a small cup before folding it into the meringue.

This time, I filled them with a butter cream with about 2 tablespoons of cranberry jam added in order to get a pretty pink colour but with a more tart taste than raspberry or other red fruits. Personally, I preferred the chocolate filling I used last time (dark chocolate, butter and amarena syrup blended together). I asked my boss which ones of the "macaroni" as he called them he preferred, but he said he found them equally good.

matcharons V.2 with dark chocolate filling

I think I'm going to try some other versions of macarons (I haven't given up on achieving that perfect surface yet!) before my patient testers aka my co-workers get sick of matcha, but I love the pistachio-icecream colour a lot.