Strawberry Macarons

Filling:

1. Roughly chop the couverture. Briefly bring the cream and jam to the boil in a saucepan and stir. Take the saucepan off the stove and first dissolve the couverture and then the butter while stirring. Color the mixture with a little red color, transfer it to a bowl and place in the refrigerator for 5 – 2 hours.

Macarons:

1. Put the almond flour and powdered sugar in a chopper, grind to a fine powder and then sieve 2 x. Beat the egg whites until stiff. When it starts to set, pour in the sugar in several small portions while whipping. Then keep beating until you can see a pattern. Color with the same color. Then fold in the almond powdered sugar mixture with a rubber spatula – also in small portions. Do this until the dough is shiny and smooth and flows slightly viscous from the spatula.
2. Then fill the dough into a larger piping bag and cut the tip off so that an opening of 7 – 8 mm is created. Line a tray and a smooth, firm surface with baking foil or paper and use a piping bag – with a small gap – to sprinkle the macarons on top in a strawberry shape. Then tap the sheet several times on the work surface so that the surfaces are smooth. Then let the surface of the blanks dry slightly at room temperature for 30 minutes.
3. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 150 ° O / bottom heat. The baking time is 15 minutes per tray on the 1st rail from the bottom. After baking, pull the macarons, including the foil, from the tray onto a grid and let them cool down completely before removing them.

Decoration:

1. In the meantime, prepare the powdered sugar mixture for the decoration. For the color green you need 50 g powdered sugar and 2.5 teaspoons of water. For black 20 g powdered sugar and 0.75 teaspoons of water and for yellow also 20 g of powdered sugar and 0.75 teaspoons of water. Fill all three colors into small piping bags, close them and have them ready. Don’t be surprised, all three masses are very firm and tough. But that is intentional.

Completion:

1. Now arrange the macarons in pairs. Always one with the bottom up. The later upper parts are now provided with the typical, small dots, first put a small one in yellow and black against it. This is what the little grains of strawberry are supposed to represent. To make it really mini-dots, only minimally cut off the tip of the piping bag so that an opening of no more than 1.5 mm is created. Then cut as much from the tip of the piping bag with the green mass that an opening of approx. 4 mm is created and thus indicates the leaves on the upper edge of the strawberry. Then let everything dry well.
2. In the meantime, take the well-chilled mass for the filling out of the cooler and whip up to a cream with the paddle of the hand mixer at the highest level and then pour it into a piping bag. (If the decoration is not yet dry, put the piping bag in the cooler again for as long.)
3. Then cut off so much from the tip of the piping bag that an opening of approx. 5-6 mm is created, so that a thick dab of the filling splashes onto each turned part and put the top with the decoration on it and gently press it on. The “strawberries” are ready ………… ;-))
4. I took a few as a decoration for a cake and gave the rest to my “girls” in the practice ….. they still do an amazing job and I wanted to keep them “happy” … ;-)))
5. The above-mentioned number of people refers to a quantity of 60 individual copies, i.e. 30 pieces with filling.